Memorizing the First 20 Elements of the Periodic Table!

The Periodic Table is definitely a hard-to-forget memory from high school chemistry class.  Trying to learn the elements in order involved some rote learning with the occasional trick or two.  However, it's to memorize the first 20 elements in order, backward and forward, as well as knowing which element belongs to which number.  Impress your friends and train your brain with this fun exercise.  You may even impress Sheldon Cooper!

Follow along:

Here are the links to every number to which you will associate with the periodic elements.

They are:

1. sun
2. shoe
3. tree
4. door
5. hive
6. stick
7. heaven
8. skate
9. wine
10. pen

From 10 to 20, it's a bit different but still easy.

11. Imagine football uprights
12. (A dozen) eggs
13. A witch
14. Valentine's Day item (Feb. 14 - a box of chocolates, for example)
15. Tax returns (April 15)
16. Sweet 16 - candies or other sweets
17. 'Seventeen' Magazine
18. Voting Booth (legal age to vote)
19. Golf Club (19th Hole)
20. Pack of Cigarettes  (smoking not recommended!)


Now, we'll take a look at  the Top 20  Periodic Elements.

They are:

1. Hydrogen
2. Helium
3. Lithium
4. Beryllium
5. Boron
6. Carbon
7. Nitrogen
8. Oxygen
9. Fluorine
10. Neon
11. Sodium
12. Magnesium
13. Aluminum
14. Silicon
15. Phosphorus
16. Sulfur
17. Chlorine
18. Argon
19. Potassium
20. Calcium

Now, let's link the element with the memory aid for each number.

1. Hydrogen/sun - The sun is mostly composed of hydrogen!

2. Helium/shoe - Imagine floating on shoes made of helium

3. Lithium/tree - Imagine a lithium battery tree

4. Beryllium/door - Imagine opening the fridge to get some berries

5. Boron/hive - Imagine boring into a bee hive (not recommended in real life!)

6. Carbon/stick - Imagine a carbon hockey stick

7. Nitrogen/heaven - Imagine liquid nitrogen ice cream heaven!

8. Oxygen/skate - Imagine a skater with an oxygen mask

9. Fluorine/wine - Imagine wine with added fluoride!

10. Neon/pen - Imagine a neon pen!

11. Sodium/football goalpost - Imagine kicking a field goal with a salt shaker!

12. Magnesium/dozen eggs - Imagine getting your daily magnesium requirement with eggs

13. Aluminum/witch - Imagine a witch on an  aluminum pop can!

14. Silicon/Valentine's  - Imagine Silicon Valley king Mark Zuckerberg as someone's Valentine!

15. Phosphorus/tax return - Imagine igniting your tax return with phosphorus (not recommended in real life!)

16. Sulfur/ Sweet 16 (candies) - Imagine chocolate candies stinking like sulfur

17. Chlorine/'Seventeen magazine - Imagine reading Seventeen magazine by the pool and smelling the chlorine

18. Argon/voting booth - Imagine looking at the choices in a voting booth and saying "Aaaaaargh!!"

19. Potassium/golf - Imagine playing golf with a banana (they're rich in potassium!)

20. Calcium/pack of cigarettes - Imagine a cow smoking a cigarette

After you create these images, you'll find it very easy to recite the list from the top or bottom and to instantly recall any number. Quick, what's number 10?  Pen = Neon!

With the links, you can substitute other words for the numbers, such as one-gun or eight-gate but any word will do.  Have fun with the exercise and use it for any top 10 list that you can find useful!

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Inspirational Quotes on Creativity

Creativity has been the source of many innovations throughout our history.  Whether in art, science, business, education or so many other fields, creative minds have been the source of many breakthroughs in the way we see and understand our world.  The wonderful aspect of this is that we can all be creative and there is no limit to your imagination, no matter who you are!

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Which Will Be The First Trillion Dollar Company?

August 2, 2018:

"Apple Inc. became the first $1 trillion publicly listed U.S. company on Thursday, crowning a decade-long rise powered by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed it from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications. The tech company's stock jumped 2.9 per cent to end the day at $207.39 US, giving it a market capitalization of $1.002 trillion US. During the session, Apple's stock market value reached as much as $1.006 trillion US."

(www.cbc.ca/news/business/apple-trillion-stock-market-valuation-1.4771428)

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Update:  After posting a strong earnings report for the second quarter of 2018, Apple is withing striking distance of the $1 Trillion figure.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/01/apple-1-trillion-share-price-threshold.html

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To be sure, a trillion dollars is a lot of money.  

If you Google '1 trillion', the response is 'A trillion is 1,000,000,000,000, also know as 10 to the 12th power, or one million million. It's such a large number it's hard to get your head around it, so sometimes trillion just means “wow, a lot.”.'

