Chemical Forums
Specialty Chemistry Forums => Chemical Education and Careers => Topic started by: research on November 20, 2010, 12:36:08 PM
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hi
I don't know have you ever forgotten your chemical knowledge that you had learned and understood them very well before ??? if so you will understand how disappointing it is :'(. is there any way for memorizing with out forgeting essential knowledge?
I would be grateful if you help me
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Whenever I forget things in chemistry I go back and do some problems and start to click "oh yeah, this is how you do it". Another way for me to review is trying to help in the forum or reading how people's questions get solved. Th only advice I can give is keep practicing and don't go too long without reviewing.
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The best way not to forget is to help other people on the forum. It is what I do.
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First thing you should know is that you never forget anything. Your brain remembers EVERYTHING from your first name to what you had for breakfast 15 years ago. What it allows you to recall is a different matter. It allows you to recall things that are relevant to your life. Things that you will need to recall. For example if you move to get a new house you'll instantly remember the name of the street despite it being such a mundane detail and despite you only having seen it once or twice. This is because its so relevant to you, you're going to be going there every single day for the rest of your life (until you move again) and its something that is completely essential to remember. This is why I think the learning style universities use these days is completely ineffective. Heres how I ensure that I remember things rapidly and permanently. I find out things that I can use the knowledge for in my everyday life and in my overall plans in life. I find out how it relates to all my other knowledge (this also increases my recall of those other concepts). Then I start implementing it in projects that I setup. For example to learn about locksmithing I decided to learn what I needed to know to rekey my front door lock myself without having to pay a locksmith and how to get through my locker padlock on days when I forget the key. I learned this 3 years ago and right now I can tell you exactly how pin and tumbler locks work, all the commonly used methods to bypass them, how to make your own lock picks, *Ignore me, I am impatient* keys, shims, auto jigglers etc. and all sorts of other things. What keeps this knowledge permanent is the fact that whenever I see a lock I automatically picture the insides of it and recall that I know things about them and can bypass them if I need to.
For chemistry I built a little lab in my shed and I setup all sorts projects for myself. The projects for chemistry are always to obtain a specific chemical that I can use in my everyday life and use as part of my missions in life. To make them without ordering any chemicals online. You'd be surprised how many steps it can take to do this. Its not just the reaction I need to do, I have to extract the chemical, purify it then analyse it to confirm its identity and purity. In the process of making 1 chemical I always need to obtain different solvents and precursors. Off the top of my head I know the boiling points of all sorts of common solvents because to obtain them I had to distill them from paint strippers and other OTC products. I find ways to encorporate every bit of chemistry knowledge I've attained. Its not always easy though because a lot of the stuff I've learned in college is hard to put into practice. For example my spectroscopy course goes into extreme detail about the Schrodinger equation and all sorts of other concepts which I have no apparent use for. I plan on becoming a research scientist and discovering new concepts though so this plan makes the information relevant to me. My advice is setup some projects for yourself and utilise as much of your knowledge as you can in them. This will tell your brain that the information is relevant and needs to be readily recalled.
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Your brain remembers EVERYTHING from your first name to what you had for breakfast 15 years ago.
Do you have any credible source to support this statement?
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The best way not to forget is to help other people on the forum. It is what I do.
Yeah, this is why I am here and on pretty much all chemistry forums.
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I studied Biochemistry for 4 years between 1980 and 1984 as an undergraduate. I can honestly say I've probably forgotten 90 - 95% of what I learned.
However, what i have gained is the ability to know where to go and what to look for If I need to retrieve information in order to solve a particualr problem.