MCAT Mnemonics: Diatomic Elements

Ken Tao is the MedSchoolCoach expert on MCAT, and discusses acronyms to help remember the diatomic elements: Have No Fear of Ice Cold Beer.

Full Transcription

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another MCAT Mnemonic Monday. My name is Ken and I’m an MCAT expert with MedSchoolCoach. Today, we have an MCAT general chemistry mnemonic and it is on the diatonic elements.

These are good to keep in mind because when you’re calculating the enthalpy change of a reaction using heat of formation you want to keep in mind that the diatomic elements exist in their diatomic forms and their standard state and therefore have a heat of formation of zero.

So our Mnemonic is: Have No Fear Of Ice Cold Beer.

So these are our seven diatomic elements: Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Flourine, Oxygen, Iodine, Chlorine, Iodine, and Bromine.

And what I particularly like about this mnemonic is you’ll notice that ice is a solid, and beer is a liquid. All of the diatomic elements are gases except iodine which is a solid, and bromine which is a liquid.