Tricks, Tricks, Tricks to remember

How to remember everything? I am not particularly keen on historical facts, but in order to remember various physical constants I recall historical dates:

The Cosmic Microwave Background: The CMB surface of last scattering occured at approximatley 1066 which is the year that historians consdier the begining of the Middle Ages (the years just prior being the late Dark Ages). Historically 1066 was the year of the Battle of Hastings and the ensuing Norman conquest of England. In the case of cosmology 1066 coresponds to the begining of the cosmological dark ages.

The mass ratio of a proton to an electron: The actual ratio of a proton to electron mass is 1836.153. The Battle of the Alamo was 1836. This trick works best if you are from Texas.




Euler's number: e is 2.7 1828 1828 I wrote it with the spaces between the 1828's because many people remember the 2.7.  And 1828 is one year after Beethoven died. This trick works best if you know your classical composers.




This memory trick using historical dates seems strange even to me; if anything the physical constants actually helped me remember the history dates, but either way I remembered. Memory tricks can be powerful tools. For example you can memorize nearly 4000 digits of π with a mnemonic technique, but the most powerful memory enhancing approach is certainly the method of loci.

Be sure and watch the second part that teaches you the link memory technique.

Detexify: Dymistify your LaTeX symbol

I write a lot in LaTeX and I forget a lot of obscure symbols I need. The solution: Detexify.  Detexify will discover the LaTeX formatting of any symbol you can manage to scrawl with your mouse. If you don't know what LaTex is then your probably not in academia, a student, or a publisher; it is a digital typesetting package.  Ignore this then and move along, otherwise I ask you...
How else would you learn about: \bat

Or have a little: \Heart

Or make real numbers: \Re

Or that one symbol you can't remember: \Denarius

And who can remember angstroms: \aa


Detexify is the work of Daniel Kirsch.  There is an iphone app too, but I am trying to figure out who has LaTex on their iphone?

The Jodcast

I want to give a shout out to The Jodcast.  The Jodcast is an audio podcast about astronomy by astronomers at the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank telescope. It discusses current science in twice-monthly shows.  They are great for listening to during commute or whenever, and you can subscribe for free of course on their website or here.  If you are a scientist and want to stay up on astronomy news, this is a powerful resource, so powerful that if you follow it regularly you will probably be more broadly aware of astronomy news than most astronomers.  Enjoy.