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Mnemonic Devices
6

Mnemonic Devices

Mnemonic Devices

(OP)
Over in thread240-177089 there's a discussion about mnemonic devices for the resistor color code.

What are your favorite mnemonic devices?

A Rat In The House May Eat The Ice Cream
(Spelling arithmetic)

Every Good Boy Does Fine
(Staff lines of the treble clef)

FACE -- rhymes with SPACE
(Staff spaces on the treble clef)

Good Boys Do Fine Always
(Staff lines on the bass clef)

All Cows Eat Grass  or  All Cars Eat Gas
(Staff Spaces on the bass clef)

The Girls Can Flirt And Other Queer Things Can Do
(The Mho Hardness Scale:  Talc, Gypsum, Calcite, Fluorite, Apatite, Orthoclase, Quartz, Topaz, Carborundum, Diamond)

Putting the knuckles of your two fists together correspond to long and short months of the Julian calendar.  
(The dips between the knuckles of one hand correspond to February, April and June.  The dips continue after two adjacent knuckles (July and August) for September and November.)

These are ones I learned in grade school.  They really stick with you.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

My Dog Has Fleas
(Ukulele tuning)

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Oscar Had A Hit Of Acid - sine, cosine, tangent

RE: Mnemonic Devices

The old classic....

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain

(Colours of the rainbow)

Just spent last night teaching it to my son

Kevin Hammond

Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK
 

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain ... colours of the rainbow

RE: Mnemonic Devices

sychronised posting !

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Twinkle twinkle little star power equals I squared R.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Sweet

Kevin Hammond

Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK
 

RE: Mnemonic Devices

fighting pc blade

Countries in NATO (in 1980)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pumpkins

(Planets of our solar system, prior to Pluto getting the boot)

ewh,

I remember the trig functions by:

Oscar Had A Heap Of Apples

RE: Mnemonic Devices

This one doesn't go over well with most, but learned it from my electronics teacher that was an ex-Marine.
It's bad, but has always stuck in my head.
Brave Boys Rape Our Young Girls, But Violet gives Willingly.
(resister color code)

Chris
SolidWorks 06 5.1/PDMWorks 06
AutoCAD 06
ctopher's home (updated 02-10-07)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

I was taught "Bad Boys", but Brave Boys sounds better.

"Art without engineering is dreaming; Engineering without art is calculating."

Have you read FAQ731-376 to make the best use of Eng-Tips Forums?

RE: Mnemonic Devices

ctopher

The slightly less crude version (probably my Irish upbringing)

Bold Boys Ravish Our Young Girls, But Violet gives Willingly

Kevin Hammond

Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK
 

RE: Mnemonic Devices

The Old Arab Sat On His Camel And Howled (Tan = O/A, Sin = O/H, Cos = A/H)

Father Charles Goes Down And Ends Battle / Battle Ends and Down Goes Charles' Father  (sharps/flats in key signatures - and if you deal from the middle of the pack, the keys they go with)

A.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

A youth at college always used this one:

May I F... You Eleanor Rigby (M/I = F/Y = E/R)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Two from WAAAAY back during my mis-spent youth when I was in a "Techniques of Military Instruction" class, these refer to the inclusion of a video (back then a film) in a block of instruction:

P - Preview
I - Introduce
S - Show
S - Summarize

Or, if you're of a more delicate bent, use the last letter of each step, and you get"

W
E
W
E

I remember them now, almost forty years later...

old field guy

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Righty tighty, Lefty Lucy (loosey)

NozzleTwister
Houston, Texas

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Tut Tut those of you learned the rainbow in reverse order; "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" .....
In the correct (reverse) order, so a lady teacher told me, the mnemonic is:
"Virgins In Bed Get Your Organs Red"

JMW
www.ViscoAnalyser.com

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Is there any RED PORT LEFT?

i.e the red light goes on the port side which is the left

M

--
Dr Michael F Platten

RE: Mnemonic Devices

"Happy Henry Likes Beryl Brown Chewing Nuts On Fridays. Nell Said May All Silly Physicians Suffer Chills Always."

