Submicro Level in Chemistry Education: Atoms, Ions and Moleculesto Understand Acid-base and Redox Reactions

From experiences all over the world we know that formulae and chemical equations are memorized
very often or are equalized by counting the number of „atoms on the left and right side of the
equation“. Looking to our Chemical triangle (Fig. 1) lecturers and students are jumping from the Macro
level just to the Symbolic level. If we would go first from Macro level to Submicro level and explain
chemical reactions with involved atoms, ions and molecules, learners would understand chemistry
more successfully. With a special questionnaire we are investigating the ability of university students
and chemistry teachers in Indonesia, Tanzania and Germany to interpret given chemical equations
with involved particles. We found a lot of misconceptions and proposed how to challenge them.