Nature Of Matter

From Project2061 Benchmarks

Research Background
Nature of Matter (from section 4D)
Elementary and middle-school students may think everything that exists is matter, including heat, light, and electricity (Stavy, 1991; Lee et al., 1993). Alternatively, they may believe that matter does not include liquids and gases or that they are weightless materials (Stavy, 1991; Mas, Perez, & Harris, 1987). With specially designed instruction, some middle-school students can learn the scientific notion of matter (Lee et al., 1993). 

Middle-school and high-school students are deeply committed to a theory of continuous matter (Nussbaum, 1985b). Although some students may think that substances can be divided up into small particles, they do not recognize the particles as building blocks, but as formed of basically continuous substances under certain conditions (Pfundt, 1981). 

Students at the end of elementary school and beginning of middle school may be at different points in their conceptualization of a "theory" of matter (Carey, 1991; Smith et al., 1985; Smith, Snir, & Grosslight, 1987). Although some 3rd graders may start seeing weight as a fundamental property of all matter, many students in 6th and 7th grade still appear to think of weight simply as "felt weight"—something whose weight they can't feel is considered to have no weight at all. Accordingly, some students believe that if one keeps dividing a piece of styrofoam, one would soon obtain a piece that weighed nothing (Carey, 1991). 

Conservation of matter (from section 4D)
Students cannot understand conservation of matter and weight if they do not understand what matter is, or accept weight as an intrinsic property of matter, or distinguish between weight and density (Lee et al., 1993; Stavy, 1990). By 5th grade, many students can understand qualitatively that matter is conserved in transforming from solid to liquid. They also start to understand that matter is quantitatively conserved in transforming...