(The first 18 elements / 3 rows of the Periodic Table.)

"My Very Easy Method Just Simplifies Us Naming Planets."

(Unfortunately, this now reads "My Very Easy Method Just Simplifies Us Naming", which doesn't work as well!)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Further to MikeyP

There is no red port left, it has all gone down my throat, indicating that the throat halyard goes on the Port side.

Stephen Argles
Land & Marine
www.landandmarine.com

RE: Mnemonic Devices

ROY G BIV - colours of the rainbow

She Made Him Eat Onions - order of the great lakes

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Elephants Grow Big During February!

RE: Mnemonic Devices

How about ELI the ICE man?
For inductive and capacitive circuits.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

HOMES works for the Great Lakes, too.

And a white pine has 5 needles - W-H-I-T-E - while other pines like the J-A-C-K only have 4 per little bundle - don't know if that's true, but it's what they taught us at the nature center in 5th grade.  Funny what you remember...

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Bad boys rob only young girls but violet gives willingly gold and silver. This version of the resistor color code is more appropriate and includes the tolerance band and fractional multiplier band colors.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

From a friend in the Sea Cadets --
PORT wine is RED
LEFT is shorter than RIGHT, PORT is shorter than STARBOARD

From when I did my ONC in Mechanical Engineering --
F*** Your Mistress In the Engine Room  (F/Y = M/I = E/R)

(all of the above from 40+ years ago!)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

I Value Xylophones Like Cows Dig Milk
I V X L C D M
1 5 10 50 100 500 1000

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction




RE: Mnemonic Devices

2
(OP)
Foets reminds me... Emdas Ig Fio

Pseudo-Latin for Exponentiation, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction--in groups--from [the] inside out.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

SOH CAH TOA
Sin = O/H, Cos = A/H, Tan = O/A

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
Parenthesis, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, Addition, Subtraction (Order of operations)

Then of course there is the whole list of bar recipes relying on Mnemonic devices

I ain't never seen a hearse with a luggage rack.-GS

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Some old horse caught another horse taking oats away.

Sin = O/H....

RE: Mnemonic Devices

From my high school biology teacher:

Kinky People Cry Out For Great Sex
(kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, species)

Hg

Eng-Tips policies:  FAQ731-376

RE: Mnemonic Devices


Red Right Returning

Red light is always on the right when returning to port. (In the U.S.)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

stevenal
your version (BBROGVGW) with gold and silver is obviously the superior version.  A long time ago an old gent gave me that tip too.

Please let us all know how this works out for you! and don't forget FAQ731-376

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Not a mnemonic but rather an acronym that I came up as a rookie engineer after another of the rookies dropped a year's salary on a new Mercedes:

MERCEDES = My Ego Requires Cars Evoking Delusional Enhanced Status

I'm reviewing mammalian organ systems and just came up with:

My Resolve Is Completely RUINED for the ten organ systems.

--------------------
How much do YOU owe?
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
--------------------

RE: Mnemonic Devices

"Camels Ordinarily Sit Down Carefully - Perhaps Their Joints Creak. Possibly Early Oiling May Prevent Permanent Resting."

The divisions of geologic time:

Cambrian / Ordovician / Silurian / Devonian / Carboniferous / Permian / Triassic / Jurassic / Cretaceous / Paleocene / Eocene / Oligocene / Miocene / Pliocene / Pleistocene / Recent

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Every Alsation Dog's Got Big Ears
Strings on a guitar

Tommy On A Ship Of His Caught A Herring
tan = Opp/Adj, Sin = Opp/Hyp and Cos = Adj/Hyp

RE: Mnemonic Devices

I'll probably kick myself, but...
M/I = F/Y = E/R what's that mean? I have no idea...

and I can't believe no one's brought out this moldy oldie:

I before E
except after C
or when sounding like A
like in neighbor or weigh
English is weird

cheers,
rad
"According to my calculations the problem doesn't exist."

