Abstract:

In Portugal, the Essential Learning strategies for Education of Physics and Chemistry presupposes that the "scientific literacy of the student (…) is based on the articulation between knowledge and know-how associated with the capacity of thinking critically and creatively” and assumes that students "develop competences to recognize, interpret and produce varied representations of scientific information and learning outcomes: reports, diagrams and diagrams, graphs, tables, equations, models and computational simulations. "Material Properties and Periodic Table (PT) are present in Physics and Chemistry "to relate the electronic distribution of the atoms of the elements with their position in the PT" and "to locate in the PT the different elements of the groups" are objectives for developing the capability to manipulate the knowledge, even if this manipulation requires in scientific literacy a development of articulation skills higher than deciphering skills.

We can say that PT, build 150 years ago by Mendeleiev, is now designed to establish order considering chemistry knowledge but also his philosophical ideas about the nature of the elements. Reading Scerri (2007) words, we understand that “The periodic table of the elements is a wonderful mnemonic and a tool that serves to organize the whole of chemistry.” Analyzing how it has been used and reorganized we also believe as Scerri (2007) explains that the ultimate representations of the periodic system are “energetic and expansive”.

Considering its pedagogical value, we know that the PT graphic information demands the development of scientific literacy. This literacy is based on chemistry, semantic and technologic knowledge and helps to locate, decipher and read visual information in an isogramatic table organisation, based on vertical and horizontal coherent distribution of the elements.

We used Virtual Reality to propose a pedagogic instrument as a challenge for deciding and acceding to information and as a possibility of expanding the information of the PT, allowing the student not only to accede visually to the PT information, but to develop an interactive attitude with knowledge.

The dip immersion in virtual PT is presented for distinct chemical elements that include the main properties of element and elemental substance, as well as data about the origin of the name, the circumstances and the date discovery, occurrence in nature, presence in the human body, importance to life, practical applications and utilities, and implications for the environment.

Subsequent exploration of the PT admits to follow a roadmap that, in particular, focuses on essential aspects of organization such as groups, families, periods and blocks and passes through the recognition of representative and transition elements, by metallic, non-metallic and semi-metallic elements, by the natural and artificial elements, by the periodic properties of the elements and by establishing correlations based on the electronic configuration to interpret, explain and predict the behaviour of the elements.

This experiment built up an application to create the idea that the PT browser inhabits an innovative world where knowledge is accessible. The 3D models were produced in Autodesk Maya and then integrated with other systems in the Unity game engine for later publication in a Windows application. The minimum requirements to run this application require a PC with a high-end graphics card (GTX 1070 or equivalent).

Keywords:

Periodic table of elements, Virtual and Augmented Reality.