Categories: Site glossary
the idea that in chemistry certain words, formulae and equations can refer at both the macroscopic level and the submicroscopic level, which means they support shifts between these levels (explaining bench phenomena in terms of quanticles) – but shifts that stunts may not automatically follow
"Whilst this is a powerful tool, once again it means that the learner has to deal with ambiguity in our symbolic representation, and to draw upon context and background knowledge to interpret when the teaching is using the symbolic representation to stand for phenomena, and when it models the conjectured world of subatomic particles used in chemical explanations." (Taber, 2009, p.100)
