Abstract
Many of heat phenomena in the living environment can be explained using a view of heat like to the caloric theory. Considering this fact and the development of the heat concept in the history of science, one can suppose that adults will retain various ideas about heat which appear in children's developmental process. The purpose of this paper describes the conceptions of heat in adults and, as the result, is to clarify the children's formation of the heat concept. The data were obtained by using the questionnaire on the weight and volume of a heated body and the heat transfer. The subjects were the 92 students in the Faculty of Education, Kumamoto University. The main findings may be summarized as follows: (1) The learning of the cubical expansion and the heat conduction in an elementary school has great influence on the children's acquisition of the heat concept. (2) Heat is perceived at the first as a type of material substance with properties attributed generally to matter. (3) The single-component view of hot heat appears earlier than the two-component view of hot heat and cold heat. (4) The two-component view of heat is suitable for the explanation of the heat transfer in an isotropic solid. (5) Realizing that the hot heat and the cold heat take up no space or are equal in volume, children will attempt to introduce the conception of motion of molecules and atoms into the notion of heat like caloric.
