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There are many issues here with respect to student understanding.<snip>
There are some books which actually state that bonds store energy, so
one must be aware of these. In addition some teacher repeat this so
that students may have actually been taught the misconception.
Actually there are a large number of teachers who have the
misconception. Some treat this statement as shorthand for what is
really going on.
So confronting this misconception requires a lot of attention to
detail. Yes, lots of graphs can be helpful, if students actually
understand graphs. This of course depends on the student audience.
Elementary school teachers will require a different treatment from
physics students. But it is valuable because students can graduate
from college with a degree in biology and still have this
misconception. I daresay the majority of batchelor's degree students
in biology may have this misconception. I was told by one that the
college biology books even repeat this misconception.
The problem is that biology texts tend to confuse the net energy of a
series
of reactions with the energy involved in the separate steps of the series.
In reaction kinetics, special attention is paid to the absorption of
energy
in the formation of the activated complex (activation energy) followed by
the release of energy as new bonds are formed. The net result can be an
overall release of energy (exothermic - when release in the second stage
exceeds the absorption of the first stage), or an overall absorption of
energy (exothermic - if the release is less than the absorption). In
photosynthesis, the texts skip over the energetics of the multiple steps
and
focus instead on the overall release of energy "when the bonds are
broken".
Very poor pedogogically.