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StoriesHuman beings are natural story-tellers, so use this to your advantage - it's fun! You can make up stories to help you remember many things. For example: - Stories of processes (such as those in Chemistry and Physics). You can get really weird with this. Here's an example: I want to remember what happens in the menstrual cycle - the stages, hormones and so on. So I draw diagrams, get the facts clear (ish) and make up a story. In this story, I am an egg. "Hi, I'm an egg and this is my story. The first thing I remember was when I was very, very little. I was floating around in a container called a follicle with around a dozen other little eggs. I don't remember why we did it, but we decided to send a message to the brain to tell it that we wanted to be BIG EGGS. the brain sent a messenger called Oestrogen. Hey presto, we started to grow! Magic! The brain told us that only one of us would survive - the biggest and best - and that Oestrogen was preparing a path for the 'winner' to a place called the Uterus. The Uterus was being made nourishing for our arrival. Anyway, I grew fast - faster than all the rest, apart from one other. When I could grow any more, I was able to burst out of the Follicle and found myself in a dark tunnel. But I wasn't the only one! Another egg had managed to get out; this was really not what was supposed to happen! There was a label on the wall saying, "Fallopian Tube". Strange name for a tunnel, I thought. Anyway, the pair of us were wafted down this tunnel by little hairs sticking out of the tunnel walls. Half-way along we saw masses of little wiggly things heading towards us. When they got to us, one of them dumped fertiliser all over me - hey, I'd been fertislised! The same happened for my eggy friend. This changed things. We sent another message to the brain saying that our status was now a lot higher and we demand better treatment, seeing as we were fertilised. So the brain sent Progesterone which created a really nice covering for the Uterus so that when we got there, we were really comfortable and could find a place to stay. Both of us did find a place in the Uterus, and the rest, as they say, is history. We are now twins." Ok - by now you will realise that if I was your personal tutor, things would not be quite normal - but they'd be interesting! And you'd remember stuff! Creating a story like this makes the whole process easier to remember. You may not like my story, but you will make up your own. That will be the best one for you because you've created it. It helps to have something visual written down - a drawing or diagram, that goes with the story. Think of how cartoon work! Here's a Photosynthesis story: "It's a sunny day and Carbon Dioxide is floating around in the air. Water is creeping up through the xylem vessels from the roots to the leaves where it evaporates into the spaces between the cells. The carbon dioxide floats underneath a the leaf which has small holes in it called stoma. The holes are bounded by two guard cells. The whole thing - cells and the hole - is called a stomata. The gases drifts through the stomata and find s itself in the spaces between the leaf cells. Both carbon dioxide and the water vapour diffuse into the cell's cytoplasm. Inside the cell there are many green blobs called chloroplasts. After diffusing through the chloroplast membrane they find that the green colour comes from a chemical called chlorophyll. It looks as though each chlorophyll molecule is being struck by lightning - in fact it's a ray of sunlight! The carbon dioxide and water are attracted to the chlorophyll and find themselves stuck. When the next ray of sunlight hits the chlorophyll molecule, is causes a chemical reaction which combines the carbon dioxide and water molecules. Further reactions occur with five more carbon dioxide and water molecules until a molecule of sugar - specifically glucose - is formed. It is made up of six carbon atoms, twelve hydrogens and six oxygens - all from carbon dioxide and water. But there's lots of oxygen left over, so that drifts out of the leaf as oxygen gas - which is just as well for both plants and animals which need oxygen for respiration. Some of the glucose is used to make chemicals in the plant cell, especially cellulose for new cell walls. Some is changed in the mitochondria into energy to fuel chemical reactions and the rest is stored as starch. If you have a great story, let me know and I might include it here! [-> Next - go to the learning activity - Mnemonics ] |
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