paroles de chanson The Elements - Tom Lehrer

Now if I may digress momentarily from the mainstream of this evening's symposium
I'd like to sing a song which is completely pointless
But is something which I picked up during my career as a scientist
This may prove useful to some of you someday, perhaps
In a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances
It's simply the names of the chemical elements set to a possibly recognizable tune

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 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?
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 Harvard
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered
And now, may I have the next slide, please?
Carried away there