Chapter 10 Flashcards
(12 cards)
Describe an image you could use to help you remember an important equation.
Pick any listing of four or more key ideas or concepts from any of your classes.
Describe how you would encode those ideas as memorable images and tell where you would deposit them in your memory palace.
(For your teacher’s sake, you will want to censor some of your more memorable images.
As a white British actressonce said, “I don’t care what they do, as long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”)
Explain the memory palace technique in a way that your grandmother could understand.
MIND-JOGGING JINGLES
In my tenth-grade chemistry class, we were introduced to Avogadro’s number—6.02214× 107—and none of us could remember it.
So one of my friends made up a song about it with a tune borrowed from a Golden Grahams cereal commercial
(that turned out to be amuch older song called ‘Oh, Them Golden Slippers’).
So now, thirty years later, as an older student, I still remember Avogadro’s number because of that song.
TOP TEACHER TRACEY’S MEMORY TIPS
“Pacing back and forth, and even having a bit of a snack beforehand, can be helpful when you are memorizing because the brain uses a lot of energy during mental activities. It is also important to make use of multiple areas of the brain when learning. We use the visualcortex of the brain to remember what we see, the auditory cortex for things we hear, the sensory cortex for things we feel, and the motor cortex for things we pick up and move. By using more areas of the brain while learning, we build stronger memory patterns, weaving atighter web that is less likely to be forgotten during the stress of an exam. For example, inanatomy lab, students should pick up the anatomy models, close their eyes, feel eachstructure, and say the name of each part out loud. You can skip the senses of smell and taste . . . gotta draw the line somewhere!”
Use the Memory Palace
Top anatomy professor Tracey Magrann applies the memory palace technique to learning the five layers of the epidermis:
“The epidermis has five layers. From deep to superficial, they are the stratum basale,stratum spinosum, stratum granulosum, stratum lucidum, and stratum corneum.
Toremember which one is the deepest layer, visualize your basement.
That is the stratumbasale.
To get from your basement (deepest layer) to the roof (superficial layer), walk up your basement stairs . . . be careful! They are covered with cactus spines (stratumspinosum). That leads you to the kitchen, where someone has spilled granulated sugar all over the floor (stratum granulosum).
Then you go upstairs and stop to put on suntan lotion before you go to the roof.
The stratum lucidum is like a layer of suntan lotion because it protects you from UV rays but is present only on the palms and soles, so that’s where you picture yourself applying the lot.
Now you are ready to go to the roof and enjoy a nice corn on the cob (stratum corneum).
”Can you think of a way to use the memory palace in your studies?
How can you effectively use memorable images to help you in a speech?
For speeches and presentations—those occasionally petrifying do-or-die experiences—can become much easier when you realize that potentially memorable images can help the key concepts you want to speak about stay in mind.
All you need to do is tie the essential ideas you want to talk about to memorable images. See Joshua Foer’s masterful TED talk for a demonstration of the memory palace technique for rememberingspeeches.6If you’d like to see how to apply these ideas directly to memorizingformulas, try out the SkillsToolboxcom website for a list of easy-toremember visuals for mathematical symbols.
(For example, the divide symbol“/” is a children’s slide.)
What’s a memory aid? How can they be used? How can you turn them into a habit to help you study?
Memory aids—whether memorable images, sticky songs, or easily imagined “palaces”—are useful because they help you focus and pay attention when your mind would rather skiter off and do something else.
They help remind you that meaning is important for remembering, even if the initial meaning is wacky.
In short, memorization techniques remind you to make what you learn in your life meaningful, memorable, and fun.
How can songs help cement ideas?
Songs that help cement ideas in your mind are related to the memory palace technique in that they also make preferential use of the brain’s right hemisphere.
There are tunes to help you remember the quadratic formula,volume formulas for geometric figures, and many other types of equations.
Just Google “quadratic formula” and “song” for examples, or make up yourown.
Many nursery rhymes use actions along with song to help embed thelyrics (think of “Litle Bunny Foo Foo”).
Using meaningful motions, from aprance to a jiggle to an ity-bity hop, can offer even more neural hooks tohold ideas in memory because movement produces sensations that become partof the memory.
What are mnemonics? What is an example of one? How can they help with memorization?
Let’s say you are trying to remember the mineral hardness scale, whichranges from 1 to 10 (talc 1, gypsum 2, calcite 3, fluorite 4, apatite 5,orthoclase 6, quartz 7, topaz 8, corundum 9, diamond 10).
You can come up with a memory sentence mnemonic:
Terrible Giants Can Find Alligators or Quaint Trolls Conveniently Digestible.
The problem is that it can still be difficult to remember the sentence.
But things become easier if you then add the memory palace.
At your front door, there is a terrible giant there, holding a can.
Once inside, you find an alligator. . . .
You get the idea. If you are studying finance, economics, chemistry, or what-have-you have, you’d use the same approach.
What’s a memory palace? How can you use one where you are now to help with remembering a concept?
The memory palace technique involves calling to mind a familiar place—like the layout of your house—and using it as a sort of visual notepad where you can deposit concept-images that you want to remember.
All you have to do is call to mind a place you are familiar with:
your home, your route to school, or your favorite restaurant. And voilà! In the blink of an imaginative eye, thisbecomes the memory palace you’ll use as your notepad.
The memory palace technique is useful for remembering unrelated items,such as a grocery list (milk, bread, eggs).
To use the technique, you might imagine a gigantic botle of milk just inside your front door, the bread plopped on the couch, and a cracked egg dribbling off the edge of the coffee table.
In other words, you’d imagine yourself walking through a place you know well, coupled with shockingly memorable images of what you might want to remember.
What is the right brains visuospatial? How can you access your visual memory? How does thst help with you remember something your learning?
To begin tapping into your visual memory system, try making a very memorable visual image representing one key item you want to remember.
For example, here is a picture you could use to remember Newton’s second law: f = ma.
(This is a fundamental relationshiprelating force to mass and acceleration that only took humans a couple hundred thousand years to figure out.)
The leter f in the formula could stand for flying, m for mule, and a, well, that’s up to you.
Part of the reason an image is so important to memory is that images connect directly to your right brain’s visuospatial centers. The image helps you encapsulate a seemingly humdrum and hard-to-remember concept by tapping into visual areas with enhanced memory abilities.
