Mnemonic Devices

Every Good Boy Deserves FavoUr

Aside from being an excellent Moody Blues album of yesteryear, it helped me remember the lines of the treble clef when I learned it (also way back in yesteryear).

or Fudge!

Ha! I never heard that version.

And then there was this foolishness from mineralogy class (Mohs scale of hardness):

The Girls Can Flirt And Other Queer Things Can Do

(talc - gypsum - calcite - fluorite - apatite - orthoclase - quartz - topaz - corundum - diamond)

Fudge! That is the one I remember.

Another that I just remembered: King Phillip Cried Out For Good Soup gets me to Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, and Species.

There must be hundreds of these memory jogging tools.

[edit] Coordinating conjunctions in English sentence structure: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. A memory helper for these seven conjunctions is FANBOY, or Four Apes Nibbled Big Orange Yams.

Hey, this is kind of fun. I have a headache already!

Good Boys Deserve Fudge Always for the bass clef (lines)

All Cars Eat Gas (or All Cows Eat Grass) for the spaces of the base clef

FACE for the spaces of the treble clef

I also learned that Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, but it was even easier to note that the spaces spell "FACE."

I learned it as Every Good Boy Does Find.

I kept (still) wondering what those good boys found.

Or, Every Good Boy Does Fine?

Oh....you may be correct.....but it sounded to me like she (piano teacher) was saying 'find'. Most likely I was mistaken.

By the way...from wikipedia some others I hadn't heard:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EGBDF

EGBDF may refer to:

e, g, b, d and f

• The notes on the lines of the treble clef and the mnemonic used by some music students to remember it, such as Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge. Another elementary-style rhyme "EGBDF, these are the lines on the treble clef", is also a fairly simple chant.

• A number of song and album names satirising the above mnemonics:
• Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, a play by Tom Stoppard
• Every Good Boy Deserves Favour (album), by the Moody Blues
• Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge, an album by Mudhoney

I kind of like the Fudge one.

LOLOL - I was thinking Fudge was a new acronym Duh!!!

LOL. Well I'm sure if we gave it a little thought, we could come up with something.

Freaky, Ugly, Dirty, Gross, Erratic. - My son describing his big sister and her friends. Oh wait, maybe it's my daughter describing my son and his friends.

Every Good Boy Deserves Food...

and what the ??? does Fudge mean??

Fudge...as in the chocolate (mostly?) sugary tasty confectionery.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fudge

Send now!!!!

Do to an unforseen urge demand, we are temporarily out of stock.

When I was younger I needed to learn the vertebrae for a horse knowledge thing. My mom came up with:

Cats That Leap, Sleep Clumsily

Cervical, Thoracic, Lumbar, Sacral, and Coccygeal

Haven't forgotten it since - it's helped me through high school and college bio as well as anatomy and physiology.

Another one for horse people - how to remember the letters of a dressage arena:

A Fat Bay Mare Can Hardly Ever Kick (counter clockwise)

or

All King Edward's Horses Can Master Big Fences (clockwise)

Oh, OK. I had to look that up.

SOH CAH TOA

sin = opp/hyp

cos = adj/hyp

tan = opp/adj

Here's one my Dad taught me from his college days - it was about the only bit of maths he ever remembered (tho' he was always sh1t hot at arithmetic):

Reminder for which trig functions are positive in each quadrant.

Guess which college he went to (some 70-odd years ago) ...

We learnt this as

All Stations To Crawley (Crawley being the tin pot town in which I grew up)

More entertaingly one of the class wits noticed that we could include our Maths teacher

Always Smythe Talks Crap

We just learnt that as the acronym ACTS, which amused me as I been taught ACTS stood for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving and Supplication....the order in which one's prayers should be structured!

I use the version All Sausages Turn Cold

Never Eat Shredded Wheat...the points of a compass, clockwise.

"Never Eat Shredded Wheat"

As well as a mnemonic, that is profound advice! I can't believe people put those in their mouth.

Oh, another one. Ordering the nine planets: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. As this changes to eight planets once in a while, it might be My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos.

Most of these so far follow the Magical Number Seven (+/- 2) rule for memory.

^{The following is NOT an endorsement.}

I happen to enjoy my morning hay bales Shredded Wheat. Toss on a few blueberries to sweeten them up...yum! Good for the cholesterol, too! You just gotta let the milk soften them up a bit first, otherwise you'll get a stick jammed up into your gums, which kinda smarts.

Hay bales! That's what my dad called them!

Yeah, I just never acquired the taste for them. Lots of Some people do enjoy them, I guess. It doesn't seem right to eat something that looks like a scouring pad.

I always used "Never Eat Soggy Worms" For NESW

.......N.......

.......|........

W-- * --E...

.......|........

.......S.......

I needed a mnemonic and a rhyme for that one!

I think like most people I can remember the first four planets easily enough:-

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars

Next is the big one:

Jupiter

I hadn't realised until recently that the SUN comes at the beginning and end of the list (now that pluto's gone.)

S aturn
U ranus
N eptune

"Many Volcanoes Erupt Mulbery Jam Sandwiches Under Normal Pressure". So there!

For high school biology, the five stages of cell mitosis: It Pays Me A Thousand

Interphase - Prophase - Metaphase - Anaphase - Telephase

Alas, a Wikipedia check now shows eight stages. So I can forget this nonsense...or not.

