Horror vacui

Ozmen (2004, especially for chemical bonding) and Coll und Treagust (2003, chemistiy of metals) can help to develop a first overview. Numerous authors (e g. Pfund, 1975 Schldpke, 1991 Griffith and Preston, 1992 Mas et al., 1987) describe parallels between students conceptions and historical scientific ideas. Schldpke (1991), for example, points out similarities between students conceptions concerning properties of matter and ideas in alchemist thinking. Lee, Eichinger, Anderson, Berkheimer, and Blakeslee (1993) mentions semblances between the ideas of Aristotle and students conceptions about general aspects of the particulate nature of matter and the horror vacui . 

In agreement with the old philosophic rule Horror vacui . Nature abhors a vacuum. 

The requirement that components be of compatible size is a crystal-packing requirement. The horror vacui which Kitaigorodskii16 explored in crystal packing calculations [40] means that, with the best designed donors and acceptors, if they are of very different sizes, good compact structures with charge transfer are not achieved. This is why there are few interesting salts with TCNE and so many with TCNQ TCNE is too small an electron acceptor, compared with most donors, while literally hundreds of salts are known with TCNQ. 

Nachdem mit Torricelli-Experimenten der horror vacui in makroskopi-scher Hinsicht iiberwunden worden war und das Vakuum denkbar wurde. 

Abb. 4.10. Ausschnitt filr Fragebogen zum Horror vacui beim Teilchenkonzept ftir Case [7] (Teilchenvorstellung bereits richtig eingezeichnet, wie Schiiler sie meist angefertigt haben)... 

Barke, H.-D. Der horror vacui in den Vorstellungen zum Teilchenkonzept. In Barke, H.-D., Harsch, G. Chemiedidaktik Heute. Lernprozesse in Theorie und Praxis. Heidelberg 2001... 

Experiments with pipettes and wine siphons alerted the ancient natural philosophers to the fact that there are no air-free or other areas free of material on this earth, that as soon as a substance leaves a space it is replaced by another -mostly air. In this regard, Canonicus came up with a well-known formula, which states that nature avoids empty space without any material, nature shows a horror vacui, a fear of empty spaces [5],... 

Aristotle and other philosophers claimed that the continual separation of matter was infinite. The idea of the impossibility of free space, which must separate particles from each other - the horror vacui - convinced them of the continual reconstruction of matter Hypothesis of Continuation. The School of Aristotle had a huge influence and led to the suppression of the Hypothesis of Discontinuity for almost 2000 years [9]. 

After the vacuum was realized by the Torricelli experiments the horror vacui was hugely overthrown one could conceptualize a vacuum. Gassendi developed on that base the particle concept from a sub-microscopic point of view, and in 1649 he rehearsed Democritus idea of atoms and empty space as the only principles of nature, apart from the complete full and complete empty space nothing else can be considered [10]. After a two-thousand year interruption, scientists were finally able to embrace the Hypothesis of Discontinuity and to reconsider matter as being made up of smallest particles. 

Fig. 4.10 Empirical results concerning the horror vacui by Novick and Nussbaum [8]...

Novick and Nussbaum [8] also sent out questionnaires regarding the comprehension of particles and realized when talking of gases that the majority of students in the U.S.A. are of the opinion that air or other matter can be found between the gas particles (see Fig. 4.10). Based on this, further studies were carried out in Germany about the horror vacui and the space between the particles of gases [9]. 

Despite all the methodically correct efforts, one must expect the horror vacui to show up with children as well as adults - the idea of nothing can be especially difficult to comprehend. An experienced academic advisor expressed this during a lesson by telling his students Just imagine the entire room here is filled with vacuum (Abitur paper of the year 1965 at the Gymnasium in Lehrte near Hannover, Germany). 

In psychological language we should say that when the unconscious wholeness becomes manifest, i.e., leaves the unconscious and crosses over into the sphere of consciousness, one of the four remains behind, held fast by the horror vacui of the unconscious. There thus arises a... 

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