Effects of Teaching the Particle Concept of Electric Current in the Elementary School Class “Heat Generated by Electric Current”

Abstract

This paper examines whether elementary school students’ comprehension of the heat generated by electric current will improve through teaching of the particle concept of electric current. Students in the experimental group were taught the particle concept of electric current by using the analogy of marble flow. Before the experiment, students tended to explain the heat generated by connecting “the amount of heat generated by the electric current” directly to the “thickness of the heating wire”. On other hand, the explanation by students in the experimental group managed to connect “the amount of heat generated by the electric current” to “the hitting between atoms and electrons”, using the particle concept of electric current. Thus students in the experimental group could describe the mechanism of heat generated by electric current more correctly than students in the control group by using the particle concept of electric current. Overall, we conclude that it is effective to teach elementary school students the particle concept of electric current so that they can comprehend the heat generated by electric current.