Songs and Lyrics (Lehrer)/The Elements
THE ELEMENTS
| words: | Tom Lehrer |
| music: | "The Major General's Song" from The Pirates of Penzance, by Arthur Sullivan (public domain) |
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.
| Note: | There exists a much earlier version of this song. The complete lyrics, which are by Aristotle, are: There's earth and air and fire and water. |
Elements 103 to 118
added by Tom Lehrer in 2020
Copernicium, meitnerium, nihonium, moscovium,
Rutherfordiuim, seaborgium, roentgenium, flerovium,
Darmstadtium, lawrencium, oganesson, livermoriuim,
And tennessine and hassium and dubnium and bohrium.
This will scan with only three deviations from the original music. The first two syllables of copernicium and rutherfordium and the last two syllables of lawrencium must each be sung as two sixteenth-notes, rather than as one eighth-note.
Note: the preferred primary accent in oganesson is on the third syllable (ness), although there is disagreement about this.