Fall in love with school, no longer tire of learning

Chapter 16 Student Self-Guidance (3)
Waiting for the arrival of "Newton Apple"
In the process of researching problems, many celebrities are in a situation of frowning and no way to advance or retreat. At this time, it is inevitable to have disgust and evasion psychology, and some even commit suicide because they can't figure it out.Some of them, after a period of trouble, finally suddenly became enlightened and found the result of hard thinking.It is the so-called "mountains and rivers are full of doubts and there is no way out, and there is another village with dark willows and flowers".The ancient Chinese called this enlightenment.

In the history of science, there are many legends of shocking discoveries made in the blink of an eye.Legend has it that more than 2000 years ago, the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes suddenly realized that the principle of buoyancy could be used to solve the thorny problem of identifying whether the newly-made gold crown was adulterated by King Jerome when he was taking a bath.

For thousands of years, "epiphany" has become a unique way of thinking for human beings to deal with scientific and other problems.It has some characteristics that are different from conventional problem-solving methods. For example, there are often puzzled, distressed and sleepy stages before the "epiphany"; when the inspiration comes suddenly, I often do not realize that I am thinking about the problem. It is also impossible to say exactly how the answer was obtained.

Epiphany is a sudden enlightenment.Gestalt psychologists pointed out that the process of human beings to deal with problems is epiphany.When people are puzzled by the problem and hit a wall everywhere, they suddenly see the various relationships in the problem situation and have an epiphany and understanding, just like "breaking through the iron shoes and finding nowhere to find it, it takes no effort to get it."It is characterized by suddenness, predisposition, chance, extreme happiness or sudden enlightenment, etc.Even, many modern psychologists have found that epiphanies are related to people's non-memory subconscious.

The story of Newton figuring out the law of gravitation after seeing an apple falling from a tree is also a classic example.

newton under the apple tree

There is a famous apple in the world. The reason why this apple is different is that it hit the head of the great physicist Newton and has been passed down for hundreds of years, at least in legend.

As the Royal Society celebrates its 350th anniversary, it has released digitally a trove of rare manuscripts, including a manuscript written by William Stukeley in 1752 about the life of Newton. Stukeley is an archaeologist and biographer of Newton, and his manuscript reveals the truth about Newton's apple for us.

Stukeley writes:
"After dinner, it was warm, and we went into the garden, talking in the shade of the apple tree, just him and me. He told me he was still thinking about gravity. He was sitting there meditating, and it happened that a The apple fell, and he thought, why does the apple always fall vertically? Why not sideways or upwards, but constantly towards the center of the earth? The reason must be that the earth is pulling it..."

What happened next is known to everyone on Earth.

Therefore, when we are in the mood of information saturation and weariness of learning, we must be calm and don't give up easily, because the mysterious "Newton Apple" may hit your head one day.

When to "Awaken"

For some naughty or dull children, enlightened teachers and parents often say: "This child hasn't enlightened yet, it will be fine with time." Sometimes parents get anxious and scold the child: "When will your brain become enlightened?" what?"

Some students, especially boys, also have this kind of experience. When they were in elementary school or middle school, their grades were not good or bad. Suddenly, in high school, their grades improved by leaps and bounds, which is impressive.Adults will say that this is "enlightened" or sensible.

This "enlightenment" has a lot to do with the "epiphany" mentioned above.Before understanding "epiphany", please answer a few psychological questions. Guess what is referred to in the riddle?
① Given a candle and a box of nails, how would you fix the candle to the wall? (addition: no fire)
②What is it that can move a huge piece of wood but not a small iron nail?
③Because the cloth has been torn, the haystack becomes useful, what is it?
④Because the stick is bent, the person can't see anything. What is it?
(Answer: ①Pour out the nails from the box, nail the box to the wall first, and then put the candle in the box. ②The river ③The parachute ④The wiper on the windshield of the car.) When you think hard and finally guess When answering the question, is there a feeling of being puzzled and then suddenly enlightened? What is the mystery and where does the "inspiration" of people come from?

At the International "Human Brain Imaging" Conference held in New York, the Chinese psychologists Luo Yuejia and Luo Jin discovered the birthplace of "inspiration" - the "anterior cingulate gyrus" of the brain, which is to unravel the mystery of "inspiration" Foundation.The four riddles in front of the article are the experimental materials used by the research team led by Luo Yuejia to solve the riddles.

"Inspiration" is often used in ancient Chinese writings as "Tianji", "Xinghui", "God Comes", and "Enlightenment" to refer to similar thinking phenomena.For the explanation of "inspiration", Professor Luo believes that "inspiration" is essentially a special state in human thinking activities.When people are in this special state, the brain will have strong emotional oscillations, and vivid images, clear concepts and smooth reasoning will emerge, so that a key link of long-term intense exploration is suddenly released, and inspiration arises. But it will go away in a flash, so it has the characteristics of sudden and short-lived.

