Mnemonics, two I use and one I am no longer so sure of.

[chknltl]

A mnemonic device (pronounced "neh-mon-ik") is a memory aid. Commonly met mnemonics are often verbal, something such as a very short poem or a special word used to help a person remember something, particularly lists, but may be visual, kinesthetic or auditory. ( from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic )

One in common use among photographers is the name "Roy G. Biv" which stands for the sequence of colors in the light spectrum: "Red; Orange; Yellow; Green; Blue; Indigo; Violet" (I think a fellow DUer uses this name, btw.)

Here are two I came up with as a child long ago:

Port vs Starboard:
'Port' has 4 letters, 'Left' has 4 letters. 'Starboard' and 'Right' both have more than 4 letters. Therefore port equals left and starboard equals right as one faces the front of the boat or plane.

Stalactite vs Stalagmite:
Stalactite has the letter 'c' for ceiling and the letter 't' for top in it. Stalagmite has the letter 'g' for ground and the letter 'm' for mound in it. Therefore stalactites form on the ceiling while Stalagmites mound up on the ground!

One I recall from childhood that I am no longer so sure about: 'Meteor' vs 'Meteorite'.
The childhood mnemonic I once read regarding this is: "A meteor is a flash of light made by a falling meteorite!" Easy enough, the meteor is what we see streaking across the sky while the object that formed it was the meteorite. This begs the question: Did a 'flash of light' wipe out the dinosaurs???

Posting this for further mnemonics and maybe a clarification on what really offed the dinosaurs.

[Godhumor]

1. Feet in a mile is "Five tomatoes" (5280)

I learned stalagmite as "MIGHT hang from the ceiling but doesn't"

[ChazII]

27. Thank you for this information.

My third grade class is studying measurement and this fits right in with our unit.

[Godhumor]

29. I think that's about the age I learned it. Never forgot it.

Amazing how some mnemonics can stick with you.

[Kali]

54. oh that is great - I love it - thankyou

5 tomatoes:rofl:

stalactites hang tight is how I remember

[NMDemDist2]

2. I work in a famous cave and the way I tell the visitors to remember

stalactite v stalagmite is

a stalactite holds tightly to the top and a stalagmite grows mighty from the floor

:hi:

[bmbmd]

4. It's like ants in your pants.

The 'mites go up, the 'tites go down.

[chknltl]

38. Ha! I like that one best!

[JimGinPA]

3. I Thought 'Meteorite' Was...

Someone who came from 'Meteor'.

[bmbmd]

5. On old Olympia's towering top

a fat assed german viewed a hop. (or-alternately:"Oh oh oh to touch and feel a good vagina always hot")
Never would have graduated without mnemonics.

[FloridaJudy]

35. A "fat assed Goddess"

When the professors' backs were turned, otherwise it was a "Finn and German".

Lately "My Very Educated Mother Just Sat Under the North Pole" morphed into "Served Us Nachos". Ah, the march of Science!

[bmbmd]

42. In a fit of nostalgia, I tried to remember the story of

Heli BeBKNOF and his suicidal girlfriend NeNa. The only link I found on google? DU, 2004. Help me out if you remember the story.

[Pacifist Patriot]

6. King Philip Came Over For Good Sex

Kingdom, Phylyum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

HOMES: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior

Whenever I think of the extinction of the dinosaurs I cannot get the Gary Laursen cartoon out of my head.

[Lethe]

40. i use a different one for that

King Philip Cooks Otters For Good Spaghetti

doesn't really make any sense but that's what i've always used haha

[Lethe]

41. C. Hopkins Cafe Mighty Good

major elemental nutrients that plants need

Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorous, Potassium, Sulfur, Nitrogen, Calcium, Iron, Magnesium

[LynzM]

46. Or:

Kinky people can often find good sex :)

[SKKY]

7. The Navy defines hazardous materials in 6 categories...

Flammables
Aerosol Containers
Toxic Materials
Compressed Gasses
Oxidizing Materials
Corrosive Materials...


or, "Fat Cock"

[chknltl]

8. .

