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Showing posts with the label memory

Beating confusion: The power of association

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1) With increase in frequency, energy of electromagnetic waves increases or decreases 2) Molarity is Often students confuse between molarity and molality. 3) In positive deviation from Raoult's Law, Solute-Solvent Interaction is strong or weak Students often confuse with these kinds of answers, when there is a dichotomy. It's nothing to do with the understanding of the subject, it's about memory. Students confuse because they have not formed enough association with main concepts . Eliminating these confusion requires memory tricks. Let's work with the first two example: The third one I leave to students or teachers to design so that they can memorize it.  In positive deviation, there will be more vapor pressure, this is only possible when solute-solvent interaction is weak. Weak intermolecular force means more particles in the gas phase.

Common prevailing myths in education that needs to be busted

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A student is not scoring well, the main reason given: He/She has the less innate ability . He/She was not working hard . Let's bust the second myth first. My question to schools, teachers, and parents is after spending about 6-7 hours in schools, or 24 hrs in residential schools and colleges, how can you really blame children for not working hard. Why do schools expect children to study all by themselves? Why they have to do homework? The problem is not about working hard, it's about not following effective study strategies. Not providing them to do enough retrieval practice. The implementing of the effective study strategies is a very complicated process and often contextual, so much of attributes involved, from content, curriculum to test questions. But the good thing is so much of research already available that will guide teachers to help students in learning. http://www.learningscientists.org/ Now the first myth: She lacks the innate ability. Fact: All organisms at the i...

Why are our books filled with unnecessary short cut formulas?

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A short cut formula like these add nothing to the understanding of concepts, also overloads children with pointless burden as they have to memorize by parroting. How its need to be solved? P° Solvent = 0.850 bar Mass of solute = 0.5g Mass of solvent = 39g Molar mass of benzene = 78g/mol P Solution = 0.845 bar Molar mass of solute (g/mol) = ? P Solution = χ Solvent P° Solvent χ Solvent = n Solvent / (n Solvent + n Solute ) Solvent: g -----> mol Conversion factor = 1 mol/ 78 g 39g * 1 mol/78 g = 39/78 mol No. of moles of solvent = 39/78 mol Solute: g -----> mole Conversion factor = 1 mol/x g 0.5g * 1 mol/x g = 0.5/x mol No. of moles of solute = 0.5/x mol Putting these values in the equation P Solution = χ Solvent P° Solvent we get following equation (((39/78)/(39/78 + 0.5/x))*0.850) -0.845 = 0 Solving it through python programming: Ans: [169.000000000000] Also why overload students with so much of large calculations (in higher education), when we have calculator or pro...

In the age of the internet, what to memorize and what not?

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There is a heated discussion about why remember facts when all information is at fingertips (through the internet)?. So first look at dictionary what a fact is? The first definition that comes up is this: A thing that is known or proved to be true. Ok, but most things we study in our education are facts. Earth revolves around the sun is a fact. New Delhi is the capital of India is a fact. Hitler born on dated 20 April 1889 is a fact. Independence day of India is 15th August is a fact. Out of these, first two and last one, I needn't have to search the internet,  because these facts are very important to me as I live in India, and I am from Earth (Lol). I searched the internet to find out when Hilter was born because his date of birth was irrelevant for me till now. Maybe I will forget his date of birth after one day because it will not come to any use to me later. So, some facts are very important to memorize while others are not.  Then what to memorize and what not? In the ag...

Why we face difficulty to remember non-concrete information?

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What are the functions of a brain? Pattern recognition, interpretation and storing of information that we get from our sense organs I would go with following steps to show that non-concrete information is the type of information that our brain is not trained for. The most requirement to remember abstract information is more recent when mathematics and different languages were invented. The invention of writing that allowed storing information that we can't remember. The human being invented abstract information like more than one language or mathematics which we are evolutionarily unfit to remember. Are we evolutionary unfit to memorize abstract information? To prove it lets look the following experiment. The brain is good at recognizing things in a span of seconds. For example, we change our path if there is a hindrance in front. But if you close your eyes, we will miss details of the hindrance. Let's try to memorize this map in a span of seconds or minutes. Can you do it? ...