Periodic Posting.

I just finished watching NCIS (we're a season or three behind N.A.) and my favourite mathematical music maker was featured in an episode. Ages ago, I made note of Tom Lehrer's song on the Periodic Table and wrote a little bit about it at that little link. Of course the ever-vigilant folks at YouTube have taken down the tune so you'll have to try and track it down from his MySpace page.

Here are the lyrics (click for the originating site with guitar chords.)
ARTIST: Tom Lehrer
Tune: Major-General's Song from Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance".
TITLE: The Elements

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? [Laughter] 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

[Alternate ending:]

Lawrencium and Hahnium and lastly Rutherfordium
If there are any others, I'm afraid I haven't heardium

Since my first post on this subject has been expunged of the tune, here it is again.



Good work to Abby on NCIS for deciphering the code and saving the day and thanks to Tom for writing the song!

My Chemical Romance.

For no particular reason, I'm going to post a Tom Lehrer song about the Elements. I've spoken about Math in the past (and at the bottom of that link you can listen to another version of this song. But I'm really impressed with the pictorial that some YouTuber has added to this song.



I've sung this tune to the Chemistry teachers at school but not at quite the same pace. Of course, the Periodic table is slightly different in Japanese (元素の周期表 = genso no shuukihyou). I should try and translate and sing it in Japanese...now there's a challenge!

Here's a few of the more interesting examples:

sodium... is natoriumu (ナトリウム), natrium in Latin.
mercury... is suigin (水銀) literally meaning "watery silver", like the element's symbol, Hg (Latin for hydro-argyrum).
sulfur... is iō (硫黄), (黄 indicates sulfur's typical yellow color.)
zinc... is a-en (亜鉛) meaning "lesser lead", with lead being 鉛 in Japanese.
platinum... is hakkin 白金 or "white gold".
bromine... is shuuso 臭素 or "the stinky element".
nitrogen... is chisso 窒素 or "the suffocating element" since air that is purely nitrogen is toxic to all mammals.

This has been a public service notice from the guy who is neither Bill Nye nor Commander Rick.

Hypote-news.

No one sings about math as well as Danny Kaye. A Canajun writer for McLeans, Jaime J. Weinman mentions his prowess at explaining the Pythagoreum theorum. (Perhaps it would have been wiser of the Scarecrow to have listened to this song before showing off his new brains.)

My personal favourite of his is from Hans Christian Anderson where he sings about the Inchworm. (Pictured is Charles Aznavour who sang it on the Muppet Show prior to Danny. Though Big Bird beat them both to it on Sesame Street.)



Click away for more Math in the Movies. Yet I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Tom Lehrer's genius for mathematical tunes. His best would be New Math, explaining how to subtract 173 from 342 in base 10 and in base 8.

Though it's not about math, it is one of my favourite tunes of his where he can be found singing periodically.