Erika's List Of Things To Learn When You Fly

[noflyingfan]

1. The names of all the U.S. states and their capitals. And their nicknames if you have time.
2. The names of the U.S. presidents, in chronlogical order.
3. All the words to "Them Bones."
4. "The House That Jack Built."
5. All the words to "Scotland the Brave."
6. The names of all the vertebrae.
7. All the groups of insects.
8. How many electoral votes each state has.
9. The names of all of the elements on the periodic table, according to atomic number.
10. The names of all the countries in Africa.
11. The names of every monarch in England since Elizabeth I.
12. The names of all of the political parties in France.
13. The Greek Alphabet.
14. All the names of dinosaurs, and who their counterparts were in The Land Before Time Series.
15. What sort of currency is used in various countries around the world.
16. The names of Elizabeth Taylor's husbands.
17. The Top 20 grossing movies of all time.
18. The Top 20 selling albums of all time.
19. The real names of everybody on the Taking Flight board and where we all live.
20. The names of all the parts of an airplane and how many of each thing your airplane has.
21. The names of all the Osmonds.
22. The names of every car ever made by a manufacturer of your choice.
23. The names of every one of Shakespeare's plays.
24. All the words to that aspirin commercial jingle that names all the parts of your heart the blood goes to and the chorus is something like "pump pump pump pump pump pump pump pump pumps your blood."
25. The airport code to every city the airline you're flying serves.

[xiknal]

9. The names of all of the elements on the periodic table, according to atomic number.

Or...according to verse meter and rhyme, as in Tom Lehrer's "The Elements"

there's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
and nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium...

...and a flash animation for the elemental aficionados:

www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html (http://www.privatehand.com/flash/elements.html)

:shocked

and, there's MORE!!

thebutlers.info/audio/NewElements.mp3 (http://thebutlers.info/audio/NewElements.mp3)

this is truly a stroke of genius...:thundercloud

[spiffyone]

The vertebrae are very boring, though. They should have nicknames like "Vertebrae of Bob" or something.

Good list!

Barb - we should add the words to Lehrer's "New Math." That would be fun to sing in flight.

spiffy

[xiknal]

ARTIST: Tom Lehrer
TITLE: New Math



{Spoken}
You can't take three from two
Two is less than three
So you look at the four in the tens place
Now that's really four tens
So you make it three tens
Regroup, and you change a ten to ten ones
And you add them to the two and get twelve
And you take away three, that's nine
Is that clear?

Now instead of four in the tens place
You've got three
'Cause you added one
That is to say, ten, to the two
But you can't take seven from three
So you look in the hundreds place

From the three you then use one
To make ten tens
And you know why four plus minus one
Plus ten is fourteen minus one
'Cause addition is commutative, right?
And so you've got thirteen tens
And you take away seven
And that leaves five

Well, six actually
But the idea is the important thing

Now go back to the hundreds place
And you're left with two
And you take away one from two
And that leaves

Everybody get one?
Not bad for the first day

{Refrain}
Hooray for new math
New-hoo-hoo-math
It won't do you a bit of good to review math
It's so simple
So very simple
That only a child can do it :blink

[noflyingfan]

Good one.

I also enjoy his "Life's Gonna Suck" song. Although it kind of hits where it hurts.

"Life's gonna suck when you grow up, when you grow up, when you grow up. Life's gonna suck when you grow up. It sucks pretty bad right now."