Historically, many scientific conjectures and new ideas were born from "epiphany". "Give me a fulcrum, and I can pry up the whole earth," said the ancient Greek scholar Archimedes, who realized the principle of buoyancy while taking a bath.

Newton, the founder of classical mechanics, came up with the law of universal gravitation after being hit on the head by an apple falling from a tree.Lu Ji of the Western Jin Dynasty also made a detailed description of the phenomenon of inspiration in the process of literary creation in "Wen Fu".However, the psychological process and brain mechanism produced by the "epiphany" process are still unknown.

Modern psychology believes that there are certain internal reasons and conditions for the burst of inspiration.The human brain is a huge information storage, we have to receive a lot of external information every day, some of which can be consciously perceived and sorted out; while the other part becomes our subconscious, which is actually still active and constantly changing. Make new arrangements and combinations.

Under certain conditions, once triggered by specific external things, the subconscious mind will jump into the conscious consciousness of the person, and when its results suddenly appear, it will give people a feeling of enlightenment.Because of this, modern psychologists try to study this problem experimentally.

Professor Luo said that through learning, people will form a mindset for dealing with a certain problem, and once they want to deal with a difficult problem they have never encountered, they need to break this mindset and find another way.The experimental condition of "brain imaging" is to determine this time point, use it as the starting point of the record, and require necessary "repetition".So they chose traditional riddles and brain teasers as experimental materials.There are two types of riddles, one is easier and can be solved with normal computational thinking, such as "Although it blocks your eyes, you can see better" (answer: glasses).Another type of riddle is more difficult, that is, "brain teasers". The four riddles in the front of the article are of this type. This type of riddle requires a breakthrough in thinking.

These two types of questions actually use two different parts of the brain, the former does not produce an "epiphany", while the latter does.The researchers just subtracted the "simple" from the "difficult" in the back to form an activation area, which is the brain activity area produced by "insight".

They used "functional magnetic resonance imaging" and "brain wave" to record and test. The former has a millimeter-level spatial resolution, and the latter has a millisecond-level temporal resolution. The combination of the two is the most advanced brain research technology at present. good combination.Among them, the magnetic resonance test was completed in Japan, and the brain wave experiment was completed in China, and both tests obtained the same results.

Professor Luo said excitedly: "The experimental results are very obvious. When the human brain has an 'epiphany', the neural activity in the 'precingulate gyrus' area of ​​the brain is extremely strong."

The discovery of "epiphany" has attracted widespread attention from scientists.According to British media reports, Francis Crick, one of the discoverers of the double helix structure of DNA and the winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1962, published a paper in the journal Nature Neuroscience saying that human beings have "soul cells", he claimed Human consciousness, commonly known as "soul", is not innate, but is produced and controlled by a small group of neurons in the brain, and these neurons may be in the "pre-cingulate gyrus".Professor Luo's discovery is providing scientific evidence for his theory.

A new study by scientists at Northwestern University and Drexel University suggests that "aha" actually has something to do with the unusual way the brain works.The scientists asked 18 subjects to play an anagram game. The content was to find a word so that it could be matched with the other three different English words listed to form three meaningful new words.

Each experimental subject had to report the moment of "enlightenment" they experienced during the problem-solving process, and the researchers could monitor it through instruments. The activity was obviously enhanced, and high-frequency brain waves were suddenly generated about 0.3 seconds before the "epiphany".

They believe that the generation of "sightseeing" depends on the unique activity mechanism of the brain's nerve center, which provides support for the process of "sightseeing" in the brain.Does the new study contradict Professor Luo's findings?Professor Luo commented that the contradiction between the two is not great.Because "epiphany" embodies the spark of human wisdom, and it may be completed by more brain regions.Further research will help to completely unravel the mystery of "epiphany".

The eureka effect on learning

When it comes to buoyancy, we all think of Archimedes.Archimedes was born in Syracuse, Sicily, at the southern tip of the Italian peninsula in 287 BC. His father was a mathematician and astronomer.Archimedes had a good family upbringing since he was a child, and was sent to study in Alexandria, the center of Greek culture at the age of 11.In this famous city known as the "City of Wisdom", Archimedes read a lot of books and learned a lot of knowledge. ".

Later Archimedes became a great scholar who was both a mathematician and a mechanics, and enjoyed the title of "Father of Mechanics".The reason is that he discovered the principle of leverage through a large number of experiments, and then used geometric deductive methods to deduce many propositions of leverage, and gave strict proofs, including the famous "Archimedes' principle".He also has extremely brilliant achievements in mathematics.Although there are only 10 works of Archimedes handed down to the present, most of them are geometric works, which play a decisive role in promoting the development of mathematics.

