Basic cheatsheet
Matt Hall
When I was a spotty schoolboy my favourite book was the Science Data Book. This amazing little book, which fit in my jacket pocket (we wore suits to school), went everywhere with me. Everywhere at school, I mean, I'm not that much of a nerd.
It contains some really handy stuff: the Greek alphabet, SI unit definitions, the periodic table, the fundamental constants, handy formulae like the Maclaurin series, (remember that?), and even a very nice table of isotopes (did you know that the half-life of vanadium-50 is 400 trillion years?).
Amazingly, there are some used copies of that little book on Amazon.
You might think that in these days of smartphones and WiFi everywhere there's no need for such things. But have you never sat in a meeting or lecture and just couldn't remember how many acres in a hectare (2.47), or when the Silurian was (417 Ma BP)? Usually it's too much hassle to pull out my phone, then find Wikipedia and the one piece of data I need. Especially when tapping away on a cell phone looks like you're texting someone 'So bored, please get me out of this meeting, call me in 5 mins?'.
So, I give you the first in a series of cheatsheets. This one has mostly basic stuff on it; future editions will have more geoscience-related content. Print it out and stick in your notebook, or maybe on your wall, right next to Signs & Symbols.
If you use it, please let me know what you like or dislike, so I can improve it. Have I missed anything you're always looking up?
← Click on the image for the PDF
Reader Comments (9)
The keyboard shortcuts section lacks OS X support, but it can be forgiven. Well done, sir. Looking forward to more cheat sheets.
Looks good. Some other things I find useful:
- Other conversions: cubic feet-cubic meters, cubic feet-barrel, mcf-boe, kg/m3-API
- Archies equation
- Radial form of Darcy's Law for oil and gas
There are other useful things for engineers like gas compressibility stuff, material balance stuff, etc but I won't bore you with that.
Did you design this cheat sheet to be printed on a specific size paper?
This fits inside my notebook if you print it on 8.5x11 and trim the edges. Might not fit for all notebooks . . .
Thanks for the comments!
@jcchang: You're right... A bit embarrassing, since I'm on a Mac. Next version!
@j: I guess it's meant for US Letter paper, but it might bear a bit of re-sizing. I'm not that happy with the quality; if I can get everything as native fonts in the PDF, it should go to almost any size nicely. And thanks for the other conversions; it's good to know what's useful. If you get a chance to send me what's good for engineers, I will perhaps make one especially for them!
I updated the PDF: now with Mac OS X shortcuts! Quite a few are missing. Best I can find is to go into System Preferences > Language and Text > Character Viewer > Add to Favourites. Seems clunky; anyone know of a better way?
hey Matt - I remember that book. It's aged pretty well. I think your chart could probably do with the Scoville scale, plus the recycling collection rota and rules for the RG7 area
Some geo-additions for future editions: all those geophysical nomenclature things that (as a geologist) I can never remember or work out from first principles.
Minimum-phase and zero-phase wavelets: which is which? (Because, let's face it, how much more minimum can you get than zero?)
Normal and reverse polarity (for the US and Europe).
AVO classes: I can remember these after a day of working on them , then forget them if I miss more than a week.
@Christian: Yes, it still has some stains on it from double Chemistry. I will have to think about an angle on the Scoville scale... I know there is one...
@Richie: Great suggestions, I don't think you will be disappointed. I didn't have minimum vs zero-phase on there. I might send you what I have for the others, see if they will work for you.
Thanks for the comments!