Tuesday, March 4, 2008

I thought I had it bad!

So I saw this article on CNN today. I thought I had it bad when learning the solar system growing up...Mercury, Venus what...? I remember most distinctly the episode of Saved by the Bell when Screech shares his great tool for remembering the order of the planets... MVEMJSUNP...Now that was helpful. So, we had to know which planets had rings, the order...but now...Now they have to know 11 planets, the original planets plus dwarf planets. But here is the catch, Pluto is no longer a planet...so it is now 8 planets, and 3 dwarf planets, lets keep that straight while we try to also keep straight the new order...

Ah Man, I am going to have to memorize this order so I can help my kids learn it too! Anyway, here is the link to the article...I guess I have a new mnemonic to learn...or maybe I will go for Screeches style... MVEMCJSUNPE Man, how could we pronounce that?

Here is the new order in case you haven't heard it already...

Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and Eris.

Here is a cool image of the planets:









Oh, here is the link to the CNN article... http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/space/02/27/planets.mnemonic.ap/index.html

I think I am done with my rant...

Just kidding, I think that it is great that Science continues to learn things too. Sciences changes, just like the world around us! It is a little reassuring!

1 comment:

* Stephanie said...

Hey guys,
Michael and I both like the new look of your blog (we had a baby and then were out of town for a couple of months, so maybe it's not really new anymore, but we like it anyway). Good luck with #3 -- boys are lots of fun!
Stephanie

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