2008-01-02

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 (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.

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