http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5282440.stm

Pluto is no longer classed as a planet, it's a dwarf planet. So now we need a new mnemonic for naming the planets:-/

I like yours

Many vegetarians eat meat jammed straight up noses?

Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain?

hmm, no.....

Teachers Or Arithmetic Can Always Have Sunshine On Holidays?

not that either.....

erm....

In my Physics class, my friend Max was like "Oh no! The mnemonic is ruined! What else can mother serve us that starts with an N?!?! Nothing!"

and the teacher was like "Nothing! Exactly!"

so it's "My very excellent mother just served us nothing."

so it's "My very excellent mother just served us nothing."
More like my voraciously eating mother :cool:

Or, y'know, you could just remember the planets. It ain't difficult. We aren't dealing with the periodic table here, or the first twenty digits of pi.

Even then, personally I prefer songs and rhythms to textual mnemonics (though I admit they don't translate so well to a forum. Still, the first few chemical elements to the tune of the Can-Can is quite fun:

Hydrogen and helium,
Lithium, beryllium,
Boron, carbon, nitrogen,
Oxygen - fluorine, neon,

Sodium, magnesium,
Aluminium, silicon,
Phosphorus and sulphur,
Chlorine and argon.

Po-tass-i-um,
Calcium and scandium,
Ti-tan-i-um,
Vanadium and chromium,
Man-ga-ne-ese,
Iron, cobalt, nickel, copper,
Zinc, Gall-i-um,
Germanium and arsenic...

... it kinda dissolves after that...)

Mnemonic Verses Enhance Memory; Just Stop Unincluding Names

Hmm. That's not very good.

Mr. Vole Eats Many A Juicy Slug Under Ned's Kolrabbi

(Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Asteroid Belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Kuiper Belt)

As opposed to the more traditional Parsley ending...

We could even try:

So, Mr. Vole Eats Many A Juicy Slug Under Ned's Kolrabbi, Okay?

to include the Sun and the Oort Cloud (where the comets hang out)...

I fail to see what's "easy" to remember about those. :p

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus.

Just did that from memory, no mnemonic stuff.
Got Neptune and Uranus wrong, but I haven't tried to remember the order for quite some time, now.

I fail to see what's "easy" to remember about those. :p

Well, I dunno, what's the Portugese equivalent?

For reference, although I don't really need one, Mr. Vole Eats Many A Juicy Slug Under Ned's Parsley was the mnemonic we learnt at my school. It has the merit of being relatively easy to adapt, as Kolrabbi is a vegetable that happily begins with a K.

Here's the mnemonic we learned at school (translated to English):

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, (Pluto).

:(

(well, in Norwegian: Merkur, Venus, Jorda, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptun, Pluto)

Just did that from memory, no mnemonic stuff.
Got Neptune and Uranus wrong, but --
This is why you need a mnemonic.

Though if "a long time" is more than about a year, you'd have been right: Neptune was some distance further out than Uranus until fairly recently.

Well, I dunno, what's the Portugese equivalent?I have no idea if there's a Portuguese equivalent since I've never learned or needed one.

Plus we use Mercúrio, Vénus, Terra, Marte, Júpiter, Saturno, Úrano, Neptuno, Plutão.

How about "Mandible volcano ecclectic Marmite jaffa surreality underpants naturalist"?

I mean a "long time" as in I haven't thought about the order of the planets for a very long time... over a year, maybe more than 4.

I find the mnemotics harder to remember than the names of the planets themselves... I never liked them.

Mercurio Venus Tierra Marte Jupiter Saturno Urano Neptuno y Pluton.
That's how I learnt it, and I don't recall it being anywhere near complicated to learn.

Also, Uranus... *chuckles*

I pronounce Uranus "Oo-rah-nuhs" just because I hate that joke.

Though I suppose it's like calling a dam a "darn".

That's basically how Uranus is pronounced here :p

I pronounce it "Your-ah-nus"

Bold = primary stress
Italic = secondary stress

I pronounce Uranus "Oo-rah-nuhs" just because I hate that joke.

Though I suppose it's like calling a dam a "darn".

Good God people are rubbish at phonetic spelling around here.

If you actually pronounce it "oorahnuhs" you sound like an idiot.

I just pronounce it properly and regard anyone who laughs as immature.

Meh, I've always pronounced it "Your-ah-nus" ever since I first saw the word, and no-one ever bothered to correct me (For obvious reasons :p)

In direct contrast, they came down fairly heavily on me when I started saying Grand Prix phonetically.

I've always pronounced it Yurr-Ann-Us

I've always pronounced it Yurr-Ann-Us
ten characters

Strictly, the traditional pronunciation is with the "hilarious" hard A. The alternative is a little bit overly PC for my tastes. I think anyone who is offended by such things is a cretin and anyone who thinks it's funny is an even bigger cretin, and I don't think the language should be altered to appease cretins.

Otherwise we'll end up with a myriad of places from whence little errors can insidiously creep into the english language like viri.

Yeah, I'm somewhat offended by people who are easaly offended..

You can use the Latin pronunciation "oo-rah-noos" which could be argued to be more correct.

Hahaha everyone is saying "anus".

Otherwise we'll end up with a myriad of places from whence little errors can insidiously creep into the english language like viri.

Or viruses.

I think he was using it as an example.

Or viruses.

