Incidence of the terminology used in the application of the Band Theory in the presence of a misconception referred to the electrical conductivity of metals. Study in two chemistry introductory courses at the university

Abstract

In previous courses it was detected that students mistakenly assigned higher values of electrical conductivity of metals that have greater number of valence electrons with the energy of the commonly called «Conduction Band». To overcome this misconcept it is proposed that in the Chemistry courses addressing the properties of metals, the Band Orbitals are named according to the terminology of the Molecular Orbital Theory, such as: «Band-bonding Orbitals», (OBb ), for the subgroup of lower energy orbitals, and «Band-antibonding Orbitals» (OB* ), for the one with most energy. This research was developed in two stages: the first, instruments design and exploration, from 2007 to 2009, and the second, confirmation of results, in 2010. The results indicate that: a) the students applied the deduction of metal bond strength correctly, b) highly significant statistical association evidence exists between the terminology used and the responses; being highly significant the proportion of correct answers in the group that used the Molecular Orbital Theory terminology.