Mnemonic

For other uses, see Mnemonic (disambiguation).

A mnemonic using your knuckles to remember the long months of the year

A mnemonic is a way for people to remember things more easily. For example, the treble clef lines on a music staff are for the notes E G B D and F. Music students are taught to remember this with a mnemonic - Every Good Boy Does Fine. The first known mnemonics were used by the Ancient Greeks. Cicero said the poet Simonides (c.556-c.468 B.C) discovered the power of mnemonics to help him make visual images so he could remember things. The word mnemonic comes from the Greek words mnene, meaning memory and mnemon, meaning mindful.

Mnemonic Media

• 

  Detail of Giordano Bruno's statue in Rome. Bruno was famous for his mnemonics, some of which he included in his treatises De umbris idearum and Ars Memoriae.

• 

  Covering the unknown in the Ohm's law image mnemonic gives the formula in terms of the remaining parameters.*It can be adapted to similar equations e.g.*F = ma,*v = fλ,*E = mcΔT,*V = πr2h and*τ = rF sinθ. When a variable with an exponent or in a function is covered, the corresponding inverse is applied to the remainder, i.e.