A Small Victory

Mnemonic?

Good one Michele. Good one. That'll win her accolades at school. Ha. Natalie will remember every word without fail.

John

That's it.

I hope she shares that bit of Mom wisdom with her friends.

We had to make up one of those in grade six for the planets in the solar system, and I still use the damn thing today: Many Very Educated Men Just Sit Under News Papers. Hey, it's stupid but it works.

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pickles (Pizzas)

just wait till she tells the grandarents how she remembered that one!
typical grandmother response: "your mother is out of her mind!"

Many Vixens Enjoy Making Jello Shots Under Nefarious Pretenses ;)

I picked my ass years ago. I said "give me the tight peachy round one attached to that girl there"

I still remember "ROY G BIV" when discussing the visual spectrum.

Resistor codes. (The colored bands on resistors.) Used for identifying the rating.
"Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Violet Gives Willingly."

Black, Brown, Red, Orange, Green, Blue, Violet, Gray, White.

Roy Open Your Garage Before I Vomit

Every Good Boy Does Fine

Good Boys Do Fine Always

All Cows Eat Grass

Never Eat Sour Watermelon

It's been over 25 years but I still recall all the bones of the wrist.

Never lower Tillie's pants, Grandmother might come home.

Navicular, lunate, triquetrum, pisiform, greater multangular, lesser multangular, capitate, hamate.

Keith,

You are forgetting the tolerance bands -- ...Violet gives willingly for gold, silver or nothing (from the days when 5, 10, and 20 percent were the only options). And I learned it as an "ethnically insensitive" version.

Mike the EE geek

Converting compass bearing to true bearing

Can - Compass Bearing +
Dead - Deviation =
Men - Magnetic Bearing +
Vote - Variation =
Twice - True Bearing

and conversly

True - True bearing +
Virgins - Variation =
Make - Magnetic Bearing +
Dull - Deviation =
Companions - Compass Bearing

My personal favorite:

Please Don't Network These Stupid People Again

For the 7 OSI layers:

Physical, Datalink, Network, Transport, Session, Presentation, Application

I used to have trouble remembering those Presidents no one seems to remember. Here's what my Dad came up with:
Tyler Polk(ed) Taylor, Pierce(ing) his Buchannan

Remember it to this day.

An old episode of "Cheers" had Coach struggling to learn historical facts to pass his World History unit.

He made up a song about every significant country on the planet:

(To the tune of "When The Saints Go Marching In:)

Albania!

Albania!

It borders on the A-dri

Atic!

It's terrain, is mostly mountains,

And it's chief export is

Chromium!

It's scary that I still remember it, but perhaps not as scary as remembering the entire Lemon Pledge jingle far more easily than the Pythagorean Theroem.

Charles, I remember that vividly. Can still sing every note of it.

Kings Play Chess On Fine Green Stools

Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species

My 11th grade Bio teacher's phrase for Kingdom et. al. was "King Philip Came Over For Good Soup." My friends had other ideas. So one day in class I'm approached by my friend who says:

Katie, Please Come Over For Good Sex.

It caught on. The next year the teacher changed soup to sex when she taught that lesson.

Oh Be A Fine Girl Kiss Me

The classes of stars, in order of magnitude or temperature, can't remember (OBAFGKM). Our sun is type "G" I think. I maybe be wrong.

I also remember an old episode of Happy Days where Potsie was trying to remember something for an anatomy test in college, and made up a song for it. He and the entire class were dancing around the classroom, singing,

"Pumpa pumpa pumpa pump pump pump, Pumpa pumpa pumpa pump pump pump, Pumpa pumpa pumpa pump pumps your blood!"

Yeesh, that's a scary thing to remember.

Then, of course, I'm sure all of you can sing the Preamble! Courtesy of the new Schoolhouse Rock DVD, my kids are learning, too ;)

I always thought it was easier to learn the words than to remember the full mnemonic. With most mnemonics I had to remember two things: the thing I was trying to memorize originally AND the silly phrase which usually wasn't that memorable.

But I Picked My Ass Today is nothing if not memorable. :)

I've got an even better one for the 7 layer OSI model:

Please Dear, Not Tonight, Soft Pecker Already.

It's a man-thing....

I'm a biologist who postdocced on Natalie's Very Subject, Mitosis ... we were never clever enough to come up with that one (& wouldn't want to make it too easy for the struggling undergrads).

From Field Geology days:
Can Oscar See Down My Pants Pockets?
Cambrian - Ordovician - Silurian - Devonian - Mississippian - Pennsylvanian - Permian
You're on your own for Mesozoic and Cenozoic...

In my school it was King Philip Called Out For Grasshopper Stew. I thought King Philip had awfully funny tastes. Of course this was from the same biology teacher who used the pop-squish method of classifying critters based on the sound they'd make if you'd step on them. Pop-squish meant they had an exoskeleton and squish-pop meant an endoskeleton.

I love mnemonic devices ("Quick! Hand me the mnemonic device!"). Somewhere I have one that gives the first 40-odd digits of pi. I didn't feel strongly enough about that one to learn it. One not posted here yet is a chemistry one:

LEO the lion goes GER.

Lose Electrons - Oxidation
Gain Electrons - Reduction

Another electronics one is:

ELI the ICE man.

Voltage (E) leads current (I) through an inductor (L), current leads voltage through a capacitor ©.

Some of the navigation ones I remember from my Navy days don't "expand" into other information, they just make it easier to remember things (as is their intent):

Red right returning - when returning to port, keep the red buoys on your right or you'll go out of the channel.

Even red nuns have odd black cans - nun buoys are painted red and are even-numbered, can buoys are black and odd-numbered.

By the way, the large metal mass of a ship interferes with magnetic compasses significantly, so if you've ever seen a compass binnacle (the tapered canister it's mounted in), you'll have noticed two large iron spheres on either side. These are used to compensate for the effect produced by the ship, and are referred to as the "navigator's balls."

Every
Good
Boy
Does
Fine

Eat
A
Darn
Good
Breakfast
Early

I still remember those, but I can't remember what they were for!!!! One of them is for remembering the notes on the guitar, but I don't know which one it is (must be the first one, because it is 5). What's the second one???

I can't remember how to PLAY the guitar either.

Actually, it's the lines on a treble clef - EGBDF. The spaces are FACE (Face).

The bass clef lines are Good Boys Do Fine Always (GBDFA) and the spaces are A Cow Eats Grass (ACEG).

Never heard of the other one, though.

Mrs. Du Toit -- Barry's right, the first one is notes on the clef. The second one (EADGBE) is the strings of a guitar. They have 6 strings. :)

I learned "My Very Earnest Mother Just Sent Us Nine Pickles" for the planets, "King Philip Came Over From Germany Saturday" for the taxonomic structure, ROY G. BIV for the spectrum... And when I was in Natalie's shoes, I just remembered the "word" IPMAT; that worked for me. The ass-picking is awfully good, though. I will try to remember that for my kids. :)

No, no, theresa, the OSI model is:
American Presidents Should Try New Dating Practices.

Never had any problems remembering that one :)

But I like yours too.

Mine was "King Philip Came over for Good Sex." Go figure. :P

In my school, the "official" mnemonic term for the Great Lakes was HOMES (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior). Perhaps due to my Brooklyn background, I always preferred my own: SHMOE.

"King Phillip Can Order Fine Good Soup"

Well, I don't know about Natalie, but I will certainly never forget them now - lol :-)

I really agree with that last comment!

Any good ideas on remembering all the presidents?