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Topic: Trick to remember atomic numbers of elements.  (Read 11052 times)

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Offline Dweera

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Trick to remember atomic numbers of elements.
« on: January 24, 2017, 01:14:18 AM »
Hey friends, just joined this forum.
Well i come from India, and in India, there are about 60/70 students per class. (India amongst most populated countries in world)More stress is given on rote learning rather than understanding. For that i have to constantly develop mnemonics to help children remember formulas, equations, etc. I am a Math teacher by profession and deal with lots of numbers. Though once i had to teach Chemistry as a substitute teacher. This is my attempt to give children mnemonics to help remember atomic numbers of first ten elements.
Okay. Here it is
(H-1) Rotate “H” and its looks like Roman Numeral I . So atomic number for Hydrogen is 1.
(He-2)Remember word “Hell” could be split as “He-ll”( Helium and 2)
(Li-3)Similarly, word Thrilling : Thri-li-ng’ splits as “Thri”(3) and Li ( Lithium) and
(Be-4) “Before” splits as “Be-fore” “Be”( Berylium) and 4.
(B-5) Boron has 5 letters in it. So its atomic number is 5.
(C-6)Carbon C looks like incomplete 6. Atomic number for Carbon is 6.
(N-7)Rotate ‘N” and it looks like 7. Imagine N without last leg of N
(O-8)Similarly O looks like incomplete 8. Imagine O on top of another O.
(F-9)Take mirror image of F and it looks like incomplete electronic 9.
(Ne-10)Add ‘T’ to “Ne” and it reads 10. Read it backwards. “Ne-T”.
Please be kind enough to share more such tricks/mnemonics for memorising atomic numbers or mass numbers of elements, if you have them.

Offline Borek

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Re: Trick to remember atomic numbers of elements.
« Reply #1 on: January 24, 2017, 02:43:11 AM »
I would rather think about mnemonics that will give a correct order of symbols of these elements, then counting them to find out which is which will work easily. Your mnemonics are "all over the place" - they are based on different ideas, so they are much more difficult to remember in a systematic way.
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