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
The tune is that of The Major-General's Song from Gilbert &
Sullivan's The Pirates Of Penzance
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,
There's strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium
Isn't that interesting? I knew you wouldI 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