Now, if I may digress momentarily from the mainstream
of this evening's symposium, I'd like to sing a song which is completely
pointless, but is something which I picked up during my career as a scientist.
This may prove useful to some of you some day, perhaps, in a somewhat bizarre
set of circumstances. It's simply the names of the chemical elements set
to a possibly recognizable tune*.
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold and protactinium and indium and gallium, (gasp)
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.
Isn't that interesting?
I knew you would.
I hope you're all taking notes, because there's going to be a short quiz
next period...
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium, (gasp)
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulfur, californium and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Hahvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discahvered.
And now, may I have the next slide please? ...carried away there.
Notes
* The tune is that of The Major-General's
Song, by Sir Arthur Sullivan, from Gilbert & Sullivan's The Pirates Of
Penzance.
The Elements was an attempt to top the song
Tschaikowsky, by Ira Gershwin and Kurt Weill, which Danny Kaye sang in the
show Lady in the Dark, rattling off the names of 50 Russian composers at lightning
speed.
Although there has been much confusion and academic
infighting over the Periodic Table in recent years, here are the elements
that have been discovered since the writing of this song:
103. Lawrenciuim (Lr)
104. Rutherfordium (Rf)
105. Dubnium (Db)
106. Seaborgium (Sg)
107. Bohrioum (Bh)
108. Hassium (Hs)
109. Meitnerium (Mt)
110. Still Unnamed (--)
111. Still Unnamed (--)
112. Still Unnamed (--)
114. Still Unnamed (--)
116. Still Unnamed (--)
118. Still Unnamed (--)