3 Ways to Improve Memory While Studying

1. Vary Your Study Space

Carey cites a study in which students who studied a list of words in a windowless room and again in a room with a view did far better on a test than students who studied only in the viewless room.
Surprisingly, that study was conducted in 1978, and still we haven’t learned.
“The brain makes subtle associations between what it is studying and the background sensations it has at the time, the authors say, regardless of whether those perceptions are conscious,” writes Carey.
Dr. Robert A. Bjork, psychologist at the University of California, L.A. and senior author of the research, states, “What we think is happening here is that, when the outside context is varied, the information is enriched, and this slows down forgetting.”

2. Vary What You Study

The same principal may apply to what you study. Carey suggests that musicians and athletes have known this for years. They practice cross-training.
“Varying the type of material studied in a single sitting — alternating, for example, among vocabulary, reading and speaking in a new language — seems to leave a deeper impression on the brain than does concentrating on just one skill at a time,” Carey writes.


3. Test Yourself Often

It also turns out that when a student is required to retrieve information, say for a test, that information is re-stored in the brain in a more accessible way for future use.
Carey reports that researchers don’t know why this is true, just that it is.
“It may be that the brain, when it revisits material at a later time, has to relearn some of what it has absorbed before adding new stuff — and that that process is itself self-reinforcing,” he writes.
“The idea is that forgetting is the friend of learning,” Carey quotes Dr. Nate Kornell, a psychologist at Williams College, as saying. “When you forget something, it allows you to relearn, and do so effectively, the next time you see it.”
Practice tests, then, are powerful learning tools.
source:adulted.about

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10 Ways to Be a Great Student

You've decided to go back to school. Dare to be the best student you can possibly be. Here are 10 ways to be a great student.   

image from google

1. Take Hard Classes

You're paying good money for an education, make sure you get one. There will be classes that are required for your major, of course, but you will have a fair number of electives as well. Don't take classes simply to accrue credits. Take the classes that really teach you something.
Be passionate about learning.
I once had an advisor that said to me when I expressed fear of a difficult class, "Do you want to get an education or not?"

2. Show Up, Every Time

Make your classes your highest priority.
If you've got children, I understand that this isn't always possible. Children should always come first. But if you don't show up for your classes, you're not getting that education we discussed in No. 1.
Make sure you've got a good plan for seeing that your children are cared for when you're scheduled to be in class, and when you need to study. It really is possible to raise children while you're going to school. People do it every day.

3. Sit in the Front Row

If you happen to be shy, sitting in the front row can be very uncomfortable at first, but I promise you, it's one of the best ways to pay attention to everything being taught. You can hear better. You can see everything on the board without having to crane your neck around the head in front of you.
You can make eye contact with the professor. Don't underestimate the power of this. If your teacher knows you're really listening and that you care about what you're learning, he or she will be extra willing to help you. Besides, it'll feel like you've got your own private teacher.

4. Ask Questions

Ask questions immediately if you don't understand something. If you're in the front row and have been making eye contact, your instructor probably already knows by the look on your face that you don't understand something. A polite raising of your hand is all you need to do to indicate you've got a question.
If it isn't appropriate to interrupt, make a quick note of your question so you don't forget, and ask later.
Having said this, don't make a pest of yourself. Nobody wants to hear you ask a question every 10 minutes. If you're completely lost, make an appointment to see your teacher after class.

5. Create a Study Space

Carve out a place at home that is your study space. If you've got a family around you, make sure everyone understands that when you're in that space, you're not to be interrupted unless the house is on fire.
Create a space that helps you make the most of your study time. Do you need absolute quiet or do you prefer to have loud music playing? Do you like working at the kitchen table in the midst of everything or do you a quiet room with the door shut? Know your own style and create the space you need.
Update! Research shows that varying your study space improves memory: 3 Ways to Improve Memory While Studying

6. Do All the Work, Plus More

Do your homework. Read the assigned pages, and then some. Plug your topic into the Internet, grab another book at the library, and see what else you can learn about the subject.
Turn your work in on time. If extra credit work is offered, do that too.
I know this takes time, but it'll ensure you really know your stuff. And that's why you're going to school. Right?

7. Make Practice Tests

While you're studying, pay attention to the material you know will be on a test and write a quick practice question. Start a new document on your laptop and add questions as you think of them.
When you're ready to study for a test, you'll have a practice test ready. Brilliant.