I suppose I'm showing my age, but I learned the resistor code in a time of less political correctness:

Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.

You beat me to it.

Einstein was once asked how may centimeter in an inch. He said he didn't know, but he knew where to find out. The same principle applies to this jingle:

Thirty days hath September.

All the rest I can't remember.

If I want to know them all,

I look at the calendar on the wall.

Thirty days in November, April, June and September. All the rest have thirty-one... except February which has twenty-eight... except every four years when there are twenty-nine... except every one hundred years when there are twenty-eight... except every FOUR hundred years when there are twenty-nine.

As luck would have it, I had a final job interview on 29 February 2000. After being offered the position, I joked something like "So, my annual salary review will be every four-hundred years?" It should have been a hint of things to come when he responded, with eyebrow raised, "Annual salary review?".

Unfortunately, I remember it as:

Bad Boys Rape Only Young Girls But Prefer (Purple) Good Whores

In the U.S. Army it was even more politically incorrect as the first word was the actual color.

I heard one even less PC, and a bit racist, but I won't repeat it here.

[EDIT] To follow #16 Resistor code for tolerance percentages. [/EDIT]

Get Some Now (Gold 5% tolerance, Silver 10% tolerance, No band for 20% tolerance.)

It's a name, a ratio extending on always
Going and going, entirely boundless.
Numbers recalling can be all exciting;
This symbol- it proves ever fun and inviting.

--Carol Meyers, Pomona College

Make mine Key Lime, please!

ACROSS: Boy On Girl Brings Satisfaction

DOWN: Why Run Backwards You Varmint

Bell Systems wire color code:

Blue, Orange, Green, Brown, Slate,

White, Red, Black, Yellow, Violet

Pair#1 White blue

Pair#2 White Orange

etc.

An easy way to rememeber which months have 31 days or less, is make a fist with your left hand.Start on the first knuckle with January, this is 31.Then go to February, between the knuckles, this is less than 31,the next is a knuckle, so it is 31, next is 30, then 31,etc.When you reach the last knuckle, start again at the first knuckle with August and proceed as before.

Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls Behind Victory Garden Walls... Get Started Now! Product of a Navy EE education. Or maybe it's just me!

Please Send Charlie Magubbins A Zebra If The Lean Horse Cannot Munch Sweet Grass.

Anyone ?

Please Send Lord Charlie Magubbins A Zebra If The Lean Horse Cannot Munch Sweet Grass Properly.

Order of reactivity of the metals: potassium, sodium, lithium, calcium, magnesium, aluminium, zinc, iron, tin, lead, hydrogen, copper, manganese, silver, gold, platinum

Ta! Always suspected my chemistry teacher was a cheapskate .

I also remember ELI the ICE man.

ELI - Voltage (E) leads Current (I) in and Inductive (L) circuit

ICE - Current (I) leads Voltage (E) in a Capacitive (C) circuit

The planet mnemonic I learned was - My Very Extravagant Mother Just Sent Us Ninety Parakeets.

Well, my boss here in the shop told me this for electron configuration; you have to edit the last work, for pulbic consumption of course;

Some Poor Dumb F*****

spdf.

Never Eat Cheese, Eat Salmon Sandwiches And Remain Young

No use whatsoever as I learnt the mnemonic after the event!

No use assisting in spelling necessary? Or no use helping you remain young?

- I remember the mnenomic because I can spelt necessary...now that can't be right!

Brian Regan has a funny bit on this for i before e. Check out at ~0:55.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWzYaZDK6Is

Please excuse my dear Aunt Sally.

Parentheses, exponents, multiply & divide, add and subtract.

Order of operations for math.

If Very eXcellent Little Children Don't Mind

Roman numerals

I = 1

V = 5

X = 10

L = 50

C = 100

D = 500

M = 1000

Never mind...

Missfire.

You mean SNAFU?

Yeah... got sort of mixed up between an acronym and a mnemonic device.

I have trouble rememberin' that stuff! Pretty well AFU!

You mean FUBAR, don't you?

I am an accomplished FOOOO'er.

FOOOOOBAAAAAARRRRRRR! SSSSNAAAAAAFFFOOOOOO!

Those are sort of an acronym/mnemonic device together! ^{No, they're just acronyms.}

Ahbut acronyms can be mnemonics, and vice versa.

YYR, JD.

As a firefighter needing to find burning houses, sometimes the fires were not obvious so we used NEW & EOS to help find them easier. Even numbered addresses were North and West side of the road in our County, therefore we used NEW. Odd numbered addresses were on the East and South side of the road or EOS. If your system is different, you could simply change the lettering to accomodate your County or jurisdiction.

To wire up a UK plug

bLue goes to the Left
bRown goes to the Right
and the initial letters of Yellow and Green are YG the first two letters of Yggdrasil the Norse mythological tree binding heaven to EARTH.

This is really stupid, but, I think that's why I remembered it, and, of course I learned about the existence of Yggdrasil.

To remember how to wire a plug in the US, I think of oil (black gold), so black goes to the gold terminal. You could think of the song "Silver Haired Daddy" to remind you to connect the white wire to the silver terminal.

No-one has mentioned DILLIGAF, ROLFMAO and LOL yet.

We were waiting for you...PMSL