Download Order of the planets

Student activity
Order of the planets
Background information
A mnemonic is a sentence or phrase that helps us to remember a set of words in a specific
order. It uses the same first letter as the words we are trying to remember.
For example, a recently modified mnemonic for remembering the order of the planets is
the following:
Mercury
Venus
Earth
Mars
Jupiter
Saturn
Uranus
Neptune
M
V
E
M
J
S
U
N
My
Very
Excellent
Mother
Just
Served
Us
Noodles
What you do
Students should have a go at writing their own mnemonic for remembering the order of the
planets. They could also try making a mnemonic for other lists as well. See who can come
up with the longest mnemonic.
Some people remember a set of numbers by a mnemonic whose words have the same
number of letters as the set of numbers. For example:
May
3
I
1
give
4
a
1
black
5
telescope
9
to
2
Aldrin
6
Jones?
5
This represents the first 8 decimal places of the value of Pi, 3.14159265. Have a go at
making up a mnemonic for your phone number, perhaps substituting the word ‘Oh’ for 0.
Sun
http://museumvictoria.com.au/scienceworks/education/
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