Why would anyone even do that?
Teaching/learning chemistry is not an easy task. Atoms and molecules are so small you can't touch them, chemistry has it's own vocabulary, and much of the day to day work is math-based. During a visit with a student in early 2016, an idea popped into my head. One of the things that makes chemistry hard to learn at first is that there are some things one just has to memorize. I wondered if it has been so long that I had been a student that I had forgotten how hard it is to learn and memorize new things. Maybe if I put myself in the students shoes, I could share some insights about learning with my students.
The challenge
I decided to memorize the names and symbols of the elements in order. I made a template with two on a page.
On my first attempt, I was pleased to find that I could already recite the first 20 or so from being in the discipline. For the elements I was unfamiliar with, I transcribed those one by one from the NIST version (yes, there is actually more than one version of the periodic table):
To start learning those I didn't know, I leaned on my experience trying to memorize piano pieces; focus on rehearsing small chunks. The first real block I had to work on was the transition metals (scandium, titanium, vanadium, etc.). Once I knew that section by heart, I started the next row. Regardless of how much I knew, I completed at least one template each day by transcribing each element I hadn't memorized yet.
This "chunking" technique worked well, but it really only worked within a chunk. It was hard to remember which chucks were connected. For example, transitioning from zinc (Zn) to gallium (Ga) was hard to do quickly. This is where the daily writing out of the whole table really helped. That recall experience started stitching together the chunks of information.
Other things that helped
Elements 57-71 were particularly tough; how was I going to efficiently learn this completely random list of 14 names and symbols? I was regretting the pact I made with myself to avoid mnemonic devices (like in music, "Every Good Boy Does Fine" help you remember that the treble clef lines are EGBDF). I made that decision because I didn't want to have to try to remember one thing to try to help me learn the thing I was trying to remember.
Looking to learn something about the individual elements, I went to YouTube, which helped a ton! I learned some interesting tidbits about individual elements, so that they were no longer strangers to me. For example, I had a hard time remembering that hafnium is right below zirconium. On one of the videos, the author talked about how zirconium is very difficult to purify because hafnium is a significant impurity. These two have similar chemical behaviors, and they are found together in zirconium ores.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNJE2MPktvg
Wow, that is helpful! That's the point of the periodic table, right? Elements in a column, have similar properties. This little tidbit made hafnium easy to locate and gave me a mental roadmap to find my way as I wrote it out each day.
Other interesting patterns emerged; praseodymium precedes neodymium. Also, actinium precedes protactinium by two spaces on the table, and it turns out was almost named protoactinium. Berkelium is right beside californium (Berkeley is a major city in California). Terbium, erbium, and ytterbium are all close together as well. The more time I spent with the periodic table, the more patterns I began to recognize. All this stuff was in the periodic table, and I had no idea! I was energized that this interesting stuff was right under my nose and I never knew. I became addicted to learning about the periodic table for a couple of weeks.
The bulk of the learning work was recall, which was obvious when I had others check me against a print out of the periodic table. Sometimes, as I was going along, I'd get stuck on an element. If I paused too long to think about it, some checkers would shout out the next element in line. My brain had been working on it, and when they said the answer, it like like a big "duh," floated in my mind. Interestingly, whenever that happened, I would get stuck in that same place the next day. However, when my daughter refused to tell me, or even give me a subtle hint something interesting happened. I told her I really didn't know and had no idea. I just couldn't think of what was next. She said, "Dad, you have to know it, it's your favorite one!" Then I knew, it was promethium; I never forgot it after that.
Success!
To be able to write it out from memory, it took about 15 minutes/day of practice for three weeks. But, it took me an onerous 5 minutes to write it all out. I practiced writing it out twice daily for another week, and got my time down to 2:50 (min:sec). Feeling encouraged, I decided to take my side show on the road -- time to show my students in class! My template was projected using a document camera, and my class was watching me like a hawk. I was trying to go as fast as possible; I didn't want to waste too much class time. They caught me, for one of the elements I said the name correctly but wrote the second letter incorrectly. Since I teach two classes back to back, I made sure I didn't make that same mistake the second hour! Both classes were genuinely rooting for me, applauded the presentation, and I got a chance to share some of the insights I shared in this post. I enjoyed the experience overall, and I hope that the students walked away with some good ideas about learning.
Forgetting
The story doesn't end there, though. After my addiction period, I had practiced for about a week more trying to make sure the info stuck. But, life happens and I just got too busy to keep it up. Around finals time, I realized that it had been several weeks since I had filled out a template. Here was the test of what I had really learned. On my first practice: 4m19s. Ouch! Even worse, I made 2 mistakes. I felt surprised, and a little deflated. I tried again; 3m21s, and no mistakes. The next morning, I tried again. 4:20 with one mistake. Immediately, I took one more stab at and broke my record - 2:43 and no mistakes. My best time was 2:31 one day later.
The moral of the story
I've heard it said, but have not confirmed, that first year chemistry students have to learn just as much new vocabulary as first-semester Spanish students! So, I think the moral of the story is, when you are learning something new, it's important to deliberately memorize some of the basics. Having quick access allows you to get to the deeper parts of the conceptual knowledge.
