Well, I'm not trying to pitch it or anything. I haven't tried it either for this. I do have a PhD in Materials Science, but it sounds like your experience is di

Well, I'm not trying to pitch it or anything. I haven't tried it either for this. I do have a PhD in Materials Science, but it sounds like your experience is different than mine. For me, my experience is like this: Step 1: Read about stuff people are doing. Step 2: Read between the lines to understand how it fits into other things I already know about. Step 3: Evaluate based on my intuition whether the fit is reasonable. Since the data is presumed real, if the fit is bad it usually means I didn't understand the details of what they did. See if I can make the fit with other things I know coherent. Step 4: If I can explain the fit coherently, consider what problems might be solved by using that connection. Step 5: Research how that problem is normally solved and why. Step 6: Go back to Step 1 and keep going until I find something that is actually solved better using my weird idea than it is solved currently. I am terrible at memorizing, and if I am in Step 3 or Step 4 or Step 5 it's a real roadblock if I'm trying to understand why I can't harmonize the reported data and my understanding and it's because I've forgotten which sites are interstitials in a fluorite lattice. I know the information I need, but now I have to go look it up. Of course this is why people have reference materials, but it's definitely a speed bump. The important aspects of the work up there clearly aren't about memorization, but it sure helps me actually do it in practice. I really wish I were better at it. Another thing that this made me think of was using it to remember student/coworker names. Remembering my unreasonably numerous cousins' kids' names would also be nice.