Lyrics
Tom Lehrer
Miscellaneous
The Elements
Now, if I may digress momentarily from the main stream of this evenings
symposium, I’d like to sing a song which is completely pointless but which is
something I picked up during my career as a scientist. This may prove useful to
somebody 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
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
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 Ha’vard
And there may be many others, but they haven’t been discavard
Now, may I have the next slide please?
Got carried away there