Thursday, October 27, 2005

"The Elements"

Here is a flash animation accompanied by Tom Lehrer's "The Elements". Watch for how the animation shows Berkeleyium.
Posted by at

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent. This is one of the songs I want to learn on the guitar at some point, so I can play it for students when appropriate. Apparently J.C. Maxwell used to perform physics songs on guitar in his classes, and I hope to revive this tradition. (Here's an example, albeit without the guitar part.)

3:53 PM, October 27, 2005
Lemming said...

This is most excellent. I saw it a while back, and I thought it was you that passed me the link, hrm.. (I mean ~2 years ago)

I dig the lone dancing "i". And the other various flair. And the errata at the end.

4:12 PM, October 27, 2005
Mason said...

Alternatively, you could play the "Major General's Song" for them. :) I guess you're going to just have to sing to them as well so that they can truly appreciate this!

It would be awesome if you do that! Tom Lehrer has obviously sung some of his math songs to his classes, and one of my math teachers from high school always sings "I'm My Own Grandpa" on the last day of class before Winter Break. (That's how I first found out about the song.) She didn't sing any math songs, though.

I'm sure the tradition is alive if we could only find someone who does it. Politzer played "Dueling Tubas" for us in Ph 2a. That was the first time I heard that song. I remember Vito laughing at the song but simultaneously commenting on how horrible it was---people who actually make their own music seem to like that song much less than people like me who don't (or maybe it was just Vito). It offends their sensibilities or something.

The Maxwell lyrics were cool---especially the second one. :)

By the way, you should take a look at the July issue of Physics Today (which included many physics songs, including some of Tom Lehrer's that weren't ever recorded) as well as a contest to write one's own. I was too busy because of research and my book, but I am very interested in seeing the published winners. (Hopefully, they'll do this again...)


Apparently, the Major General's Song is an example of what is known as a patter song, which is something of which I'm quite fond. It's no coincidence that I like Gilbert & Sullivan.

When I saw a G & S retrospective at Georgia Tech, the Mikado song about beheading people had a slightly more modern list of names. :)

4:16 PM, October 27, 2005
Anonymous said...

Mason: "I've Got A Little List" is often rewritten with up-to-date names: in DC-area productions, this can get...bitingly political. Fast.

8:19 PM, October 27, 2005
Anonymous said...

Dude! That Physics Today article is great! That'll teach me to throw the new issues on the "To Read Later" pile (which seems to be growing monotonically these days). They've conveniently included guitar chords with some of these songs, too...

9:19 PM, October 27, 2005
Mason said...

I haven't read it cover to cover yet---they originally forgot to send it to me and I glanced through somebody else's copy and was too apathetic to read the article online. I finally have gotten that issue but there are interesting articles that occur before it, and I'm going in order. I'll get to it soon enough.

I still wish I had time to submit something. This thread has given me a couple ideas, though.

One thing would be to use Nobel Laureates instead of Elements. The other would be to go Mikado on people's asses and list journals that should be trashed (in favor of keeping things like the arxiv, of course). I bet the latter idea would cause some uptight physicists to send me hate mail (especially when PRL is #1 on that list of journals to destroy), so you know I have to write those lyrics.

11:33 PM, October 27, 2005
Anonymous said...

PRL published *my* article!

9:19 AM, October 28, 2005

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)