Space Flashcards

Here are some space-related flash cards, including planets, spaceships, and astronauts. Some things are hard to depict in graphical format, and those I had to skip. Categories of things (i.e., galaxies), or things that are too far away to see (i.e., small moons), are hard to capture in a single image. This deck has fifty-one cards. The planets all appear twice, with two different photos. In general I avoid duplicate entries, but the planet names are perhaps the most important here, and using different pictures should make the words memorable. Sometimes multiple views of the same object is quite useful, particularly if that object looks different when you change the angle or lighting.

Here is a deck for Anki. Each flashcard has a picture on the front and the Japanese, phonetic reading, and English on the back.

Picture	English	Japanese	Kana
	Mercury	水星	すいせい
	Mercury	水星	すいせい
	Venus	金星	きんせい
	Venus	金星	きんせい
	The Earth	地球	ちきゅう
	The Earth	地球	ちきゅう
	Mars	火星	かせい
	Mars	火星	かせい
	Jupiter	木星	もくせい
	Jupiter	木星	もくせい
	Saturn	土星	どせい
	Saturn	土星	どせい
	Uranus	天王星	てんのうせい
	Uranus	天王星	てんのうせい
	Neptune	海王星	かいおうせい
	Neptune	海王星	かいおうせい
	Pluto	冥王星	めいおうせい
	Pluto	冥王星	めいおうせい
	The Sun	太陽	たいよう
	The Solar System	太陽系	たいようけい
	nebula	星雲	せいうん
	galaxy	銀河	ぎんが
	The Moon	月	つき
	Ganymede	ガニメデ	ガニメデ
	Io	イオ	イオ
	comet	彗星	すいせい
	black hole	ブラックホール	ブラックホール
	meteorite	隕石	いんせき
	meteorite crater	隕石孔	いんせきこう
	sunspot	黒点	こくてん
	sundial	日時計	ひどけい
	The Big Dipper	北斗七星	ほくとしちせい
	astrolabe	アストロラーベ	アストロラーベ
	northern lights	北極光	ほっきょくこう
	solar eclipse	日食	にっしょく
	lunar eclipse	月食	げっしょく
	lunar rover	月面車	げつめんしゃ
	Mars rover	火星探査機	かせいたんさき
	The Hubble Space Telescope	ハッブル宇宙望遠鏡	ハッブルうちゅうぼうえんきょう
	The International Space Station	国際宇宙ステーション	こくさいうちゅうステーション
	spaceship	宇宙船	うちゅうせん
	astronaut	宇宙飛行士	うちゅうひこうし
	space suit	宇宙服	うちゅうふく
	space helmet	宇宙帽	うちゅうぼう
	radio telescope	電波望遠鏡	でんぱぼうえんきょう
	astronomical observatory	天文台	てんもんだい
	solar panel	ソーラーパネル	ソーラーパネル
	laser	レーザー	レーザー
	magnet	磁石	じしゃく
	atom	原子	げんし
	airplane	飛行機	ひこうき
Picture	English	Japanese	Kana

Flashcards on the Phone

I've been using phone-based and computer-based flashcards for three years. They're great because any decent application does spaced repetition, which means that you see the cards you don't know very well more often. When you first start using a spaced repetition system to study it can be frustrating. After all, the cards you don't know keep showing up and it feels like you're not making any progress. As you grow accustomed to the system, though, you worry less. Suppose you see a flashcard with picture of Jupiter on it but don't know how to say "Jupiter" in Japanese. It's good the card came along! If that flashcard hadn't come along, you might have felt you knew the word even though you didn't. The words that you sort of know, or that you can only sometimes remember, those are the ones where you want to see the flashcards. If you know a word very well and the card shows up, it's a waste of your time. Why bother studying a word you already know, right?

Avoid Burdensome Studying

A risk to any study method, and especially flashcards, is that they can get monotonous and burdensome. When you're using a spaced repetition system to study, there are two numbers to consider: the number of new cards per day, and the maximum number of cards to review each day. If you feel like studying is taking too long, and if you have too many cards to review, immediately make those numbers much lower. Currently, I have five new cards per day, which is the lowest it's been in a while. If the new cards are relatively easy, and my daily review count is low for a few weeks, I might move that up to ten or twenty. There's no point in rushing, though. If I try to study too many cards, first of all I'll get tired and inefficient. More importantly, though, studying shouldn't feel like a burden. You should study because you want to, because it's interesting, and because you feel like you're learning something every time you do it.

Find Short Time Slots

How long one should spend on flashcards is a personal consideration. If you commute by train or bus, you have two obvious time slots in your day. If you have the time and energy, studying for up to fifteen minutes twice a day sounds reasonable. Twice a day is nice, but only once a day is fine. I like to study for roughly ten minutes at a time. After that, and sometimes before that, my brain gets tired and needs a long break. Some days I can't remember much of anything and give up after a few minutes. This all varies by person; what is good for me maybe is not good for you. This all changes over time, too, as you learn flashcards and start adding new and different ones.

Delete Problematic Cards Quickly

When you're using flash cards to learn words or sentences in a foreign language, there's an important rule: If a card is confusing, takes too long, or you're not sure if it's correct, delete it. There are tens of thousands of words to learn, and there's no way you can study them all. If your flashcard set contains pictures that are ambiguous or sentences where the meaning is unclear, you save time by deleting those summarily. If you have a fifty word sentence and stumble on word #25 the first time you see it and word #28 the second time you see it, you're doing too much with one card. The sentence is too long and you should either shorten it or delete it. I recommend deleting it, because deleting things is fast and feels good. It's easy enough to find new things to study.