Tom Lehrer

The Elements

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The Elements Lyrics

	


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, (gasp)
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, (gasp)
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 Hahvard,
And there may be many others but they haven't been discahvered.

	

Submitted by

prayingmantis84 On Jul 27, 2005

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by tsreyb

18y ago

This is a true cult classic for college geeks ;)

What is really cool about this song is that the melody is from the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta "Pirates of Penzance".

For more information about the original song, including lyrics, visit:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_General's_Song

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by tsreyb

18y ago

For those not in the know, the intentional misspelling in last stanza is to emphasize a Boston accent (Hahvard == Harvard; discahvered == discovered)

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by CK15c

18y ago

I love this song! My Junior year of high school, a chemistry teacher showed a movie and this song was playing in the background. It became my goal to learn it, and I had learned it by the next school year. I ended up singing it in front of a large audience at what was called the Acoustic Café for my school (with the Boston accent on Harvard of course), and everyone loved it! That was several years ago, and I still find myself singing the song to myself every now and then! Great song!

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