Mnemonic for getting resistor colours in my thick head

[Quantumplate]

Out of the Black hole (0)
Came 1 Brown Earth.
Roy G. Biv rubbed his 2 Red eyes,
and saw 3 oranges & 4 bananas.
He played 5-a-side on the Green pitch
under the 6lue skies and the 7 Violet rays.
He h8ed Grey skies.
The game was a Whitewash: they fell like Ninepins,
So Roy won the Gold and they got Silver.

[barshatriplee]

I only knew one.

"BB ROY Good Boy Very Good Worker."

[themadhippy]

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

[Quantumplate]

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

Yeah, i recently came across that hideous one. What idiot came up with that!?

[golden_labels]

Since these mnemonics only provide colors order and not values, but the colors are in a common color progression, are they really helping? Is there any advantage in counting words compared to counting colors?

██████████

It’s just the pride flag, going to white, going to black.

ChatGPT said: “Big Boys Rave Over Young Girls But Violet Gives Willingly” and “Bad Beer Rots Our Young Guts But Vodka Goes Well”.

[wasedadoc]

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

The version our Physics teacher uttered in the second half of the 1960s had the slightly different ending: "... virgins go without".

[lycralout]

Bye Bye Rosie Off You Go, Birmingham Via Great Western

[TimFox]

When asked the same question, my undergraduate physics professor demurred since he had learned it in the US Navy.
The worst one starts with "black" for black = 0, then proceeds to actual slurring and sexual assault.
That one ends "but Violet gives willingly" for blue, violet, green, white (as in one cited above).

[langwadt]

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

Yeah, i recently came across that hideous one. What idiot came up with that!?

idiot? more like genius, the shock effect makes it stick

[nali]

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

The version our Physics teacher uttered in the second half of the 1960s had the slightly different ending: "... virgins go without".

Ours was Virgins Grow Wise. It also started off with illegitimate people of colour, which was a bit dodgy even in 1979.

[themadhippy]

It also started off with illegitimate people of colour,

yea thats the version i originally  learnt,but it got cleaned up when i went to collage.

[nali]

That WAS at college!!

[DavidAlfa]

This is the magic of young age!

There's protein (GPLD1) which presence greatly reduces with age, specially if you have a sedentary lifestyle, related to memory and learning.
I could store in my head the TV circuit blocks in just few minutes, ask me now!
I remember most of what I studied in my 20s, but anything later will wash out quickly if not used.

The thing is you can simply break enter into a nerdy school and steal kindly get some gpld1-rich blood lol, seems to work right away, I wonder why it's not being mass-produced yet, replacing the usual almost-lethal doses of caffein.

[Gyro]

Out of the Black hole (0)
Came 1 Brown Earth.
Roy G. Biv rubbed his 2 Red eyes,
and saw 3 oranges & 4 bananas.
He played 5-a-side on the Green pitch
under the 6lue skies and the 7 Violet rays.
He h8ed Grey skies.
The game was a Whitewash: they fell like Ninepins,
So Roy won the Gold and they got Silver.

I don't think I could memorise that in a month of Sundays!

[Quantumplate]

I don't think I could memorise that in a month of Sundays!

Ha ha! Oh well, i tried. You don't have to really remember it, just the general scene. In fact not even that. I've found that by going over it for a few days you make the link between the colours and numbers, which is all you want at the end of the day.

[tggzzz]

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

Yeah, i recently came across that hideous one. What idiot came up with that!?

Do not, whatever you do, execute a gurgle image search for "virgin pliers". Or look at the description/image in https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/hellermann-ident-sleeve-pliers-497159321

[gbaddeley]

Mnemonics become irrelevant if you just learn the Color patterns in the E12 or E24 series. Over time it sinks in and reading values becomes instantaneous. Sorting a few dozen random resistors into order is good practice.

[Berni]

I don't see how this makes it easier to remember

The colors simply go the same way as a rainbow and everyone already knows how the colors in a rainbow go. You just have to include infrared in the rainbow to get the brown(dull red on the edge of our vision spectrum) and black(invisible to our vision) in there. Then the gray and white is what you would see if you went shorter in wavelength to Xrays.

For assigning numbers to them it is easier to just remember a few common values and work backwards from there. Like like 100E 150E 220E 330E 470E 1K 10K 100K 1M

Over time i got so used to it that i can look at any common resistor and read its value in 1 second. However uncommon values might take me a good half minute to figure out, but i will eventually get there.

[tooki]

I, too, think I’d have more trouble remembering the mnemonic than the color code itself. After a bit of practice it becomes second nature. You really only need to memorize black, brown, red, gray, and white. The rest you can derive by counting up from red.

[Gyro]

Mnemonics become irrelevant if you just learn the Color patterns in the E12 or E24 series. Over time it sinks in and reading values becomes instantaneous. Sorting a few dozen random resistors into order is good practice.

Good plan, actualy having a bunch of resistors in front of you helps a lot. Make your prediction and then confirm with your dmm. You only need the common multipliers too (10R-10M ranges). I still have to double check odball low value ones but that's so infrequent it's not a problem.

[EPAIII]

What idiot? I don't know, but I learned it in high school over 50 years ago. And it stuck!

My wife didn't like it very much.

The version i was taught is very politically  uncorrected as it mentions bad boys  rapeing our young girls but violet going willingly

Yeah, i recently came across that hideous one. What idiot came up with that!?

[Zero999]

Cable idents use the resistor colour code and are numbered, so just make yourself up a bracelet from some wire, with them on.

[cncjerry]

the oldest I remember:

Better be right or your great big venture goes west.

[gbaddeley]

Re bracelet… great talking point and ice breaker, in the office, at parties, in the pub.

[MrAl]

Out of the Black hole (0)
Came 1 Brown Earth.
Roy G. Biv rubbed his 2 Red eyes,
and saw 3 oranges & 4 bananas.
He played 5-a-side on the Green pitch
under the 6lue skies and the 7 Violet rays.
He h8ed Grey skies.
The game was a Whitewash: they fell like Ninepins,
So Roy won the Gold and they got Silver.

Hi,

I could write you a program that you use maybe 15 minutes a day for a few days and you would learn them all.
It's practice that leads to the memory, and also say each color out loud as you read it.

Maybe we dont have to remember so many colors as there are color blends that are known too.  Some wont be as good though.

blackish-brown, red-orange, yellow-green, blue-violet, grayish-white, gold-and-silver.

red-orange, yellow-green, and blue-violet are three actual common colors.

Im sure we can come up with better ideas.