Friday, July 6, 2007

Of Memory and Mnemonics

Right from my early school days, I've used 'condensation' as an aid to mugging things up! It goes like this - I list down the points and form weird words using the first letters of each. Then comes the rote. Believe me, this is one of the most effective methods that I'd applied to do well is subjects like History, Civics and Biology!
Then I came across this term 'mnemonic'. It is an easy form of remembering an otherwise difficult thing. Everybody knows VIBGYOR - to remember the colors in the spectrum in proper order. But of course, a mnemonic needn't be an actual condensation as such. It can also be a statement or a song! Here's another famous one - 'My Very Educated Mother Just Showed Us Nine Planets', used in primary to help children remember the planets in order. As I went into higher standards, more high-funds mnemonics were employed apart from my usual condensation technique. Here are some of the more famous ones used in different subjects:

1. 'How I want a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics!' - The value of pi
2. 'In showing a painting to probably a critical or venomous lady, anger dominates. O take guard, or she raves and shouts!' - The value of e, where O stands for zero!
3. 'B B Roy of Great Britain has a Very Good Wife.' - Resistance color codes
4. 'All altruists gladly make gum in gallon tanks.' - Isomers of glucose
5. 'Scanti vikraman feconi cuzan' - A direct map of the first row transition metals!

Now these two are slightly more weird:

5. 'Mother saw father wearing the turban.' - To remember when 'Rahukalam' occurs on a day!
6. And finally my own silly line - 'Ah-am-en-aaya-ath-asya-ae' - This one helped me remember the grammar tables in Sanskrit!

What mnemonics did you use?

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Could you possibly please take me through your mnemonic for Sanskrit case endings. I get some, but not all of them. Do you have anything analogous for the dual and plural endings??