Bill was a participant in the Understanding Science Project.
Bill (a Year 7 pupil) told me that “solids they stay same shape and their particles only move a tiny bit”. He explained that the ‘particles’ were “the bits that make it what it is”, although “you can’t see them” as “they’re very, very tiny”. Later he commented that “they are microscopic”. He explained that “there is particles in everything”. Bill was able to talk a lot about particles in solids, liquid and gases and explain what happened during melting.
Later in the same interview Bill talked about how in his primary school he had studied “a lot about plants, and – inside them, how they produce their own food”, and how “inside, it has leaves, inside it, there is chlorophyll, which stores sunlight, and then it uses that sunlight to produce its food.”
I asked Bill if plants had anything to do with particles:
Bill: Well in the plant, there is particles.…’cause it’s a solid.… inside the stem is, ‘cause going up the stem there would be water, so that’s a liquid. And, it also uses oxygen, which is a gas, to make its food, so. I think so.
Bill explained that "…in the leaves it is chlorophyll which is a green substance, so that would make, give it its colour".
Interviewer: Do you think chlorophyll is made of particles?
B: Hm, don’t know.
So it seemed that although ‘there is particles in everything’, Bill did not seem to feel this meant that he could apply the particle idea to all substances.
This could be an example of a fragmentation learning impediment: that is, where learning in one area is not recognised as relevant in studying other subjects or topics (see Fragmentation Learning Impediments).
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Dr Keith S Taber kst24@cam.ac.uk
University of Cambridge Faculty of Education