Showing posts with label 21stC. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 21stC. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 May 2014

Mary Anning

Happy Birthday, Mary Anning! To celebrate, here's a song by Artichoke about the renowned Lyme Regis fossilist.

Monday, 7 May 2012

xkcd - Every Major's Terrible

Einstein on the Beach

A review in the Guardian of the new production of Einstein on the Beach at the Barbican.

Monday, 14 March 2011

Happy Pi Day!

In honour of Pi Day, here's a selection of the (many) musical tributes that have been written:

Lose Yourself (In the Digits) (lyrics here)

Mathematical Pi


Pi Day Carols

As well as attempts to play the music of Pi itself:

What Pi sounds like

A piece of Pi (violin)

Pi-ano

And, of course:

Kate Bush, 'Pi'

Wednesday, 6 October 2010

Wednesday, 11 March 2009

Superheroes of science - 14th March

Musicians from the Intercontinental Music Lab invite you to hear scientists from the past sing about their discoveries and passion for science in this light-hearted family friendly and interactive concert. This musical extravaganza also features live demonstrations and plenty of audience participation, along with a few other surprises! Songs from the album ‘Superheroes of Science’ which are featured in the performance can be downloaded for free here.

Saturday 14th March
Babbage Lecture Theatre, Cambridge
4-5pm

Free; no booking required.

The Large Hadron Rap

Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
‘Til in the hearts of the detectors, they’re made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

We see asteroids and planets, stars galore
We know a black hole resides at each galaxy’s core
But even all that matter cannot explain
What holds all these stars together – something else remains
This dark matter interacts only through gravity
And how do you catch a particle there’s no way to see
Take it back to the conservation of energy
And the particles appear, clear as can be

You see particles flying, in jets they spray
But you notice there ain’t nothin’, goin’ the other way
You say, “My law has just been violated – it don’t make sense!
There’s gotta be another particle to make this balance.”
And it might be dark matter, and for first
Time we catch a glimpse of what must fill most of the known ‘Verse.
Because…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.

Antimatter is sort of like matter’s evil twin
Because except for charge and handedness of spin
They’re the same for a particle and its anti-self
But you can’t store an antiparticle on any shelf
Cuz when it meets its normal twin, they both annihilate
Matter turns to energy and then it dissipates

When matter is created from energy
Which is exactly what they’ll do in the LHC
You get matter and antimatter in equal parts
And they try to take that back to when the universe starts
The Big Bang – back when the matter all exploded
But the amount of antimatter was somehow eroded
Because when we look around we see that matter abounds
But antimatter’s nowhere to be found.
That’s why…

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.

The Higgs Boson – that’s the one that everybody talks about.
And it’s the one sure thing that this machine will sort out
If the Higgs exists, they ought to see it right away
And if it doesn’t, then the scientists will finally say
“There is no Higgs! We need new physics to account for why
Things have mass. Something in our Standard Model went awry.”

But the Higgs – I still haven’t said just what it does
They suppose that particles have mass because
There is this Higgs field that extends through all space
And some particles slow down while other particles race
Straight through like the photon – it has no mass
But something heavy like the top quark, it’s draggin’ its ***
And the Higgs is a boson that carries a force
And makes particles take orders from the field that is its source.
They’ll detect it….

LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.

Now some of you may think that gravity is strong
Cuz when you fall off your bicycle it don’t take long
Until you hit the earth, and you say, “Dang, that hurt!”
But if you think that force is powerful, you’re wrong.
You see, gravity – it’s weaker than Weak
And the reason why is something many scientists seek
They think about dimensions – we just live in three
But maybe there are some others that are too small to see
It’s into these dimensions that gravity extends
Which makes it seem weaker, here on our end.
And these dimensions are “rolled up” – curled so tight
That they don’t affect you in your day to day life
But if you were as tiny as a graviton
You could enter these dimensions and go wandering on
And they'd find you...

When LHCb sees where the antimatter’s gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
They’re looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head!


See it on YouTube here. Further details here.

Saturday, 7 March 2009

Science Songwriters' Association

The Science Songwriters' Association website includes links to many contemporary songs about science.

Geekpop - Virtual Science Songs Festival

To coincide with National Science and Engineering Week, the 'Geekpop' online festival of science-inspired music is running from 6th-15th March here.

Friday, 6 February 2009

Mathematics

Mathematics is a difficult thing
I never understood what was the missing link
And by the time I calculated the correct solution
The question had escaped me and so did the conclusion

So tell me everything must always equal two
Or nothing else is true
And I'll believe you
Cos your X is equal to my Y
But equations pass me by

So will you take just a little of my mind and subtract it from my soul
Add a fraction of your half and you'll see it makes me whole
Multiply it by the times that we've never been apart
You'll see nothing can divide just a heart plus a heart

A little of my mind
Take it from my soul
A fraction of your half
See it makes me whole
And multiply the times
Never be apart
Cos nothing can divide a heart plus a heart

Don't know my Fibonacci or Pythagoras
But the only formula I know will work for us is that
When we're together in the sum of our parts
It's far greater than what we added up to at the start

So tell me everything must always equal two
Or nothing else is true
And I'll believe you
Cos your X is equal to my Y
But equations pass me by

So will you take just a little of my mind and subtract it from my soul
Add a fraction of your half and you'll see it makes me whole
Multiply it by the times that we've never been apart
You'll see nothing can divide just a heart plus a heart

A little of my mind
Take it from my soul
A fraction of your half
See it makes me whole
And multiply the times
Never be apart
Cos nothing can divide a heart plus a heart

A heart plus a heart

Take just a little of my mind and subtract it from my soul
Add a fraction of your half and you'll see it makes me whole
Multiply it by the times that we've never been apart
You'll see nothing can divide just a heart plus a heart

A little of my mind
Take it from my soul
A fraction of your half
See it makes me whole
And multiply the times
Never be apart
Cos nothing can divide a heart plus a heart

((c) Little Boots 2008)