MENTAL MODELS OF THE DAY-NIGHT CYCLE

This article presents the results of an experiment which investigated elementary school children's explanations of the day/night cycle. Firs t, third, and fifth grade children were asked to explain certain pheno mena, such as the disappearance of the sun during the night, the disap pearance of stars during the day, the apparent movement of the moon, a nd the alteration of day and night. The results showed that the majori ty of the children in our sample used in a consistent fashion a small number of relatively well-defined mental models of the earth, the sun, and the moon to explain the day/night cycle. These mental models of t he day/night cycle were empirically accurate, logically consistent and revealed some sensitivity on the part of the children to issues of si mplicity of explanation. The younger children formed initial mental mo dels which provided explanations of the day/night cycle based on every day experience (e.g., the sun goes down behind mountains, clouds cover up the sun). The older children constructed synthetic mental models ( e.g., the sun and the moon revolve around the stationary earth every 2 4 hours; the earth rotates in an up/down direction and the sun and moo n are fixed on opposite sides) which represented attempts to synthesiz e the culturally accepted view with aspects of their initial models. A few of the older children appeared to have constructed a mental model of the day/night cycle similar to the scientific one. A theoretical f ramework is outlined which explains the formation of initial, syntheti c, and scientific models of the day/night cycle in terms of the reinte rpretation of a hierarchy of constraints, some of which are present ea rly in the child's life, and others which emerge later out of the stru cture of the acquired knowledge.