The Elements

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 someday, 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 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 Harvard

And there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered

And now, may I have the next slide, please?

Carried away there