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Complex Numbers #964083 added August 12, 2019 at 12:07am
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Electric Avenue
Science!
https://www.wired.com/story/get-to-know-maxwells-equationsyoure-using-them-right...
Electricity and magnetism weren't something I really dug into back in college. In many ways, they might as well be magic to me, for all I understand how they work.
But that link above - well, I find it helpful, mostly because it includes jokes.
Turns out that if you want me to remember something forever, make a joke about it. For example, I once heard the following joke:
"A wave function walks into a bar. It says, 'Man... I've been everywhere,' and collapses."
That is one of the most important features of interpreting quantum mechanics - reduced to a "walks into a bar" joke. Now that I know the joke, I'll never forget the concept.
Or, take Avogadro's number, which counts the number of particles that make up one "mole" (an important unit in chemistry) of a substance. This number is roughly 6.02x1023. Outside of chemistry classes in high school, I have never once used or needed to use this knowledge. How do I remember it? I imagine that many avocados (which would immediately become the ninth planet of the solar system and a prime target for mining - for about 15 seconds.)
The joke doesn't have to be particularly funny, or even make sense, as long as it's a joke and tangentially related to the concept. So, like, for the article I linked above, I might do a riff on the "walks into a bar" joke: "A loop of wire walks into a bar magnet..." No idea how to finish that one, yet. Something about keeping up with "current" events.
Everyone has their own way of remembering shit, I suppose. For me, it's gotta be comedy. Or music. Music works, too. Bonus points if it's a funny song. |
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