Educational Alternatives, Volume 21, 2023

Rezumat: Cave illustrations from the prehistoric period used to tell stories of hunting and of rituals and even today provide us with a satisfactory view of how our ancestors lived many centuries ago. In this sense, illustrations in books help to make the content more easily understood whether the content is a fiction story or a scientific textbook. In scientific textbooks especially, pictorial representations are used widely in order to clarify relationships between measurable quantities and even between observables and more abstract ideas. However, pictures and diagrams are not free from misinterpretations and/or oversimplifications, therefore provoking a series of thoughts which can create or maintain logical deductions not strictly true within the scientific realm studied. It is therefore, not straightforward and always true that a picture has an equivalent of thousand words and may be used accordingly. In Chemistry textbooks we have identified several cases where pictorial representations may give rise to misconceptions which could and should be avoided. In most of the cases discussed there is a way to overcome such effects with low cost and high applicability amendments, a few of which are proposed in the text.