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.
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.
-----Original Message-----
From: psci-com: on the public understanding of science
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andy Boddington
Sent: 30 July 2002 14:48
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Comedy and Science
More on comedy
There is a long history of science and comedy. I leave it to those more
in touch with contemporary culture to mention the recent ones. Two early
examples come to mind:
A generation before Python (1959 if I remember correctly but I was only
4) Flanders and Swann sang a marvelous song on the third law of
thermodynamics. I vaguely recall the pre-song banter which talked about
etiquette at science parities. To a professor, you have to say "Ah,
H2SO4 Professor. And the reciprocal of PI to your good wife."
About the same time or earlier, Tom Lehrer sang the entire Periodic
Table, as it was then, to the tune of tune of the Major-General's song.
Finally, to relieve the tedium on a hot and steamy afternoon, below are
the words of that pertinent and entertaining Python song. I've always
wondered how correct it is scientifically.
===
Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour,
That's orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it's reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power.
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains 100 billion stars
It's 100,000 light years side to side.
It bulges in the middle, 16,000 light years thick
But out by us its just 3,000 light years wide
We're 30,000 light years from galactic central point,
We go round every 200 million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding Universe.
The Universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light you know,
12 million miles a minute, and that's the fastest speed there is.
So remember when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space
Because there' bugger all down here on earth.
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