Science When The Sun Don’t Shine

Use studying techniques to your advantage:

Got these notebooks for 5 cents so obviously going to buy more than one :D # strongnotebookgameisstrong

There’s a method to my madness I swear!! OK so on avg I seem to use up two of those 80 pg notebooks so I got two for each class. And consequently I needed the 4pack 32pg exercise books. 

The 80 page notebook is used for in class notes. As soon as anything important is said it is scribbled down into the notebook.  The 4 pack 32 pg exercise book is divided to two groups: Feymann technique and Cornell method.

Feymann Technique

Right after class I grab my textbook, my notebooks and two of  my exercise books. I teach myself the lesson primarily with my notes and if I don’t understand something I turn to my textbook. If I am still lost I leave space and note that there is something I need to clarify with my professor. Even while I am doing this, I force myself to decrease the writing and increase the connections between every topic since the 32 pg is quite smaller than the 80 pg. 

Thankfully when I am done with this, my 32pg becomes the go to whenever it seems like I am in need of revising a topic since it contains relevant notes from both my textbook and my notebook in my own words. 

Cornell Method.

When exam time approaches I convert my notes into the cornell notes so that I can easily test myself with the main ideas and key questions.

There is no better way to revise than to try to make connections. That is all you are going to get tested on since it’s not that hard to spit back words on a page. Instead of being asked about photosynthesis for example, you might be told about some chemical that is sprayed on a plant that will block one process and asked about how that affects the growth of the plant overall. See what I mean? 

I usually get a whiteboard and write all of the connections out and in front of me. When THAT  is done I write it down in flashcard mode and quiz myself for the next week using the Leitner system, along with the topics that are basically just memorization.

LEITNER SYSTEM

Label 5 boxes 1-4, where 1 is for cards you don’t know and 4 is for cards you are basically a pro in. You frequently test yourself in box 1 (maybe every 30 mins, you choose) and increase the time in which you test yourself until you reach 4, where you would test yourself just once a day. 

In the beginning all of your cards go in box 1,and as you get a card right it goes up a level and if you get it wrong it goes down a level. That way you are spending more time with ideas and topics you don’t have a strong hold on, rather than spending equal time with all the topics. 

At this point I have rewritten my notes twice in my own words and then converted them into flashcard mode :) I recommend this method when it comes to the sciences or humanities. For the maths I have already done a post about it here. 

Hope this helps for those still looking for study techniques! 

-F 

Images taken by the International Space Station

images here

These slides, presented during the New Horizons’ press conference at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, show the climate zones of Pluto compared to Earth. Pluto has an axial tilt of 120°, which creates extreme tropic and arctic regions. The two regions overlap, creating a ‘tropical arctic’ region that experiences both direct sunlight and prolonged sunlight and darkness. At the moment, Pluto is in an intermediate state between the extreme tropic and arctic climates.

Image Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Southwest Research Institute

The upper atmosphere of the Sun is dominated by plasma filled magnetic loops (coronal loops) whose temperature and pressure vary over a wide range. The appearance of coronal loops follows the emergence of magnetic flux, which is generated by dynamo processes inside the Sun. Emerging flux regions (EFRs) appear when magnetic flux bundles emerge from the solar interior through the photosphere and into the upper atmosphere (chromosphere and the corona). The characteristic feature of EFR is the Ω-shaped loops (created by the magnetic buoyancy/Parker instability), they appear as developing bipolar sunspots in magnetograms, and as arch filament systems in Hα. EFRs interact with pre-existing magnetic fields in the corona and produce small flares (plasma heating) and collimated plasma jets. The GIFs above show multiple energetic jets in three different wavelengths. The light has been colorized in red, green and blue, corresponding to three coronal temperature regimes ranging from ~0.8Mk to 2MK. 