One graphic has an interesting illustration of $1 trillion:

At present, there are four companies which are in striking distance of the $1 trillion valuation (as of July 26
, 2018).  They are:

Apple - $945.7 Billion

Google - $876.9 Billion

Amazon - $861.1 Billion

Microsoft - $818.1 Billion

What's amazing is that the four companies were all started in a garage in only the last few decades.  You can read more at my earlier blog 'From Humble Beginnings: Six Companies That Began In A Garage' which covers three of these companies.  

If you go back five years to early 2013, the top four companies were Apple, Exxon Mobil, Berkshire Hathaway, PetroChina and Wal-Mart, with an average valuation of $315 Billion.  

Going back to 2009 (after the market crash), the top 4 companies were Exxon Mobil, PetroChina, Wal-Mart and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China with an average valuation of $253 Billion.

With an average valuation of $872 Billion, the four current leaders may have an average themselves of $1 trillion if current trends continue.  With the NASDAQ index at a value of almost 8,000 and rising, the outlook is very certain that the trend will continue according to the chart:

The question is, which company will reach the $1 Trillion value the first?  Microsoft has been around many years and was previously known for Windows and DOS software but has made major recent strides with cloud computing.  In 2018, Microsoft's revenue came in at more than $100 Billion for the first time.  

“Our early investments in the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge are paying off, and we will continue to expand our reach in large and growing markets with differentiated innovation,” said the chief executive officer Satya Nadella.  Wal-Mart even just  signed a cloud computing deal with Microsoft as they are both competing with Amazon.  Microsoft Azure competes Amazon Web Services while Wal-Mart's retail sales have been affected by Amazon's e-commerce success.

Google has had an unprecedented surge after posting remarkable results for the 2nd Quarter of 2018 (see my article).   Apple is within $50 Billion of the $1 Trillion mark as its products continue to sell very well at high margins (who needs the iPod anymore?).

Which company will be the first to reach one followed by twelve (12!) digits in dollar value.  Apple looks poised and within reach but Google and Amazon are giving the company a run for its money!



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From Humble Beginnings: Six Companies That Began In A Garage

How did these major companies get their start?  How they started and where they began is always an inspirational story.  There are many bands that started in garages and there are many famous companies as well that also had the same humble beginnings before reaching enormous success.

AMAZON

Jeff Bezos had a successful career at the Wall Street firm D. E. Shaw & Co. but in 1994 he was drawn to the rapid growth of the internet (2,300% annually).  His desire to take advantage of this, what he called his 'regret minimization framework', caused him to leave the company and travel to Seattle in search of internet success.  

After making a list of products he could focus on, he chose books as the costs weren't high and reading was pretty well a universal past-time.  He also named his new company 'Amazon' because the name sounded exotic and it started with an 'A'.  Also, it was a name that people would easily remember and that was important in establishing a brand that would stand out among future competitors.

After traveling to Seattle, Bezos set up Amazon in his garage at his house in Bellevue, Washington with several employees.  To get away from the garage for meetings, they gathered together at a nearby Barnes & Noble (in almost a fitting bit of irony).  In two months, sales reached $20,000 a week and sales happened in 50 states and 45 countries.  In 2016, Amazon had 340,000+ employees, $135 billion in revenue and Jeff Bezos' own personal worth is now over $130 billion, making him the world's richest man.

APPLE

Apple began in the childhood house of Steve Jobs, located on Crist Drive in Los Altos, California back in April 1976.  Jobs founded the company with Steve Wozniak and it consisted of Jobs and Wozniak building computers by hand in the garage.  They sold 50 units in the first month and Apple was incorporated the next year on January 3, 1977.

Although primitive by today's standards, the first Apple computer built in a garage proved to be the foundation of a company that may soon to be the first one to be worth $1 trillion.

GOOGLE

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were PhD students at Stanford University in 1996 when they started Google as a research product.  They rented a garage in a house on Santa Margarita Avenue, close to the campus, and started to build their company that would become the second largest in the world.  The house was owned by Susan Wojcicki who needed the rental income and is now the CEO of YouTube.

Page and Brin wanted to build a web site that would collect and store information from around the world where it could then be accessed by anyone within reach of a computer.  It took a lot of hard work but the end result was a revolutionary system that make Google the namesake for seeking information online.  How many times have you said "I'll just Google it"!

HARLEY-DAVIDSON

Henry Melk isn't a very well-known name among motorcyclists but it was his garage in Milwaukee that was the starting point for the internationally-renowned Harley-Davidson company.  In 1901, William S. Harley and Arthur Davidson used his garage to work on their plans to make a engine that would power a pedal-bicycle, literally a motorbike.  The two boyhood friends spent two years working on their dream project but found that their first creation wasn't powerful enough to go up hills without using the pedals.  Rather than give up, they used the lessons learned to make a bigger engine that formed the basis of a true motorcycle rather than a motorized bicycle.