RE: Mnemonic Devices

That's the most useful beam equation

moment/I=stress/distance from neutral axis=E/radius of curvature

I hope you are wearing steel toe-capped boots

Cheers

Greg Locock

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Bye Bye Rosie Off You Go Bristol Via Great Weston

Somerset for ya!

RE: Mnemonic Devices

man, it's been too long since I did any statics/dynamics...

see, like I said, I'm kicking myself... :)

cheers,
rad
"According to my calculations the problem doesn't exist."

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Trig:
Silly old hitler, caused a havoc, to our armies
- sin=o/h, cos =a/h, tan = o/a
or
The cat sat
on an orange
and howled horribly

Which is a vertical mnemonic - t=o/a, c = a/h, s =o/h.



 

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Another one for the resistor color code that I didn't see posted is:

Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well Get Some Now

Of course I learned that in a military electronics course along with the other one posted above.

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If your ideas are any good, you'll have to ram them down people's throats.
--Howard Aiken, IBM engineer

RE: Mnemonic Devices

music:

Bears Eat And Digest Garbage Can Food
The order of the flats(b)

Fat Cows Go Down And Eat Bugs
The order of the sharps(#)

RE: Mnemonic Devices

From the speech delivered at my wedding by my Best Man:

WIFE: Washing, Ironing, F___ing, Etcetera!

I don't think it has been forgiven yet!
 

----------------------------------
  Sometimes I only open my mouth to swap feet...

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Correct order of events at a wedding ...
Aisle, alter, hymn smile

Correct order for the three rings in a relationship ...
Engagement ring, wedding ring, suffering

Colours of a rainbow, from our Chemistry teacher, who used to be a Smartie tester ....
Rowntrees Of York Give Best In Value

Childs handwriting (or adult morse code) practice, containing the whole alphabet in lower case...
A quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
(There is a shorter sentence, something with dozen liquor jugs, but it is deemed unsuitable for children, and so not used and I've forgotten it.)

Strings on a guitar ...
Every American Daughter Gets Babies Easily

Order of the recurring digits in sevenths' fractions ....
Just keep doubling
eg 7 14 28 56, so for example 4/7 is
0.571428571428571428571428571428571428571428571428...

===

What's next in the sequence ....
1,2,4,8,16, .... ?
If putting dots randomly on a circle and joining them, you cut the circle into successively 1,2,4,8,16,31 pieces.
But if you take the digits as being numerically the first letters of the old Cornish proverb Alien Birds Do Have Peculiar Feathers (with alphabet wrapping), then the answer is 32. So who is to say what answer is really correct on so called IQ tests? If you cut 4 dimensional space with 3D cuts, I believe the number of pieces you successively get is
1,2,4,8,16,31,....


RE: Mnemonic Devices

I think this is the pangram you are looking for

"Pack my bag with five dozen liquor jugs"

