Digitalisierung und informatisches Denken im naturwissenschaftlichen Unterricht der Unterstufe am Beispiel der Papierchromatographie.

Paper chromatography is a simple and harmless experiment suitable for lower secondary education. Besides the training of subject‐specific contents, paper chromatography allows the application of modelling and simulation since the submicroscopic processes can be simplified in a way that they become understandable in lower secondary education. Here, the application of digital tools in addition to the experimental performance of paper chromatography in a compulsory STEM course in grade 6 is reported. Following a series of experiments, chromatography is at first simulated by a board game and then by computer simulations. Such simulation program allows the variation of the parameters in order to explore the model and to introduce the particle concept of matter and molecular interactions. The implementation with a graphical programming environment such as Scratch also allows the programming by pupils in this age group. In this way, it is possible to introduce modelling and simulation in an early stage as important contributions to scientific work in natural sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]