Research has indicated the importance of representational competence for learning science. Issues related to the nature of students' representational competence, such as how they demonstrate representational competence across different domains of science, require investigation. In the present study, four aspects of representational competence…

Although students who used the Physical Science Study Committee experiments improved in their understanding of the conservation of momentum, greater gains were made by those who used a computer simulation of one dimensional elastic collisions in a vacuum. (AL)