:spray:
btw: My step kid's an ex-"liberal sailor". He served as a 'grape' on an aircraft carrier during Desert Storm. It was during this period of his life where the Navy taught him how to drink.... liberally, a trick he has never forgotten.

[DarkTirade]

9. I gotta remember that stalactite/stalagmite one... I can NEVER keep those two straight.

[Career Prole]

10. Port vs Starboard

Port wine is red and so is the port running light on ships and aircraft (starboard is green but you'll have to remember that one on your own).
Actually learned that one as well as yours in Navy bootcamp too many years ago.

Oh, and "Bad boys raped our young girls behind victory garden walls" was how we learned the color code for those stripes on resistors.
Black=0
Brown=1
Red=2
Orange=3
Yellow=4
Green=5
Blue=6
Violet=7
Grey=8
White=9

First two stripes are numbers, third is the number of zeros after the two numbers...which explains Chief Baty's oft-told dumb joke "What's yellow with three orange stripes? A 33K ohm banana!"

[RagAss]

11. Trying to recall...

Meteroid - object in space outside of Earth's atmosphere.

Meteor - object enters the atmosphere and burns and is visible.

Meteorite - the object as it would be recovered after hitting earth.

[chknltl]

19. That's kinda how I think it is too

I just looked here: http://www.amsmeteors.org/faqm.html#1 which confirms what you say.

As a child I recall a mnemonic which was in the form of a short poem. The first part in that poem went:
"A meteor is
a flash of light...
Made by a falling
meteorite!"
It had a bit more but this little mnemonic served me well enough until heard the word 'meteoroid', which sorta messed things up a bit. From what I understand, not all meteors are caused by objects which actually impact the earth. I think most of those objects burn up long before becoming meteorites and a few just skip through our atmosphere to bounce back out into space.

[RagAss]

45. Thanks...it's the only thing I remember from a college Astronomy class 20 yrs ago.

[Dr. Strange]

12. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine.

We had nine planets when I was a kid! x(

[Phillycat]

23. Every Good Boy Does Fine

[Genevieve]

49. My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles.

[Ptah]

13. I remember Roy G. Biv, but I don't remember the valuses associated with the colors

:DU memoryloss smilie:

[bbernardini]

14. Secant, tangent, cosine, sine, 3.14159!

Thanks to Mr. Frederick, my 9th grade geometry teacher, for that one.

[Richardo]

15. Heard this on NPR last week: No Point Letting Your Trousers Slip Half-Way

The main royal families of Britain:

norman
plantanget
lancaster
york
tudor
stuart
hanover
windsor

Now I'll always remember them, and I didn't even know them two weeks ago. :)

[pokerfan]

16. Eli the ICE man

In an inductive circuit, the current lags the voltage. In a capacitive circuit, the current leads the voltage by. So to remember this we use "ELI the ICE man" where E means voltage, I is current, L is inductance and C is capacitance.

[Richardo]

20. Yes but how do you remember that E = voltage, L = inductance and I = current?

Why doesn't I = inductance?

Can you tell I know nothing about electricity?

[pokerfan]

30. Because C already stood for capacitance

so we had to use I for current. And since we used I for current, we had to use something else for Inductance so L was chosen.

Then when we found out that mathematicians had been using i for the square root of -1, we went with its next-door neighbor, j. For example: e^jx=cos x + j sin x.

After that, we just started assigning letters at random.

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. A Great Lakes one...HOMES

Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior!

[trackfan]

18. Boys Can Do Everything In School For Girls

BCDEISFG - is the order of the compartments on one of the rows containing movable type in the California Job Case or on a linotype machine.

