Redditor Quilbert painted her fingernails from left to right, zero to nine, black to white, to remind her of the resistor value color codes before a test (and, probably, forever afterward). No, she assures the predictable hecklers, it wasn’t cheating, as she was allowed a color code chart to refer to during the test, anyway. [via adafruit]

More:
Free Downloadable Resistor Value Computer

BY Sean Michael Ragan

I am descended from 5,000 generations of tool-using primates. Also, I went to college and stuff. I write for MAKE, serve as Technical Editor for MAKE magazine, and develop original DIY content for Make: Projects.

0 Responses to Nail Polish Resistor Value Mnemonic

  1. Bad Boys Rape Our Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly

    Offensive but that just means you won’t forget it

    • I feel that it would be better to do away with that offensive phrase and make up a new one.

      • Maybe, but it’s the offensiveness that makes it stick.  If your reaction is repulsion that will make you remember it the first time.  If on the other hand you just think it’s amusing then that will still help you remember it, although maybe not as much as the repulsion would.  I think most people will react to that mnemonic in one of those two ways. Some nicer, more neutral phrase would be easier to remember than just memorizing the chart of course but would still be more work than this one. Why make extra work for yourself?  Violet doesn’t seem to mind!

    • My dad told me that when he learned it back in the mid-50s as a ham radio geek, it was “black boys” and nobody thought twice about it.  It’s bizarre to think of a world like that only 55 years ago.

  2. there is a better one, its the one my teacher taught me.
    http://kinetic-learning-center.com/promotions.ivnu#1

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