Their hard work paid off when their motorcycle made its racing debut in September 1904 at the Milwaukee State Fair Park.  They came in 4th and this heralded the beginning of Harley-Davidson's ascension to the pinnacle of the motorcycle universe.

MATTEL

Like Harley-Davidson, Mattel is named after the company's two founders Harold "Matt" Matson and Elliot Handler.  The duo started out making picture frames in 1945 and soon made dollhouses and dollhouse furniture from the material that was left over.  Surprisingly, they found that the dollhouses were selling much better than the picture frames and then decided to focus on the more popular product.

Fate intervened when Matson sold his share of the company to his partner due to poor health.  Handler's wife Ruth took over Matson's duties and created the Barbie doll in 1959 (named after her daughter Barbara).  Mattel soon became a giant among toy maufacturerS with a variety of best-selling brands including Matchbox, Hot Wheels, Fisher-Price, American Girl and the eternally famous Barbie and Ken.

WALT DISNEY

"I only hope that we don't lose sight of one thing - that it was all started by a mouse."  This quote by Walt Disney is one of the more famous quotes in business and the mouse started a company that has grown into an international entertainment giant that had $55 Billion revenue in 2017 and includes Marvel Studios and the Star Wars franchise among its many properties.

Walt Disney was born in Chicago but eventually bought a train ticket moved to California in 1923 to be with his brother and uncle.  He was a talented artist but still had many pitfalls in his career before his relocation to the west coast.  Once settled in north Hollywood, he formed his first studio in a garage owned by his uncle.  

Working with his brother Roy and paying his uncle $1 per week for rent, Walt Disney created a studio in the garage and the next year found success with a film series based on Alice In Wonderland that combined live action and animation.  In 1928, Disney created Mickey Mouse (originally named Mortimer) and the company was soon well on its way to fame and fortune.

Success is the result of hard work, commitment and dedication where the origin in many cases has been a simple garage.  If you ever have a million-dollar idea and the only space you have to work on it is your garage, then let the previous stories be an example that humble origins are no barrier to fulfilling your dreams.

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Inspirational Quotes From Stephen Hawking

Considered by many to be the world's greatest living scientist, Stephen Hawking was also a cosmologist, astronomer, mathematician and author of numerous books including the landmark "A Brief History of Time," which has sold more than 10 million copies.

With fellow physicist Roger Penrose, Hawking merged Einstein's theory of relativity with quantum theory to suggest that space and time would begin with the Big Bang and end in black holes. Hawking also discovered that black holes were not completely black but emit radiation and would likely eventually evaporate and disappear.

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

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Memorizing the Wealthiest Celebrities of 2017

Memorizing the Wealthiest Celebrities of 2017

The list of the Forbes wealthiest celebrities for 2017 has just been released and they certainly are worth a lot of money!  A fun mental exercise to boost your brain power is to memorize the top 10 celebrities on the list in a way where you can recite them from top to bottom or bottom to top.

The Top 10

As a reminder, here are the links to every number to which you will associate with the people on the list.

They are:

1. sun
2. shoe
3. tree
4. door
5. hive
6. stick
7. heaven
8. skate
9. wine
10. pen


Now, we'll take a look at  the Top 10  Celebrities list (as of December 2017).

They are:

1. George Lucas, $4.6 billion
2. Steven Spielberg, $3.7 billion
3. Oprah Winfrey, $2.8 billion
4. Michael Jordan, $1.2 billion
5. David Copperfield, $850 million
6. Diddy, $750 million
7. Tiger Woods, $740 million
8. Dr. Dre, $710 million
9. James Patterson, $700 million
10. Jerry Seinfeld, $670 million

Now, let's link the celebrity with the memory aid for each number.

1. George Lucas/sun - Imagine George Lucas directing Star Wars under the hot desert sun

2. Steven Spielberg/shoe - Imagine Steven Spielberg wearing his running shoes, everywhere!

3. Oprah Winfrey/tree - Imagine Oprah Winfrey lounging under a majestic tree

4. Michael Jordan/door - Imagine Michael Jordan poster on a door (plus hoop!)

5. David Copperfield/hive - Imagine David Copperfield doing a magic act with a bee from a local hive

6. Diddy/stick - Imagine Diddy with a selfie stick

7. Tiger Woods/heaven - Imagine Tiger Woods in golf heaven

8. Dr Dre/skate - Imagine Dr Dre and his skate-board speaker

9. James Patterson/wine - Imagine reading a James Patterson book with a glass of wine (hey there, George Clooney!)

10. Jerry Seinfeld/pen - Imagine Jerry Seinfeld with the astronaut's pen that writes upside down.  Take the pen!!!

After you create these images, you'll find it very easy to recite the list from the top or bottom and to instantly recall any number. Quick, what's number 6?  Stick - Diddy

With the links, you can substitute other words for the numbers, such as one-gun or eight-gate but any word will do.  Have fun with the exercise and use it for any top 10 list that you can find useful!

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