Study of Understanding of Physics Education Students from the Concepts related to the Law of Conservation of Mass and Stoichiometry and Extracting their Misconceptions

Misconceptions in science lead to deviations from the goals and the ability to expand the concepts and strengthens the learning the content of the sciences being studied. In the case of abstract and incomprehensible concepts such as some chemical concepts, It will be much more important to recognize and deal with misunderstandings. Stoichiometry which is the study of quantitative relationships between materials in chemical reactions is one of the most important sources of chemical misconceptions because of its difficulty. In the present study, understanding of physics education students about the concepts related to the stoichiometry and the law of conservation of mass have been studied. To gather information, students were asked to describe the relationship between the concepts of stoichiometry, balancing, chemical equation, and the law of conservation of mass as a concept map based on own prior knowledge. Student responses were collected, investigated and their misconceptions extracted. According to the findings of this study, most of the students are unable to construct the correct relations between these concepts and some of them use incorrect phrases and phrases containing misconceptions.