Asia-Pacific Forum on Science Learning and Teaching, Volume 18, Issue 2, Article 12 (Dec., 2017) Firmanul Catur WIBOWO, Andi SUHANDI, NAHADI, Achmad SAMSUDIN, Dina Rahmi DARMAN, Zulmiswal SUHERLI, Aceng HASANI, Suroso Mukti LEKSONO, Aan HENDRAYANA, SUHERMAN, Sholeh HIDAYAT, Dede HAMDANI, Bayram COŞTU Virtual Microscopic Simulation (VMS) to promote students’ conceptual change: A case study of heat transfer Previous Contents Next

Macroscopic and microscopic of physics

As described superficially earlier, a characteristic of physics consists of microscopic and macroscopic properties (detailed in the Table1). Mainwood (2006) stated that the Physics that may describe the very small, so for the moment I shall verbalize of "micro-physics" and "macro-physical" leaving it open Whether Reviews. These terms refer to the current standard model of particle. Macroscopic properties in physics are defined as a concept that can be observed with the eye and can be measured. For instance, a car is moving at a certain speed. In this task; the speed of the car can be observed by the senses and speed of the car can be measured. Microscopic properties are defined as properties of unobservable by eye (i.e abstract) and are only observed in micro level or in particulate nature of matter. Examples of microscopic physics are the size of the constituent particles of water in micro scale and movement of water particles cannot be observed by the senses of sight (Wibowo et al, 2016).

From the microscopic properties in Physics, one of them is duality of particles and waves. Particles can behave as waves and waves behave as particles. The concept of wave particle duality is observed by two experiments namely the photoelectric effect by Albert Einstein and electron diffraction experiments by G.P. Thomson (Crowell, 2006). The concept of electric and electron diffraction photograph is difficult to observe, it was created a media as a tool for the "visualization" hard particles directly observed by eye.

Table 1. Microscopic and Macroscopic of Physic

Fields	The Main Theory	Concept	Category Physics
Classical mechanics	Newton's laws of motion, Mechanics Lagrangian, Hamiltonian Mechanics, Fluid Dynamics, Continuum Mechanics	Dimensions, Space, Time, Motion Length, Velocity, Mass, Momentum, Force, Energy, Angular momentum, Torque, Conservation law, Harmonic oscillator, waves, and Power	Macroscopic
Electromagnetic	Electrostatic, Electricity, Magnetism, Maxwell's equations	Electric charge, electric field, magnetic field, electromagnetic radiation, Magnetic monopole	Microscopic
Atomic physics, molecular and optical	Atomic physics, molecular physics, Optics, Quantum Optics	Diffraction, Electromagnetic radiation, Laser, Polarization,	Microscopic
Particle physics	The standard model atomic, physics accelerators, nuclear physics	Electromagnetic, particle elements,	Microscopic
Condensed matter physics	Solid matter physics, material physics, polymer physics, material, Fermi	Phases (gas, liquid, solid, Bose-Einstein Condensate, a super conductor, super fluid), electrical conduction, Magnetic	Microscopic

In summary, the obtained picture that physics departing from microscopic observation of a system, the system is very small (very small size - i.e. Angstrom level), cannot be measured directly as an example of a single particle system. Explanation of this single particle system can be done through the laws of classical and quantum mechanics and for considerable amounts can be helped by using a numerical (computer).