Chemistry and physics. any helpful mnemonic devices, etc?

Question

hi all!

i am not a chem/physics/mathematics natural and am always looking for helpful advice for studying these horrifying (to me) subjects. i know doing practice problems is the only way to really get it, but i am interested in mnemonic devices and other study hints that have worked for you personally. thanks!

Answer 1

Yeah the other person was right in that you should come up with ones that work for you personally. Get creative.

I'll list some of the ones I used though.

For the diatomic molecules, our teacher pointed out that there's 7 of them, and starting with N, it forms a number 7 on the periodic table, going down to I. cool eh? Oh hydrogen is in there too but you just gotta remember that.

Electrochem: auto car. Auto starts with A and ends with O, and this means at the anode oxidation takes place. Car: at the cathode reduction takes place. Or, as my teacher likes to say: "An Ox (anode oxidation) sat on a Red Cat (reduction cathode)"

There's a lot. You should get creative with them.

Answer 2

as for me, I understnad mnemonics as "YOUR OWN WAY OF MEMORIZING THINGS EASILY". double underline the "your own way" part. like, a chem teacher of mine last year used the weird term "HNClBrIF" read as hankle-brief, for us to memorize easily the diatomic molecules, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Chlorine... you know the rest.

taking the first letter and mixing them to your choice to come up with a WORD makes memorization faster.

as for math, math is not of memorization. once you understand why the formula is created, you will realize it's just complex looking because of the variables, but they are very simple when understood completely. at least most of the formulas.

Good luck :D