Why is this something widespread? I did chemistry up till A-levels and no one ever asked me to memorise the periodic table and no one gave a shit about committing it to memory. WTF is going on.
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2025
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It's common in the US. Our priorities are... Misaligned.
Our education system values rote memorization over actually learning something. So instead of teaching you how to use the periodic table, they teach you "The element of Hydrogen has an atomic mass of 1" etc.
A few teachers who actually give a fuck will do both, but they are required to teach the test for funding. Because that's how they are graded.
Omg my high school had 2 chem teachers and both were insane and took the class too seriously. The first week was making us memorize the elements and being drilled in almost daily tests to see if we could write them down.
By the end of the week, my teacher said if you didn’t have at least an 8/10 from her quizzes, to basically change classes. She and the other teacher often went overtime and ignored the period ending bell which pissed off a lot of other teachers.
The periodic table of elements was on a paper that she’d roll up during our quizzes and for the rest of the year, we had to take our quizzes with the assumption that we’ve memorized the tables and could do equations and conversions with no references. The class had to be graded on a curve since most of us 16 year olds had other school work to focus on.
In the end, I think no one from those classes ever became a chem major. It certainly made me hate it.
I went looking for a CSI Miami pun, but came out very... *puts on sunglasses*
disappointed
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Yeah this is exactly why I mentally checked out of chemistry. Memorization was being pushed harder than conceptual understanding.
What did you memorize?
I recall most of chem being "here's a rule that applies to a very narrow subdomain but literally nothing else." So we learned a lot of mostly useless rules and then we'd do a lab where most the chemicals didn't use any of the same interaction rules or naming conventions as each other. Or here's a lab test we can use only on chemicals that mix perfectly and don't separate, cloud, etc.
Yeah I don't get it either. My degree is in chemical engineering, and I always had a periodic table available for every test going to back to grade 11 chemistry.
In high school, my teacher gave us a printed copy on the first day of class and said, "This is your best friend." We could bring that page into any test. He also allowed some handwritten notes and alterations to the page, notably a list of polyatomic ions, and colour coding of certain elements. But if you forgot your personal copy, he'd give you a blank one before the test.
In university, I wasn't allowed to bring a loose sheet with the table on it, but one was stapled to the back of every test and exam if it was required (you don't really need chemical properties to do fluid mechanics and heat transfer). Also, most tests were open book, and most of my textbooks had a periodic table printed on the inside cover anyhow.
My orgo professor let us use notes for the quizzes but not exams. We were allowed to use a molecular kit (sticks and balls) on exams.
Orgo was the one core course where we couldn't bring any supplementary material to the tests - no textbook, no handwritten notes, no molecular kits. But they still stapled a periodic table to the back of the test.
IMO, some people think that being educated means achieving mountains of rote memorization, and little else. Some of those people also become teachers.
This may also be why there's a big row every time someone changes what algorithms are taught in basic maths (in the US, anyway).
My wife has a couple graduate degrees on this subject. This is one that I got to be the unwilling editor on her papers for.
Its a lack of understanding how students need to learn the information: memorization by usage versus memorization by rote.
Memorization by rote: This is the old school method of teaching. You memorize random facts figures with no context or usage. Its a bit of standalone information that is often not useful. Memorization by rote leads to kids that can say all of the letters but not recognize the symbols or associated them with sounds and words.
Memorization by usage: This is a much more effective method to teach. Its also much harder. This requires teaching the concepts and systems and linking the information together. You memorize the same information by repeated usage but it's in context. It takes a ton more skill to teach this way because you have to engage the student through the entire process, repeatedly.
I remember having to memorize some amount in like grade 10 science, I think the first 10 were required - but only the name, symbol, and in order. We didn't have to memorize any of the other details and on tests we either had a full table to work from or the test would provide the relevant information for the elements needed.
I think the memorization part was more a brain development excercise for kids, every class had some sort of "memorize these few things" up until grade 12 or so.
I did my master in physical chemistry. The pretty advanced periodic table the university bookstore sold was allowed at exam. On the other hand I memorized amino acids for some reaso
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earth, fire, water, wind - it's not hard
Forgot the most important element of all: surprise.
Surprise and fear.
surprise and fear. and a fanatical devotion to the pope.
Ah! I'll come in again.
Hey now everyone, the order is:
- Water
- Earth
- Fire
- Air
Previously—on Avatar...
- Earth
- Fire
- Wind
- Water
- Heart
Captain planet! He's our hero! Gonna take pollution down to zero!
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Our chemistry teacher made us memorise up to Argon with a song, that was literally just him singing the 1/2 letter names of all the elements. HHeLiBeBCNOFNe...
It was on a poster on the wall in every lesson. It was in the textbook. It was printed on the exam papers.
I've no idea why he tried to make us do that, and the annoying thing is I can still remember a good chunk of it 30 years later. I could have been using that chunk of my brain for something useful.
"1066 Battle of Hastings
1096 First Crusade
1120 Sinking of the White Ship
1153 Treaty of Westminster
1189 Third Crusade
1215 Magna Carta
1265 First parliament
1314 Battle of Bannockburn
1348 Black Death
1381 Peasant's Revolt
1415 Battle of Agincourt
1485 Battle of Bosworth..."
Etched into my brain for 25 years for absolutely no reason
And the amount of time dedicated to ox-bow lakes. Where are they all? You'd think every second meander would be an ox-bow lake by now, but I've never even seen one.
I think geography teachers made them up and hoped nobody would ever check.
I have always simply refused to memorize anything.
I had to memorize all the most recent presidents in order. My teacher suggedting using a nemonoc device. I jokingly said "Her tech jiniff kirbicx" in a robot voice - HRTEKJNFCRBC
Hoover, Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton
I had to memorize every element until Radon in 2nd Semester. Just position and therefore the amount of protons (the "order number"? idk in english), but still: such a waste of time. When we asked "y no table of elemens?", our prof said that we should be glad that we had a system to memorize.
I asked a chemistry teacher about this and he was baffled that we had to do this.
The best part? I wasn't even studying chemistry! But rather general "engineering science" which had a lot of focus on material science. But chemistry was my least favourite science. I wanted all engineering but chemisty. ;_;
the "order number" idk in english
The English term is "atomic number".
Thx. Makes way more sense than "Ordnungszahl" in German.
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I have a degree in chemistry and I never had to do this. ~98% of the time you're working with the same 5 elements. Many elements on the table literally only existed for a microsecond in a lab decades ago.
Same on everything except my professors actually made us memorize ~15 because we used them so frequently in gen chem and they said it would help on timed tests.
Now I just keep a periodic table as my computer desktop and posted in the lab.
The fourth one is air. Wind is just the movement of air. You wouldn't say water is river
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You forgot "fuckin' magnets".
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