Infinity Small Concepts in the Learning of Chemistry

Abstract

Chemistry is a science that goes back and forth between phenomenology and abstraction, the macroscopic and the microscopic, which means that understanding the macroscopic involves understanding the microscopic first. Thus, the science of chemical material requires an interest in quantum concepts that should be understood first of all to imagine what happens in the small infinite including the interaction between atoms and molecules. However, this imagination, blocked by epistemological obstacles, may be limited and even muddled. This is because we do not have an optical visibility on these quantum phenomena but simply a mapping that logical, analytical and philosophical reasoning show us. In this context, the conceptualization of these invisible phenomena can occur only if the connections between the macroscopic, the microscopic and the symbolic are well established. Then another liaison is to be considered between the microscopic and the symbolic which represents schematically the concepts of the small infinite that sometimes go beyond the context of logic in the mind of a student and even of an advanced chemist.In this article, the idea is to highlight the difficulties in understanding quantum concepts and to ensure the true concepts of infinitely small phenomena, discussed in the disciplines of chemical matter by quantum concepts, while exposing the results of a case study through a qualitative survey performed on target students.