My history teacher told us to memorize all fifty states and their capitals in the US by October 3. How should I go about memorizing them and what techniques should I use?
If you just want to memorize their names, you could put them in a memory palace*. You could create a journey with 50 locations and then put two mnemonic images in each location – one for the state and one for the capital.
Here’s a partial list:
- Alabama: Montgomery
- Alaska: Juneau
- Arizona: Phoenix
- Arkansas: Little Rock
Alabama is first. Picture something that reminds you of Alabama and create a visual image of it. Then create an image for the word Montgomerey (a mountain?) and connect it to the image for Alabama and place it in the first location of your memory palace.
Alaska/Juneau is second. I’d picture a moose and Juno at the second location.
Arizona/Phoenix: a cactus and a phoenix.
Arkansas/Little Rock: an ark on a little rock. I’d probably add Bill Clinton, because I know that he is from Little Rock and that would remind me.
Here’s a full list for reference (from Wikipedia):
- Alabama: Montgomery
- Alaska: Juneau
- Arizona: Phoenix
- Arkansas: Little Rock
- California: Sacramento
- Colorado: Denver
- Connecticut: Hartford
- Delaware: Dover
- Florida: Tallahassee
- Georgia: Atlanta
- Hawaii: Honolulu
- Idaho: Boise
- Illinois: Springfield
- Indiana: Indianapolis
- Iowa: Des Moines
- Kansas: Topeka
- Kentucky: Frankfort
- Louisiana: Baton Rouge
- Maine: Augusta
- Maryland: Annapolis
- Massachusetts: Boston
- Michigan: Lansing
- Minnesota: Saint Paul
- Mississippi: Jackson
- Missouri: Jefferson City
- Montana: Helena
- Nebraska: Lincoln
- Nevada: Carson City
- New Hampshire: Concord
- New Jersey: Trenton
- New Mexico: Santa Fe
- New York: Albany
- North Carolina: Raleigh
- North Dakota: Bismarck
- Ohio: Columbus
- Oklahoma: Oklahoma City
- Oregon: Salem
- Pennsylvania: Harrisburg
- Rhode Island: Providence
- South Carolina: Columbia
- South Dakota: Pierre
- Tennessee: Nashville
- Texas: Austin
- Utah: Salt Lake City
- Vermont: Montpelier
- Virginia: Richmond
- Washington: Olympia
- West Virginia: Charleston
- Wisconsin: Madison
- Wyoming: Cheyenne
If you want to memorize the map too, see this discussion about US geography.
*Edit: If you use a memory palace, it will keep them all in order and you’ll be able to recite them forwards and backwards without skipping any.
If you just need a quick way to recall the capital when given a state name, you can simply link the state names with the capital names using mnemonic images.
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Thank very much!