[Richardo]

21. O Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me

Stellar spectral classifications

Temperature
O 30,000 - 60,000 K Blue stars
B 10,000 - 30,000 K Blue-white stars
A 7,500 - 10,000 K White stars
F 6,000 - 7,500 K Yellow-white stars
G 5,000 - 6,000 K Yellow stars (like the Sun)
K 3,500 - 5,000K Yellow-orange stars
M < 3,500 K Red stars

[namahage]

22. How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics.

3.14159265358979 = first few digits of pi

[Richardo]

24. Took me a minute, but very clever.

:thumbsup:

[Duer 157099]

32. I don't get it. help? n/t

[namahage]

33. Count the letters in each word. n/t

[chknltl]

39. Wowsers! Thanks! nt

[meegbear]

43. Very clever indeed!

:thumbsup:

[ThomCat]

36. Cool.

[LynzM]

47. LOL

Fantastic. :)

[namahage]

51. That's nothing--look at this:

http://www.cadaeic.net/cadenza.htm">The Cadaeic Cadenza

The first 3835 digits of pi. An excerpt:

One
A Poem

A Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber's antedoor.
"This", I whispered quietly, "I ignore".

[bluesbassman]

25. Every Good Boy Does Fine

Lines on the treble clef: E-G-B-D-F

Face - Spaces on the treble clef: F-A-C-E

George Brown Drives Far Away - Lines on the bass clef: G-B-D-F-A

All Cows Eat Grass - Spaces on the bass clef: A-C-E-G

[Piltdown13]

52. Or -- Great Big Dogs Fly Airplanes

according to my elementary-school music teacher. :-)

[justabob]

26. prohibition/repeal amendments

18 is the old drinking age 21 is the new drinking age..... prohibition was the 18th amendment, its repeal the 21st amendment

not one that comes up very often, but that is the one I know :)

[Godhumor]

28. "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Voltage equals I times R"

"Splishy splashy in the sea. Power equals I times V"

Ah, Physics and Ohm's Law...

[namahage]

31. MY LEGS

Six types of contracts that fall under the "Statute of Frauds" rule (must be in writing to be valid)

Marriage
Year (contracts that can't be performed in 1 year)
Land (transfers, etc.)
Executor (or administrator)
Goods (sale over a certain price ($500))
Surety contracts (agreeing to be guarantor of a debt)

At least, that's how the Contracts professor explained it. I rather liked a different mnemonic:

Over one year
Real estate
Goods
Administrator/executor
Surety
Marriage

[ThomCat]

37. Your version seems more concise

and somehow easier to remember. :P

[XemaSab]

34. Quercus is in the Fagaceae

:hide:

[MicaelS]

44. Southern California's Going Ape

Top four metals in terms of best conductivity:

Silver
Copper
Gold
Aluminum

So if silver was plentiful as copper, we would all have silver wiring in our homes instead of copper wiring.

[Ohio Joe]

48. In Every Damn Program

In every interview I've had since I was an entry level programmer till the one I had two weeks ago (18+ years), I've always been asked to name the four divisions of a COBOL program. Thats how I've always remembered them.

Identification
Environment
Data
Procedure

[Arugula Latte]

50. Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally

Order of operations for complex equations: Do the stuff in Parenthesis first, then the Exponents, then Multiply, then Divide, then Add, then Subtract.

Also: "FOIL" for solving quadratic equations. Do "first," "outside," "inside" then "last."

Also: FANBOYS ... for the coordinating conjunctions, which are used to join two independent clauses: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so. A comma precedes them. Example: "I use the mneumonic "fanboys" to remember, for it is easy to forget proper grammar."

[Piltdown13]

53. Put Eggs On My Plate Please Honey

for the epochs in the Cenozoic Era:

Paleocene
Eocene
Oligocene
Miocene
Pliocene
Pleistocene
Holocene

I learned it on the first day of the lab section for the first geology class I took in college. I've now passed it on to hundreds of my own undergrads. Amazing what sticks in the brain!

[JitterbugPerfume]

55. Great lakes according to size

Super man helps every one