The Elements (song)

"The Elements" (1959) is a song by Tom Lehrer that recites the names of all the chemical elements that were known at the time of writing, up to number 102, nobelium. It can be found as a track on An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer. The song is sung to the tune of Sir Arthur Sullivan's "Major General's Song" ("I am the very model of a modern major-general...") from The Pirates of Penzance. Here are the opening and closing lines:

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,

And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,

....

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.

Indeed, since that time, 11 more have been discovered, and 9 of those have been named. Those 9 are lawrencium, rutherfordium, dubnium, seaborgium, bohrium, hassium, meitnerium, darmstadtium, and roentgenium.

As a note, the final rhyme of "Harvard" and "discovered" is delivered in an exaggerated parody of a Boston accent.

External links

• Guitar chords from alt.guitar.tab newsgroup
• Flash animation of song