DO THE PUPILS AND STUDENTS UNDERSTAND ELECTROCHEMICAL VOLTAGE SERIES?

This article is focused on chemical skills and their applications in the field of electrochemistry. The main problem is the application of electrochemical voltage series on solving of practical problems. The article compares the results received with university students (future teachers of chemistry) in their last year of study with the results received with lower secondary school pupils and upper secondary school pupils.

It follows from our results that only 1/3 of university students of chemistry teaching in the last year of their study does understand the rules of electrochemical voltage series. Similar situation is with upper secondary school students. As for lower secondary school, according to our results the children must be taught some “cookbook procedure”. They do not know the rules how to use the electrochemical voltage series, they do not even recognize the rules among other possibilities. But they do correctly solve tasks that require application of the rules.

How do they do it? They can not learn it from their textbook, as the subject matter is not explained very well there. Maybe their teachers tried to teach them how to use the electrochemical voltage series, but they did not connect his/her explanation with the text in the textbook.

This situation is very sad, as electrochemical voltage series gives a great opportunity to explain why some substances do react one with the other, and why other substances do not. Instead, many children only memorize the reactions, beginning to hate chemistry because of too much subject matter.