a few useful mnemonics

[mhazelm]

I remember someone posting about physics mnemonics, and I found a few I thought were cute that might help us to be human calculators on the PGRE:

For square roots remember the following phrases. The answer is in the number of letters in each word in the first half of the quip - so for square root of two, I =1 wish=4 I = 1 knew =4 --> 1.414, and so on.

I wish I knew - the root of two
O charmed was he - to know root three
So now we strive - to find root five

and for Pi's reciprocal:

Can I remember the reciprocal?

Count 'em up, and put a 0. in front to get the reciprocal of Pi.

I've got to go now, in the next three weeks I have the PGRE, the general GRE, 4 midterms, NSF fellowship proposal and a thesis proposal due... I just might not make it to Thanksgiving...

[cato88]

wow thats long and a bit complicated since you have to remember to have i=1 other=4

Do you even need to know more than sqrt 2 = 1.4
two sig fig?

[mhazelm]

no, not really. I just thought they were kind of cool. I guess more like "impress your mom" things than useful for the gre, but you know...

[mhazelm]

it's also fun to teach your parents that 1+1=0, which is true in some fields. But that's more abstract algebra than physics. Sorry, major math geek here.