Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Mnemonics and Rates



        Mnemonics and Rates


             Here’s a mnemonic for the order-of-operations convention in algebra; parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction:
             Please Eat My Delicious Apple Strudel.


             Here’s a mnemonic for the metric prefixes: kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, exa, zetta, yotta:
             Kelley Meghan’s Gigantic Terrapin Pets Extremely Zesty Yetis.
             Then there's milli, micro, nano, pico, femto, atto, zepto, yocto:
             Millicent Might Not Pick Fetching A Zapped Yak.
             Can you do better than that? “Fetching” seems a little weak, but there 
aren't many fmt words! Fermenting a zapped yak?


             I would also like a short word meaning ‘miles per hour’. The ‘knot’ is a nautical mile per hour, and it makes sense that sailors, travelling on a liquid, would have a name for velocity; I would like a landlubber’s equivalent. A muph? A miph? An oomph? No.

             Terrs from terrestrial miles per hour? Tearing along at 60 terrs? Hmm…

             I already know a good one for kilometers per second (suitable for space flight): kips! Earth’s escape velocity is 11.2 kips.
             Also, feet per second are fips, and a mile per hour is about 1.467 fips; and 60 mph (highway speed) is 88 fips.
              

No comments:

Post a Comment