How razorback-jumping frogs can level six piqued gymnasts!
Back in June we delivered oxygen equipment of the same size.
A quick movement of the enemy will jeopardize six gunboats.
All questions asked by five watch experts amazed the judge.
Crazy Fredericka bought many very exquisite opal jewels.
Sixty zippers were quickly picked from the woven jute bag.
John Prady, give me a black walnut box of quite small size.
Have a pick; twenty six letters -- no forcing a jumbled quiz!
Big July earthquakes confound zany experimental vow.
Six big devils from Japan quickly forgot how to waltz.
My girl wove six dozen plaid jackets before she quit.
Foxy parsons quiz & cajole the lovably dim wiki-girl.
Cozy lummox gives smart squid who asks for job pen.
Amazingly few discotheques provide jukeboxes.
Adjusting quiver and bow, Zompyc killed the fox.
My faxed joke won a pager in the cable TV quiz show.
Woven silk pyjamas exchanged for blue quartz.
Brawny gods just flocked up to quiz and vex him.
A wizard’s job is to vex chumps quietly in fog.
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
The jay, pig, fox, zebra and my wolves quack!
Blowzy red vixens fight for a quick jump.
Cozy sphinx waves quart jug of bad milk.
A very bad quack might jinx zippy fowls.
Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.
Few quips galvanized the mock jury box.
Five quacking zephyrs jolt my wax bed.
The five boxing wizards jump quickly.
Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz.
How quickly daft jumping zebras vex.
Two driven jocks help fax my big quiz.
Quick Baz, get my woven flax jodhpurs.
Bright vixens jump; dozy fowl quack.
Quick wafting zephyrs vex bold Jim.
Quick zephyrs blow, vexing daft Jim.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Sex-charged fop blew my junk TV quiz
Junk MTV quiz graced by fox whelps
Bawds jog, flick quartz, vex nymphs.
Waltz, bad nymph, for quick jigs vex.
Fox nymphs grab quick jived waltz.
Brick quiz whangs jumpy veldt fox.
DJs flock by when MTV ax quiz prog.

FOETS
Social Drinker with a Golfing Problem

RE: Mnemonic Devices

(OP)
I remember one from my youth that went something like

Biv X. Z. Felt jr. knows Guy Q. Mac, PhD.




RE: Mnemonic Devices

crysta1c1ear,
it's only 31 if there is a central area (if the points are not symmetrically arranged, which is one possibility for "randomly distributed").

6 symmetrically distributed points yields 30 areas.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

(OP)
Looking up at the moon this morning I was reminded of the mnemonic "DOC".  The waxing crescent before a full moon is like the arc of a "D", "O" represents the full moon, and the waning crescent looks like a "C".  I'd guess that south of the equator the mnemonic would be "COD".

Together they're a nice palindromic name for a veterinarian who specializes in fish.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

The French say something like "La lune est monteur" (which means the moon tells lies,) because of the words Croisant and Decroisant for waxing and waning.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

My father showed me a pattern for making a 4x4 magic square

CODE

X..X
.XX.
.XX.
X..X
You simply fill in the numbers 1 to 16 in the appropriate slots, forwards and backwards.

CODE

01 .. .. 04
.. 06 07 ..
.. 10 11 ..
13 .. .. 16
to get

CODE

01 15 14 04
12 06 07 09
08 10 11 05
13 03 02 16

RE: Mnemonic Devices

For magic squares of odd dimensions just start one below the centre and go down diagonally to the right, bouncing off completed boxes and wrapping top to bottom and left to right, eg

CODE

   yy .. 29 .. 21 .. 13 .. 05 XX
zz 06 38 .. 30 .. 22 .. 14 46
   .. 07 39 .. 31 .. 23 .. 15
   16 .. 08 40 .. 32 .. 24 ..
   .. 17 .. 09 41 .. 33 .. 25
   26 .. 18 .. 01 42 .. 34 ..
   .. 27 .. 10 .. 02 43 .. 35
   36 .. 19 .. 11 .. 03 44 ..
   .. 28 .. 20 .. 12 .. 04 45
   xx                         ww

36 bounces off 28 to put 37 in position yy.

Note the tricky wrapping and bouncing for 46 in this example where it should go in position ww but wrapping makes it xx or XX (depending on the order you prefer to wrap things), and then yy (which is occupied by 37), so bouncing makes it zz, and then wrapping finally finds a space for it. That's all so complicated, it's easier just to remember where it goes: 2nd down on the right!

RE: Mnemonic Devices

In Spanish:

For the color of buoys in a channel:

SIR = "saliendo izquierda roja" (in your wayout red on your left)

To teach that red light goes on port side:

ABC = "a babor, colorado" (on port side, red)

There is a short poem also, to teach the rules to follow by a vessel in open sea to decide in what senses to alter course and other basic ones.