8. Form or Join a Study Group

A lot of people study better with others. If that's you, form a study group in your class or join one that's already organized.
There are lots of benefits to studying in a group. You have to be organized. You can't procrastinate. You have to really understand something to be able to explain it out loud to someone else. Grace Fleming, About.com's Guide to Homework and Study Tips, has a great article on Study Groups.

9. Use One Planner

I don't know about you, but if I had a separate calendar for work, school and life, I'd be a complete mess. When everything in your life is on one calendar, in one planner, you can't double-book anything. You know, like an important test and a dinner with your boss. The test trumps, by the way.
Get a great calendar or planner with enough room for several daily entries. Keep it with you at all times.

10. Meditate

One of the best things you can do to improve your entire life, not just school, is meditate. Fifteen minutes a day is all you need to feel calm, centered and confident. If you don't know how, here's an easy way to learn
Meditate any time, but 15 minutes before you study, 15 minutes before class, 15 minutes before a test, and you'll be amazed at how well you can perform as a student.
Meditate.
source::adulted.about.com

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How to Use Potato Electricity in 4 Steps

You might be surprised but potatoes can make a clock work. No, it doesn’t mean they can fix them (not that I know of) but rather power them. When you think about it if they can provide energy to the human body, they might do the same for anything that requires electricity.
Generating potato electricity from something like potato may sound bizarre, but it's possible. Well, there are many people who are generating green electricity from potatoes for running small items like a clock or a small light bulb.
We all know that the scientists are trying hard to find alternate energy resources that can replace the thermal and the nuclear energies to generate electricity. This is to both save the earth from the negative impact of pollution as well as bring down the costs that one has to bear for the use of electricity.
People are trying new methods from using the wind to the solar power and some of these are even showing great results. There is a real issue on our hands and we need to keep trying in order to find something that can replace the conventional energy resources. The potato electricity voltage we know is not better than that a normal torch cell, but the principle involved can be of great use for the development of more efficient batteries in the future.    

Let's look at the science behind this innovative energy resource:

Actually, is not hard at all to determine how to make electricity with a potato. Potatoes are made up of the following elements:

• water
• starch 
• sugars
• trace minerals (plenty of ions)

Since potatoes are mostly water and have lots of ions dissolved in them, they can be used as batteries quite easily. Ions are particles with an electric charge (positive or negative) associated to them. Technically speaking you could use almost any fruit the same way. The ions can now be used to generate electricity by using electrodes. 

So how do we use this logic to generate electricity from potatoes?

We can try a classic potato electricity experiment to illustrate how it works

Essentially we want to turn the potato into a galvanic or voltaic cell. In this type of cell a chemical reaction takes place which results in electricity being produced. 

Step 1-First, generating electricity from potatoes means that you would need a large potato, two wires and two metal rods (at least). 

Following the typical method that is used in a physics lab to generate electricity, we would need different metal rods that can be used as electrodes or carriers of electricity. One of the rods can be a galvanized zinc nail and the other one a cooper nail, penny or anything made of pure copper.
Tip: The conducting rods need to be of different metals. For instance, one rod can be zinc and the other can be copper.



Step 2- Insert a zinc nail and the copper object into the potato battery (that’s how we call it for this experiment). 

Make sure the zinc and copper objects are separated from each other. The farther they are from each other, the higher the voltage that is going to be generated.



Step 3- At this point you connect one end of the first wire to the zinc nail and the other end to the negative terminal (-) of the light bulb or clock if you prefer. Then use the second wire to connect the copper rod (or penny) to the positive terminal (+) on the bulb or clock. At that moment the electronic device should turn on (as long as the potato has plenty of ions).

The electrons will start moving from the zinc nail all the way through the wire into the electronic device and from the device to the copper object. The electricity will keep flowing until all reactants are spent. Pretty much when all zinc atoms are oxidized to Zn ions and all copper ions are reduced to copper atoms.



Step 4- You might want to use a voltmeter instead of a clock or light bulb in the beginning to make sure there is enough voltage (potential difference) being produced by the potato to turn on the device. 

If that’s not enough, several potatoes connected in series as the ones shown in the video below, might be necessary to turn on the device.

source: all about potatoes.com

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