It's amusing because you think you've pointed out my mistake but in fact you've demonstrated that you failed to spot the other two mistakes I put in there.

I did note the lack of capitalization on "English", but what was the other one?

I'd forgotten I'd done that. Three mistakes, you missed.

Sorry about that.












The others were: "myriad of" is wrong, and "from whence" is wrong. It should be simply "myriad" and "whence".

Strictly, the traditional pronunciation is with the "hilarious" hard A.Sort of "your-eh-nus"?

Now we'll all sound like David Lloyd... still, that's not a bad thing. Terrific accent, he's got.

Incidentally, myriad is actually a number, equal to ten thousand.

EDIT: Oh... I read that as pronouncing the A as in the one in "hilarious"... :o

Hmm...
I don't see a problem here at all:
Uranus ['jʊərənəs], your [jɔ:], anus ['eɪnəs]

Hmm...
I don't see a problem here at all:
Uranus ['jʊərənəs], your [jɔ:], anus ['eɪnəs]

Well, you see, as I just mentioned, ['jʊərənəs] is wrong.

Well, it's not wrong, but it's not the traditional way to say that name. It's always historically been ['jʊəreɪnəs] (I think -- I'm guessing at what all these symbols mean). It's only become ['jʊərənəs] recently to stop people making crap jokes.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha ['eɪnəs]!

I have two questions:

1. If Pluto fails the Must Have Cleared Its Orbit Of Other **** test because it shares its orbit wiht Neptune, how is Neptune still a planet?

2. This new system, where Pluto and a bunch of other stuff are all Dwarf Planets and don't count. How is it actually different to the last system where Pluto And Friends were dwarf planets and did count?

Well, you see, as I just mentioned, ['jʊərənəs] is wrong.

Well, it's not wrong, but it's not the traditional way to say that name. It's always historically been ['jʊəreɪnəs] (I think -- I'm guessing at what all these symbols mean). It's only become ['jʊərənəs] recently to stop people making crap jokes.
That's not what my dictionairy says.
And my edition is from 1996.

That's not what my dictionairy says.
And my edition is from 1996.

Well, I don't know. I'm not going to argue with dictionary people; I looked it up elsewhere, so at least one source must be wrong. But 1996 isn't that long ago.

1. If Pluto fails the Must Have Cleared Its Orbit Of Other **** test because it shares its orbit wiht Neptune, how is Neptune still a planet?

That's due to the fact that Neptune has a regular orbit around the Sun whereas Pluto's is wonky and irregular and that.

2. This new system, where Pluto and a bunch of other stuff are all Dwarf Planets and don't count.

Nice sentence. Bravo.

How is it actually different to the last system where Pluto And Friends were dwarf planets and did count?

It's a simple case of categorisation.

For example, imagine you have 100 books all numbered 1-100, each with a different title and in a slightly different shade of blue. Now imagine you have to sort those books. Do you do it numerically, alphabetically or by colour?

Whichever way you do it the books will remain unchanged. Having said that, some categorisation methods will aid you in finding the book - or perhaps even genre - you want.

Of course, the book analogy isn't a very tight one as books don't float around stars. Well they might, but I don't think it counts if an astronaut drops his copy of NASA RTFM v3.6 while he's fixing the Hubble Telejoke.

Hubble Telejoke.Poor old Hubble. A very much maligned telescope, that...

Well if you send someone Metric measurements and they're working in Imperial you should expect it to **** up, really.

It's a simple case of categorisation.

For example, imagine you have 100 books all numbered 1-100, each with a different title and in a slightly different shade of blue. Now imagine you have to sort those books. Do you do it numerically, alphabetically or by colour?

Whichever way you do it the books will remain unchanged. Having said that, some categorisation methods will aid you in finding the book - or perhaps even genre - you want.

Yes. I understand the concept of categorisation, thankyou. I just don't see how saying "there are twelve planets, of which four are dwarf planets" is significantly different from saying "there are eight planets, and four dwarf planets".

You may be interested to know that in my old office we actually did have about 100 books in varying shades of blue. They were arranged by date, so clearly your example is flawed.

Well if you send someone Metric measurements and they're working in Imperial you should expect it to **** up, really.Err, that's not Hubble. That's the Mars Climate Orbiter, which got lost in 1999.

Despite popular myth, Hubble has actually been quite successful.

Well if you send someone Metric measurements and they're working in Imperial you should expect it to **** up, really.

If someone is working in imerial in the first place they should expect to **** it up.

I just don't see how saying "there are twelve planets, of which four are dwarf planets" is significantly different from saying "there are eight planets, and four dwarf planets".
Because every chunk of rock larger than pluto orbiting the sun would be a planet.
and the better the telescopes get the more chunk we find.

BTW, they're gonna put an infra-red telescope at Earth's second Lagrange point.

Because every chunk of rock larger than pluto orbiting the sun would be a planet.
Yes, but they'd be dwarf planets either way. What difference does it make whether or not we say dwarf planets are planets? Seems to me that putting "planet" in the name and saying they're not planets is pretty stupid too.

Seems to me that putting "planet" in the name and saying they're not planets is pretty stupid too.Welcome to the wonderful world of astronomy, where, for example, a "planetary nebula" has nothing to do with planets (or indeed nebulae in the conventional sense one is taught at school) and is in fact the remains of a star that went nova.