Nobody Cares! (Science & Tech Edition)

[Ashiri]

(or maybe "Many Very Educated Men Just Screwed Up Nature"!)

or "Many very entitled morons just screwed up nature"

one of my favourite astronomy mnemonics is "Only bad astronomers feel good knowing mnemonics"

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

No, but the meeting happened only because of his decision.

And since then dozens of planetologists and other planetary scientists have publicly come out and argued that it was wrong and highly political, and basically astrology.

A better classification would be that the solar system consists of the Sun, four planets, and a bunch of debris.

 

[Free]

A better classification would be that the solar system consists of the Sun, four planets, and a bunch of debris.

We can mnemonic the shit out of that!

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

By the way, the mnemonic I learned included "a" for "asteroids".

 

[danielravennest]

(ETA) To clarify, his decision after his team discovered Eris to push for it to NOT be called a planet, despite it being in the same region and larger than Pluto according to the data at that time. His reasoning was that at least 3 more bodies for certain, and almost certainly some three dozen more, would all have to become planets as well just in our solar system.

It orbits the Sun, so it is still a planet by the IAU's own definitions. All they did is add a new size class between "major" and "minor". The new class is "dwarf planet", of which about 6 are definite, and nine more are candidates, but we don't have good enough info on them yet. There are over a million known minor planets, which historically were divided into "asteroids" and "comets". Due to finding "dead comets" in comet-like orbits, and asteroids emitting gas that are in asteroid-like orbits, and lots of icy bodies in the outer Solar System that are just like comets except they don't happen to get near the Sun, the boundary between the sub-classes has gotten fuzzy.

There's a factor of 20 mass difference between the smallest major planet (Mercury) and the largest dwarf planet (Eris), so that's a pretty clear division.

 

[Essence Lumin]

Let's Help Write a New Mnemonic for the Solar System. My Very Excellent Mother...

www.universetoday.com

 

[Casey Pelous]

Mnemonics? PTAH! These young people these days! Why, in my day we didn't have your namby pamby mnemonics, no sirree.

We had to memorize the 6 planets the hard way! AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!!

 

[Ashiri]

and a bunch of debris.

Telling people they don't live on a planet but live on a debris pile could be amusing.

 

[Free]

We had to memorize the 6 planets the hard way! AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!!

I learned them that way when there were 9.

I felt a little swindled when they took Pluto out of the lineup. All those extra minutes spent learning!

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

TBH I never learned a mnemonic for the planets either, I just learned their names.

I DID learn a pnemonic for the classification of life, though. I also learned the names of all the animal phyla, but I don't remember most of them. Except for Platyhelminthes, because I just liked saying it, and I also for some reason really liked words that had a Y in the middle of them rather than the end because that was so weird.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Also useful for Scrabble.

Mine was "King Phillip, Come Out, For God's Sake!"

I never got quite confident as to when one should use a subclass or a superorder.

 

[Clara D.]

For the colors of the rainbow: My science teacher in H.S. was a Scottish import so instead of ROYGBIV, we learned "Ryan of York Gives Battle in Vain."

Which is more memorable than gibberish IMHO.

Planets: My Very Educated Mother Just Sold Us Nine Pizzas. Which sort of becomes odd without Pluto.

Resistor Color Codes: Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well. There's a lewd one that's a bit over the top, as well.

 

[Ashiri]

For the colors of the rainbow: My science teacher in H.S. was a Scottish import so instead of ROYGBIV, we learned "Ryan of York Gives Battle in Vain."

Fuck Newton and his mysticism. Learned the colours but never could get a good answer as to where blue, indigo, and violet were supposed to be.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Blue, Indigo, and Violet are all blue. There are five colors in the rainbow, based on how much each peak activates the red, green, and blue cones. The sixth combination of cones, "red+blue", can't be triggered by a single pure color because any pure color would also activate the green cones, so they gave the darker parts of the blue spectrum "purplish" names. They don't look like the color you see when blue and red cones are stimulated together without green ones.

The exact divisions between these pseudo-colors depend on how much damage your eyes take over your lifetime by exposure to solar ultraviolet (utrablue?). Which is a factor of where you live, what your lifestyle is, and whether you pay attention to the eye-doctor about wearing sunglasses.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[danielravennest]

Mnemonics? PTAH! These young people these days! Why, in my day we didn't have your namby pamby mnemonics, no sirree.

We had to memorize the 6 planets the hard way! AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!!

There were seven planets originally, and the days of the week were named after them. Sunday, Monday (moon), and Saturday (Saturn) are still named that way in English, but somehow some Norse gods got the middle of the week (Tyr/Tiu, Woden, Thor, and Frigg/Freya). Back then, "planet" meant wanderer, as in they moved against the "fixed" stars. Thus the Sun and other "planets" moved among the signs of the Zodiac.

 

[Argent Stonecutter]

Five days in the week. Sweetmorn, Boomtime, Pungenday, Prickle-prickle, and Setting Orange.

 

[Free]

Another nonhappening.

 

[bubblesort]

Such crazy weather forecasts lately. Today, they predict russian rocket showers. Don't forget your umbrella!

 

[Casey Pelous]

...We had to memorize the 6 planets the hard way! AND WE WERE GRATEFUL!!

There were seven planets originally...

That wuz the joke.