Coherencia y congruencia en las representaciones utilizadas por estudiantes universitarios acerca de los estados de agregación

We can find an extensive list of research articles aimed to identify structure of matter representations in people belonging to several levels in the educative system. Students' learning of the explanation of macroscopic phenomena in terms of discrete and microscopic models constitutes one of the purposes of secondary and university education. The corpuscular model is essential to explain, e.g., the differences among the three states of matter, their properties and the (physical or chemical) changes they may undergo. Research has shown that although students easily accept this corpuscular model and some of its terminology, they do not use it spontaneously. This article presents an inquiry on representations about structure of the three states of matter in university students together with an evaluation of their use for combinations of states, showing that also in this level and for students belonging to Introductory Chemistry courses, the discrete model of matter accepted by the scientific community is dominant only for gases but not for solids and liquids.