Memory Tricks for Remembering Formulas in Engineering Exam

For many years, I have been using many memory tricks to aid in my review for any examination and also to help in my professional career. I was surprised when I was in 2nd year college to know that such techniques are available in the bookstore.

 
I stumbled upon Carol Turkington's book and I was amazed by knowing the memory tricks I learned from that book. And they have proven effective. I am able to won many quiz bees on college and it gave me confidence that I can learn anything that I want to as long as I apply the strategies and paid proper attention. I even passed my masters degree qualifying exam using all these techniques below.

Here are the following memory tricks I used from the book:

1. Acronyms
• This strategy is pretty simple. We have all learned this since elementary. The famous ROYGBIV stands for all the color in the rainbow.Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet will be remembered using that acronym.
  
2. Visual Memory
• I should say that I am more of a visual person. I can memorize formulas, sequence of chapters in the book and numbers by visualizing them. And i believe that most people are more into visual memorization. 
  
3. Mnemonics
• This is the most helpful memory tricks I used. Especially in engineering, we have to memorize lots of numbers in the formulas, conversion factors with numbers and constants. Using Mnemonics is a surefire method to use in those cases. For example, the numbers 1 to 10 can have corresponding letters in the alphabet. I used t =1, n=2, m=3, r=4,L=5 and so on..Now, when you have constants like 3.1416 that will mean MTRTP for my mnemonics. So what word will form out of that? Number 1 rule that I follow is to use vowels in between consonants. I may use the word..MoTheR Tap..to mean 3.1416. So you visualize your mother tapping a circle every now and then. That will surely help you remember the value of pi. Alright!
  
4. Methods of Loci
• Loci in greek means location. I use this method in combination with the other method. And with my 12 years of using memory technique, I find it easy to use method of loci when I need to remember chapters of the book. For example, there are 12 chapters in the book which I need to understand the sequence, I will visualize 12 locations that I know. And of course those locations ,say my neighborhoods houses, are all fixed in the earth. Then each houses will correspond to each chapter in the book. Visualize the title of the chapter happening in that house. Then as you walk through your streets, you will visualize each houses corresponding to each chapter in the book.
  
5. Combination of Methods
• Now, you will need to combine all those techniques above. And this is the fun part. For example, each chapter of the book which correspond to each houses in your streets has formulas. Say the pi constant appeared in first chapter. Visualize your MoTheR Tapping on that house where pi appears. Thus, you were able to use Mnemocis and Loci and visualization in each chapter. That will surely helped you in memorization. You will now be full of enthusiasm to memorize your textbook if you apply those methods.