Fluminense-Campus do Gragoatá-Niterói-RJ Recebido em 10/9/98; aceito em 8/12/99 EXPLORING THE MOTIVATION TO THE CHEMISTRY STUDY. This work intends to identify the reasons why people either like or dislike chemistry classes, based on a written questionnaire answered by 157 students of private and public schools. It has a main question-"Do you like to study chemistry? Why?"-and along with others that complement it, we attempt to explore both pupils' school and personal experiences which help them to increase their learning capacities. The answers have given us a very rich piece of discussing material about the like-and-dislike on the study of chemistry mainly about the social interactions in teaching not only this but all other subjects.

The article reflects on the notion of the museum experience from the perspective of a visitor to a science and technology museum. Unlike studies that postulate a generic, abstract 'model visitor', the goal was to discuss the perspectives of the visitor as a psychological being, and to this end the research relied on the notion of interactivity. Using two classic psychology studies analyzing the behavior of children and adolescents, the current study first focused on the notion of experimentation, characterized as an interaction between subject and object. It then explored interactions between subjects and contexts, approaching from the notion of mediated action. My conclusion is that a museum experience should, on the one hand, take into account the visitor's ability to act, ask, and experiment and, on the other, the specific museum contexts that invite and propose but may also limit these very chances to act, question, and experiment.

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