Image Credit: SDO/U. Aberystwyth

Practise what you preach

Making your own personalised guides is quite different from your normal note-taking. Study guides are more exam-oriented, instead of merely summarising and organising information. It is a tool to help you to study for your exams, and to guide you through answering exam questions. This how-to guide is a summary of my learning experiences in both high school and college, so I hope this can help everyone here.

Goals for the study guides

It has to include everything on the syllabus for the examination

Omit things that are not going to be useful/helpful in exams

There are things that may be very informative, but if they have no relevance to the exam, it’s better to take them out of the study guide

Basically, the goal of making this study guide is to have one booklet/notebook that contain things you have learnt in that course, and most importantly, everything you need for the exam.

That means you (supposedly) wouldn’t have to refer to any other materials unless specified in the study guide 

Making this booklet will help you to summarise and analyse information - a great way to study

Materials that you need

If you are in college, lecture notes are usually the most important material you should refer to when studying for exams. If you are in high school, textbooks are more likely to prevail. It depends on your course structure and the way your teacher/lecturer teaches.

Past papers / practice papers are great guidance for you when making study guides, because they help you to understand what will be on the exam paper, and most importantly, how you could answer the question.

Important tip: while making your own summary of the knowledge is useful, write down the model answer from the past paper in your study guide instead. That’s the way you should answer the question related to that topic in the exam, so you shouldn’t waste time putting in and memorising information that is not helpful.

For college students: tutorial questions usually offer great guidance as to what is going to appear in the exam. Putting those in the study guides is usually very helpful.

Organising the study guides

Here are a few tips when organising your notes:

Put a red star next to topics that you think are going to come up in the examination

Circle topics that you don’t understand / fail to grasp when making the study guides

Definitely use bullet points if possible

Highlight key words with definition in one specific colour, or anything that requires direct recitation

Because this is what you will study for the exam, also put down tips that are going to help you with the exams. (You can either draw a box to alert yourself or use a post-it note for these).

Answering structure / attack plan for common exam questions

Some common mistakes previous students made in the exam (which is usually brought up by the teacher / lecturer)

Important concept / clarification of misunderstandings

Remember to leave a page for each chapter and write a summary of it during revision

This will help you to understand the flow of the chapter and it is a great way to recall the information you have just organised

If you want to know more about how to take notes, here are some of my other posts:

A summary on how to take good lecture notes - #13

Type or write?

Type or write? updated + my approach

Should I take notes right now?

How to take outline notes?

Consolidating lecture notes and textbook notes

How to get better handwriting?

How to incorporate colours into note-taking and studying?

Dirty thunderstorm

A dirty thunderstorm (also volcanic lightning, thunder volcano) is a weather phenomenon that is related to the production of lightning in a volcanic plume.

A study in the journal Science indicated that electrical charges are generated when rock fragments, ash, and ice particles in a volcanic plume collide and produce static charges, just as ice particles collide in regular thunderstorms.

Volcanic eruptions are sometimes accompanied by flashes of lightning. However, this lightning doesn’t descend from storm clouds in the sky. It is generated within the ash cloud spewing from the volcano, in a process called charge separation.

source

images

Gliese 832c: is a Potentially Habitable Super-Earth Discovered only 16 Light-Years from Earth

A team of astronomers led by Dr Robert Wittenmyer of the University of New South Wales have discovered the super-Earth. The newly discovered exoplanet, labeled Gliese 832c, has an orbital period of 35.68 days, a mass 5.4 times that of Earth’s and receives about the same average energy as Earth does from the Sun. Gliese 832c might have Earth-like temperatures, giving it a similar terrestrial atmosphere. If the planet has a similar atmosphere to Earth it may be possible for life to survive, although seasonal shifts would be extrem.

Gliese 832c was discovered from its gravitational pull on its star, which causes the star to wobble slightly.

Planetary nebula IC 4406 in the constellation Lupus

I saw this a long time ago and finally got it to convert to GIF format on tumblr. It shows how it’s the Earth that’s moving, space is standing still. I love this perspective.