A well-known story is: King Hiero of Syracuse asked a goldsmith to make a pure gold crown. Because he suspected that there was silver mixed in it, he asked Archimedes, a great scientist at that time, to appraise it.This was really a big problem more than 2000 years ago.After receiving this task, Archimedes was puzzled.Many days passed like this.He thought about it day and night, was tired and bored, so he didn't want to think about it at all, he had better take a comfortable bath.

Archimedes in the bathtub
Archimedes was lying in the bathtub filled with hot water as usual, and his mind was still thinking about the crown, so he let the hot water overflow along the edge of the basin.Suddenly, his mind brightened, and all his boredom and fatigue were swept away. By weighing the amount of water discharged by the crown to determine its volume, and then determine its specific gravity, wouldn’t it be possible to determine whether it is true or false?Archimedes thus understood that objects of different masses, although they have the same weight, will not drain the same amount of water due to their different volumes.According to this truth, it can be judged whether the crown is adulterated.

Archimedes jumped up for joy, ran back home naked, and shouted: "Eureka! Eureka!" "Eureka" is ancient Greek, meaning: "Okay! There is a way! "

Archimedes summarized this basic principle of hydrostatics, that is, the weight of an object reduced in a liquid is equal to the weight of the liquid removed, and summarized it in his famous book "On Floating Bodies". "Famous in the world.

Archimedes' invention is called "Eureka effect" by later generations.Now "Eureka" is famous all over the world, and it has become the way for those clueless and sleepy researchers to quietly hope for miracles.

Work-rest

Health and fatigue are a dialectical relationship that affects each other in learning.Combining work and rest, maintaining a healthy body and mind is the basis for smooth learning activities.Fatigue refers to a physical and mental state in which learning and work efficiency is reduced due to activities that are too intense or too long.Especially when candidates are in the review stage, they study hard day and night, forcing themselves to persist in studying under fatigue, which often leads to soreness and discomfort in the neck, arms, back, shoulders and fingers, and a decrease in learning efficiency.At the same time, you will also feel a sense of fatigue psychologically, and your self-control, perseverance, and endurance will be greatly reduced.Main features: general fatigue, stiff joints, muscle aches, inability to concentrate, decreased memory and thinking efficiency, and sluggish brain response.

The main causes of candidate fatigue are:
(1) Lack of sleep.Many candidates, regardless of the heavy consumption of intense study during the day, burn the lights and fight at night, often reading until late at night, and even lack of sleep, which disrupts the normal biological rhythm of the human body and is groggy all day long.

(2) Too much learning content is too difficult.Too much learning content will inevitably take up rest time and shorten sleep time; too deep learning content requires the brain to carry out intense thinking activities, resulting in brain fatigue.In addition, difficult content will also affect the examinee's interest in reviewing and accelerate the formation of fatigue.

(3) Excessive psychological pressure.Due to the excessive pressure from society, school, parents and themselves, candidates are always worried about what to do if they fail the exam, and spend the whole day in a state of anxiety.This will not only directly affect the rest of the candidates, but also make them unable to concentrate, cause a drop in learning efficiency, and fail to complete the study plan, which in turn increases the psychological pressure of the candidates and makes them more prone to fatigue.

(4) Improper learning methods.Candidates usually do not pay attention to the scientific use of the brain, and the learning methods are invariable, which inhibits the brain and is prone to fatigue.

(5) Irrational nutrition.Candidates do not pay attention to diet, causing the brain to lack essential nutrients and causing brain fatigue.

(6) Poor learning environment.Insufficient or too bright light causes visual fatigue, too much noise distracts students, and too high or too low room temperature makes candidates feel uncomfortable.

The best way to prevent fatigue is to get enough rest, however it is not the most effective.Because of the heavy learning tasks before the exam, candidates have to extend their study time.The most important thing to prevent fatigue is to pay attention to the art of using the brain and to use the brain scientifically.

Over-learning must grasp the "degree"

The over-learning effect was first proposed by the German psychologist Ebbinghaus. The main meaning is: if a person wants to master the knowledge he has learned, he must often remind himself to consolidate it through repeated practice.That is to say, after people have reached a preliminary mastery of the content they have learned and memorized, if they use half of the original time to consolidate and strengthen, so that the learning level reaches 150%, the memory will be strengthened.

Ebbinghaus
Let's look at the analysis of the overlearning effect.

In the Song Dynasty, there was a man named Chen Raozi (Kang Su Gong) who was very good at archery.He can shoot poplar leaves from a hundred paces away, this kind of shooting skill is unparalleled in the world, no one can match it, Chen Raozi is very proud of her ability.

(End of this chapter)