This (arguably unhelpful) phrase seems to be taught across schools all over the world. What are some other phrases like this that are common ?
Didn’t that originate in a Sabrina The Teenage Witch episode? Or did I just imagine that?
Workers of the world, unite!
I don’t remember hearing that specific phrase in school. I remember hearing a teacher tell us to take deep breaths to fire up the mitochondria but not that it was “the powerhouse of the cell.” This was a meme that became common after my education was done. Because it became a popular meme it’s possible more teachers said it specifically along with whatever other fun phrases they had.
I think a big part of why it took off and lives on as a meme in the internet forums sense of the word, was the familiarity of the bizarre and unnatural phrase to the young adults using those forums who remembered it from biology class.
Certainly that’s how it was for me because before Digg, or Reddit, even before Facebook (though I guess not that long before), I had had that phrase uttered sincerely as part of my education and it was so uncanny and funny to see that this highly specific and distinctive phrase was used rote, word for word, at schools all over the world and was as memorably unhelpful to others as it had been to me. Perhaps the positive feedback loop from this phrase’s new life on the web really has fed in to education in a life imitating art kind of way like you describe, but I can assure you it definitely predated it’s status as a joke, and that’s where that joke came from.
I’m not doubting it was used before the meme, I’m just doubting the ubiquity of it prior to the meme. I believe it is a bit of a Mandela effect type of thing. People remember the general purpose of mitochondria and remember their science teachers saying things similar to the effect of “powerhouse of the cell” even if they didn’t actually say that. Sort of like how “beam me up, Scotty” was specifically never used in Star Trek but just about every other variant of the phrase was.
I’m not gonna go looking for scans or anything, but KnowYourMeme lists the popularity of this one as starting between 2013 and 2015, and I definitely remember seeing this phrase in a textbook around 2010 or 2011. So honestly, I might blame Pearson or McGraw Hill.
The book is on the table.
While not unhelpful, stop-drop-and-roll and quicksand don’t come up as often as we thought back then
yeah I’ve been on fire three times and it never occurred to me to stop drop and roll.
I was always worried about proper handling of nitroglycerin. Talking to my friends it seems that wasn’t as common as quicksand or even thinking you’d need to tell gold apart from fool’s gold (pyrite). Games like Crash Bandicoot, shows like Dexter’s Lab, and a general interest in science may have meant I heard more about it as a kid.
To the tune of “Pop Goes The Weasel”:
x equals negative b /
plus or minus the square root /
of b squared minus 4 ac /
all over 2a!I cannot believe that stupid fucking song is still in my head, but good God damn it worked. It’s there for all 0 times I’ll need the quadratic equation in my daily life.
It was to to the tune of Frère Jacques when I learned it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frère_Jacques
Negative b, negative b
Plus or minus square root, plus or minus square root
B squared minus 4 AC, b squared minus 4 AC
Over 2A, over 2AFinding the name of the original song was a pain. I’d never seen it written as an adult and thought it said “do re mi” so every search result kept telling me it was from the sound of music.
If you already know that much algebra you can use ax2 + bx + c = 0 and solve for x to get the formula if you forget it.
Hurr durr what if I just multiply the whole thing by 4a for some reason? Oh and then after that I’ll add b² to both sides, just for shits and giggles. And for good measure, I’ll move a few numbers from one side to the other, and that leaves me with 4a²x² + 4abx + b² = b² - 4ac.
And then golly gee! Wouldn’t you know it? That just happens to let the left side factor neatly into (2ax + b)²! So I’ll just take the square root of both sides…
No!
No!
Bad!
This is fucking voodoo. I hate this shit. It’s like trigonometric substitution.
Math is procedural. Math is algorithmic. Math is repeatable.
“If these numbers looked a little different than they do, I could solve this. Oh, wow! If I just sprinkle these magic values into my problem, everything works out great!”
Oh yes, I can see how if you just plug in this shit you pulled out of your ass, everything works out great! But when you aren’t around for a fecal transfer, I have no idea how to come up with that.
