Attacking a Dense Problem: A Learner-centered Approach to Teaching Density

Abstract

Density is a difficult concept for students to learn because it is abstract and because it is derived from the concepts of mass and volume. The solution is to address density at each of the three levels of scientific understanding: macroscopic, particle/modeling, and symbolic. This article demonstrates how to help students gain a conceptual understanding of density by combining the three levels of scientific understanding and the 5E Learning Cycle.

Keywords:

• density
• learning cycle
• modeling
• models