Agustín Tomás

RE: Mnemonic Devices

and we pass each other to port - or was that "Pass the Port old chap".

A.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

In the Navy, current convention was from negative to positive and they taught us the right hand rule for motors and left hand rule for generators.  The quantities assigned to the thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger of the appropriate hand were:
Motion (of force)
Flux
Current

To remember MFC, we had a mnemonic device.  It's been such a long time I'm not sure if I remember it.
Mary's Fuzzy Canine?
or somethign like that.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

no.... it's not Canine....

anyone else from the Navy care to chime in?

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

I suspect it may have more in common with cunning stunts and cunning runts.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

I don't mean to let this get out of control, but that's a contrived sentence in any country.

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

ELI the ICE man

ELI Voltage leads current

ICE Current leads voltage

Agustín Tomás

RE: Mnemonic Devices



ELI E= L* dI/dt
ICE I= C* dE/dt

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

I prefer to "Richard of York..."

Real Old Yokels Guzzle Beer in Vaults.

We had a rather tubby science teacher!

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Quote:

Real Old Yokels Guzzle Beer in Vaults.
what equation is that helping you remember?

=====================================
Eng-tips forums: The best place on the web for engineering discussions.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo & Violet

All the pretty colours of the rainbow

Kevin Hammond

Mechanical Design Engineer
Derbyshire, UK
 

RE: Mnemonic Devices

OHM SWEET OHM
by Dr. James D. Livingston
 
 
So a fellow named Ohm with felicity
Dreamed up a law of great simplicity
V equals I R
Is what made Ohm a star
It's the basic law of electricity

RE: Mnemonic Devices

Here is one for remembering the the eight planets and their estranged cousin:

"Man very early made jars stand up nearly perpendicular"
(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto)

And from my Sea King helicopter days (17+ years ago), a way to remember the sequence of flight control channels going to the rotor head:
"Lieutenant Colonels Fly Yo-yos"
(Lateral, Collective, Fore/Aft, Yaw)

They do work.

Randall Shelaga C.E.T.

RE: Mnemonic Devices


Thirty days have November, April, June and September, of twenty and eight there is only one, the remains are of thirty-one.

RE: Mnemonic Devices

what equation is that helping you remember?

Colours of the spectrum

real = red
old = orange
yokels = yellow
guzzle = green
beer = blue
in = indigo
vaults = violet

Clearly it's an English mnemonic!

I need to think of one to remind me to drink more whiskey.... (Scotch, that is)

RE: Mnemonic Devices


The Bard of Banff Whisky Or Whiskey?
------------------------------------

A Scotsman who spells
Whisky with a n ‘e’,
should be hand cuffed
and thrown head first in the Dee.

In the USA and Ireland,
it’s spelt with an ‘e’
but in Scotland
it’s real ‘Whisky’.

So if you see Whisky
and it has an ‘e’,
only take it,
if you get it for free!

For the name is not the same
and it never will be,
a dram is only a real dram,
from a bottle of ‘Scotch Whisky’.

 
 

RE: Mnemonic Devices

(OP)
http://www.geocities.com/capecanaveral/lab/3550/pimnem.htm has some mnemonics to remember the digits of pi.

There are sentences and poems in 14 different languages, and even a self-referencial story that represents the first 402 digits.  Any punctuation that isn't a period represents zero.  It begins...

For a time I stood pondering on circle sizes. The large computer mainframe quietly processed all of its assembly code. Inside my entire hope lay for figuring out an elusive expansion. Value: pi. Decimals expected soon.


Similarly, http://mathworld.wolfram.com/PiWordplay.html has several pi mnemonics as well, including the beginning of a parody of Poe's The Raven that gives 740 digits.

The whole poem can be found at http://users.aol.com/s6sj7gt/mikerav.htm

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