I was top of my class in math. But that voodoo shit never made any sense to me.
And there is absolute value of zero chance I could figure all that out in the heat of the moment if I forgot the quadratic formula. I had to work backwards from the formula to even get all that in the first place.
- ax^2 + bx + c = 0
- ax^2 + bx = -c move the c over
- x^2 + (b/a)x = -c/a divide by a
- x^2 + (b/a)x +(b/2a)^2 = -c/a + (b/2a)^2 complete the square
- (x + b/2a)^2 = -c/a + (b/2a)^2 factor the left hand side
- x + b/2a = sqrt(-c/a + (b/2a)^2) now we just tidy it up
- x = -b/2a + sqrt(-c/a + b2/4a2)
- x = -b/2a + (2a/2a) sqrt(-c/a + b2/4a2)
- x = (-b + (2a)sqrt(-c/a + b2/4a2))/2a
- x = (-b + sqrt(-4ac + b^2))/2a move 2a into the square root and multiply it with what’s inside
The derivation of the quadratic formula is nice because it doesn’t rely on anything fancy and it’s all tricks the teacher is likely to teach around the same time you’re learning it. It’s not voodoo shit, it’s just the ax^2 + bx + c = 0 and you solve for x.
I can’t even visualise what you are saying
I don’t hear it either, though.
I can. But I can’t hear it at all.
I know the equation but “hearing” something in your head sounds… weird
Interesting. If you focus on your internal dialogue, that’s really the same thing except it’s saying (or singing) something external.
I’ve been hearing the Donkey Kong song in my head for the last 6 hours. If you know how to make it stop, I’m all ears.
“Christopher Columbus discovered America” (hopefully they’re not still teaching this)
In 14 hundred and 92 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. And also committed genocide
Even worse: Columbus thought the earth was round but nobody believed him.
We never learnt that.
A man, a plan, a canal, Panama.
‘i’ before ‘e’ except after ‘c’
Except in glacier, because English is fucked.
Like in “science”.
Or when sounding like “A” as in neighbor and weigh
And on weekends and holidays, and all throughout May
And you always be wrong, no matter what you say.
This is honestly one of my favorite ones, and legit runs through my head whenever I can’t remember the spelling of a word
yes, Bryan, we all call that “desk”
*diesk
I bought 2 boxen of doughnuts
I always thought this one was pretty… WEIRD…
E = mc²
Question and all comments (apart from “donde esta la biblioteka”) are not “all over the world”, but American
I haven’t heard about mitochondria in so many years (obviously. why would I?) and I can’t explain why it feels so good reading this now.
Do you have any evidence your phrase is used all over the world? I never learnt it.
I learned it in German in Germany. Do we have evidence from the francophone world? Latam? China?
Checking in from NZ, sounds familiar to me
I think this phrase was made into a meme by an American children’s TV show called Bill Nye the Science Guy; it’s said during the intro sequence.
Ohhhhhh I had never put two and two together on that
Apparently the phrase dates from a biology paper published in 1957. I think I’ve been Mandela Effected; I have a memory of several voices coming in and saying science phrases, in between “Bill! Bill! Bill! Bill!” but having just rewatched the intro sequence on Youtube this only happens once and the phrase it says is “Intertia is a property of matter.”
Definitely did it in Australia.
What class? What year?
Biology class circa 2001-2003
my very eager mother just served us nine
rip pizzas
I wouldn’t have gotten this without “rip pizzas”
I still dont
Acronym for planet names (now excluding pluto)
I’ve only heard this phrase from Americans, so I think “all over the world” is a stretch
Its taught in India as well, (and is also a meme here)
Can confirm in south india
Australian here, they taught us this meme in school.
It’s a meme in the netherlands as well.
It’s a meme, but I’ve never seen it in a Dutch textbook. I don’t even know what the Dutch version of the meme would be in meme form.
Fair point. I only have english textbooks for college, and it’s in pretty much evry single one of them. My dutch teachers said the meme in a translated version during lectures. Only happened twice though.
