A STUDY ON COGNITION OF MACROSCOPIC TIME CONCEPT (1) -MEANING EFFECT ON MACROSCOPIC TIME-
1990 Volume 31 Issue 1 Pages 21-28
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1990 Volume 31 Issue 1 Pages 21-28
It is generally thought that the concept of macroscopic time is extremely difficult to understand. There are two possibilities as the reasons why the concept of macroscopic time is difficult to understand; One of them is that the figures of large unit such as 1 million or 1 billion are dealt with. The other is that the comparatively long-term time intervals are treated. If the problem is the figures of a large unit, it can be solved by the presentation of the unit conversion to students, as in the use of "light year" in astronomy. If the time intervals are a problem, it can be solved by using the word which is different from "year." In this study, a pair of figures was presented as the subject. Three types of figures were adopted; number, money and year. The subject was done by selecting bigger or smaller ones. Then the response time required for selection was measured. They were analyzed accord and the magnitude. As a result, it was decided that the cause of difficulty was the types of figures. In other words, the meaning of "billion years" is difficult for students to recognize, so the cause of difficulty was not because of its magnitude but because of its meaning of "year.'' With these results, the method of expressing by using money as the concept of macroscopic time unit was suggested at the early stage of learning. To be more concrete, it should be expressed in the case of some students about the lives of their grandfathers and grandmothers with 1-yen coins, 5-yen coins, 10-yen coins and 50-yen coins, and moreover, to express human being's history with 10,000-yen bank notes, and bundles of 1 million yen packed with newspapers. In the case of the mesozoic or the palaeozoic, they should be expressed by trunks filled with bank notes. It can be thought that it may be effective in the early stage oflearning to present the concept of macroscopic time to the students with other concrete units such as the bundle of bank notes.
