One should be a little careful about trying to find such mnemonics. The most memorable ones are often unrepeatable in polite company.
_____ From: owner-u...@colostate.edu [mailto:owner-u...@colostate.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Trusten Sent: 18 November 2009 16:07 To: U.S. Metric Association Cc: U.S. Metric Association Subject: [USMA:46180] Re: Monday Puzzle: Conversion Factors - TierneyLab Blog - NYTimes.com I second Bill's motion. We are unlikely to convince the U.S. public that metric is simple if we throw all the prefixes at them. They don't need all of SI any more than they currently need all the minutiae of YOE. During the 1970s, NBS ( now NIST) prepared a chart entitled "All you will really need to know about metric (in your everyday life)." (see separate post). The graphics and some of the content might need upgrading, but the simplicity of metric is well illustrated. Paul Trusten On Nov 18, 2009, at 9:14, Bill Hooper <billhoope...@gmail.com> wrote: I'm not sure I like the idea of publicizing widely a long mnemonic to learn ALL the SI prefixes. Few people will ever need to use the very large or very small prefixes and trying to learn ALL of them would be seen as a useless exercise in futility. It would give the impression that it is considered necessary to know all the prefixes in order to "GO METRIC", which is not true. It has always been (and should be) the practice that one does not learn everything about SI but only what one only needs. Yes, it is useful to know that the other parts (prefixes, units, etc.) are available so if one develops a need for some SI unit or prefix that had not been previously needed, one can look up whatever new is needed. Beyond that, it is not helpful to learn more. Few people will ever encounter yoctoteslas (yT) or zetabequerels (ZBq) and the like. If anything, suggesting that it is useful to memorize all the prefixes would only hurt efforts to get people to accept SI. Pat's Naughtin's mnemonics (copy below) are clever and may be helpful for the few of us who might find it helpful know all the prefixes by memory, but they are not useful for everyone. Even pat's mnemonics do not help me keep straight the difference between yocto and yotta, and between zetta and zepto. It helps to note that almost all the smaller-than-1 prefixes end in "o" while almost all the bigger-than-1 prefixes end in "a". The only exceptions are "kilo" and "milli" (and the lesser used "centi", "deci", "hecto"). I note that Pat's list shows "pica" for one of the submultiples (10^12); it should be "pico", in agreement with the pattern noted above. Regards, Bill Hooper On Nov 17 , at 7:07 PM, Pat Naughtin wrote: SI prefix mnemonics I have not found mnemonics to help young people learn SI basics, such as the names of the prefixes so I devised two mnemonics to help people learn SI prefixes that are multiples of 1000 easily. These were prepared for trade training in Australia where the prefixes, deci, centi, deca, and hecto are rarely used. Prefixes less than 1 (sub-multiples) millie, mike's nana, pickled fish at zepto's yacht(o) milli micro nano pica femto atto zepto yocto m µ n p f a z y Prefixes more than 1 (multiples) killer Meg, Giggling, Terrified Peter's Extra Zits. Yuk! kilo mega giga tera peta exa zetta yotta k M G T P E Z Y
