Mnemonics

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17085827

Lemmyversers, I'm looking for some help developing a new mnemonic device.

Inspired by a video by Epic Spaceman, where he explains a handy system for comparing the size of things from a banana to an atom, I’ve come up with a mnemonic device to aid in remembering these scales.

He lists items, each smaller than the previous by a factor of 10:

It goes:

• Banana
• Coin
• Edge of the coin
• Waterbear/microorganism
• Red blood cell
• Bacteria
• "Good virus"/Bacteriophage
• Corona Virus/"Bad Virus"
• DNA
• Atom

So a coin is roughly 1/10 a banana, and the edge of that coin is roughly 1/10 the size if that coin.

It gives good references for thinking about other things if similar size. A sort of banana for scale at each factor of 10.

And allows you to quickly determine approximations like Covid is roughly 1000 times smaller than a red blood cell. Or an atom is roughly 1 billion times smaller than a banana. (That doesn't sound right. Is that actually right?)

Do you think that's a useful memory tool? And are these best touchstones for scale at each level?

The mnemonic I've come up with for it as you may have guessed, is:

• Be
• Cool
• Even
• When
• Really
• Big
• Goblins
• Casually
• Drop
• Acid

Do you have any better ideas or tweaks you"d recommend for the mnemonic or the touchstones?

Would this be helpful when trying to wrap your head around the scale of the micro?

Also, what would make for a good macro version of this? Where everything got bigger by a factor of 10?

It's been about a year and a half since I (mostly) finalized my images from 000 to 999. I'm using Major system and have put them into a memory palace of my choice (Demon's Souls world areas). I've also been using Anki to reinforce them and focus on the most problematic images.

As fun as this has been the recall times are fairly long and some images just don't want to stick no matter how often they come up on my daily Anki sessions. Compared to my 2-digit PAO images the 3-digit ones feel much slower and more awkward in use.

I've been contemplating on ditching this experiment and honing more on the PAO, but I still feel there's some potential here despite the difficulties. Any tips or experiences on getting the 3-digit system to a more usable level?