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.

A Function of the Time - The Cavendish Society and its Postprandial Proceedings

Thursday 12th March, 5.30-7pm, talk at 6pm

Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge

A century ago, students in the Cavendish Laboratory wrote and sang humorous songs about science at their annual dinner, to well-known tunes. This talk will explore what the proceedings reveal about the culture of the Cambridge physics research community, and will include performances of these songs by the HPS chorus.

Further details on the Whipple Museum pages here, and the Cambridge Science Festival pages here.

The Radium Atom

Air: “The Tarpaulin Jacket.”

I. A radium atom was dying,
And just ere it burst up for aye,
Corpuscles, which round it were flying,
These last dying words heard it say –

Chorus: Oh, I am a radium atom,
In pitchblende I first saw the day,
But soon I shall turn into helium:
My energy’s wasting away.

2. About the laborat’ry latterly
I always have seemed in the way;
I’ve worried both Campbell and Satterly*
And many bad things made them say.

3. I often have got in a frenzy,
As down in the cellar I lay,
Being tortured by Huff or Mackenzie§
Deflecting my poor α ray.

4. The theories about my interior
Proposed by the men of to-day,
Would make me appear quite inferior –
A crowd of corpuscles at play.

5. When wishing to be in the fashion
My γ corpuscle they slay,
And state that, according to Paschen, †
‘Tis merely a swift β ray.

6. Through me they say life was created
Any animals formed out of clay,
With bouillon I’m told I was mated
And started the life of to-day.‡

7. To build up my weak constitution
I’m trusting myself to J. J.,
He’ll get the most truthful solution
Of all who have entered the fray.

8. My temperature’s very unsteady,
I’m losing in weight every day;
But if the end’s near I am ready, -
At least, life’s been lengthy and gay!
F.H.

*N.R. Campbell and J. Satterly , On the use and abuse of radioactive needles for delicate electrometers, Proc. Cav. Lab., Oct. and Nov., 1904.
§A.S. Mackenzie, Phil. Mag., vol. 10, p. 538, 1905.
†PASCHEN, Physikalische Zeitschrift, Vol. 5, p. 563, 1904.
‡Daily Chronicle, June, July and August, 19045; Punch, July 12, 1905.

From The Postprandial Proceedings of the Cavendish Physical Society (1911 fourth edition), pp. 6-7.

An Alpha Ray

Air: “A Jovial Monk”

I. An alpha ray was I, contended with my lot;
From Radium C
I was set free,
And outwards I was shot.
My speed I quickly reckoned,
As I flew off through space,
Ten thousand miles per second
Is not a trifling pace!

For an alpha ray
Goes a good long way
In a short time t,
As you easily see,
Though I don’t know why
My speed’s so high,
Or why I bear a charge 2e.

2. And in my wild career, as swiftly on I flew,
A rarefied gas
Wouldn’t let me pass,
But I pushed my way right through.
I had some lively tussles
To make it ionize,
But I set the small corpuscles
A-buzzing round like flies.

For an alpha ray
Hasn’t time to stay
While a trifling mass
Of expanded gas,
That stands in awe
Of Maxwell’s law,
Obstructs the road when I want to pass.

3. An electroscope looked on, as I made that gas conduct;
Beneath the field
The gas did yield
And the leaf was greatly “bucked.”
But in my exultation
I lost my senses clean,
And I made a scintillation
As I struck a zinc-blende screen

For an alpha ray
Makes a weird display
With fluorescence green
On a zinc-blende screen
When the room’s quite dark,
You see a spark
That marks the spot where I have been.

4. But now I’m settled down, and move about quite slow;
For I, alas,
Am helium gas
Since I got that dreadful blow.
But though I’m feeling sickly,
Still no one now denies,
That I ran that race so quickly
I’ve won a Nobel Prize.

For an alpha ray
Is a thing to pay,
And a Nobel Prize
One can not despise,
And Rutherford
Has greatly scored,
As all the world now recognise.

A.A.R.

From The Post-Prandial Proceedings of the Cavendish Physical Society (1911 4th edition), pp. 14-15.

My Name is J.J. Thomson...

Air: “Solomon Levi.”

I. My name is J.J. Thomson and my lab’s in Free School Lane,
If once a man has been inside he’s sure to come again,
Here some do play with Töpler pumps, and some with liquid air,
And some do play the giddy goat, but that’s not here nor there.

Chorus:
Oh! J. J. Thomson, J. J. Tra-la-la-la,
Sir Joseph Thomson, Tra-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la,
My name is J. J. Thomson, and my lab’s in Free School Lane,
There’s no professor like J. J. my students all maintain,
I’ve been here six and twenty years, and here I shall remain,
For all the boys just worship me at my lab. in Free School Lane.

2. I’ve got a lot of two volt cells that sometimes need repair,
I’ve got some electrometers that sometimes make me swear;
But when I’m sure a leak’s not due to ultra-violet light,
I hand the thing to Everett, who always puts it right.

3. When once or twice a week I go to play a game of golf,
I leave the apparatus safe in charge of Mr. Rolph,
And Lincoln, too, in case you want a glass tube or a flash,
Will drop his work immediately and get you what you ask.

4. When I give a public lecture nothing ever does go wrong,
For Everett is always there to help the thing along,
And there, too, in the corner, with his visage wreathed in wmile,
Sits my other good assistant, the genial Mr. Hayles.

5. The people are delighted with the wondrous things we do,
But few have any notion that we’re such a jolly crew.
If some of them were here to-night I think we’d make it plain
We’re not all just as dry as dust at the lab. in Free School Lane!

A.A.R.

From The Post Prandial Proceedings of the Cavendish Physical Society (1911 fourth edition)

Songs of the Geological Society Adapted By a Late President

AIR. – “O a’ the Airts the Wind can Blaw”

O a’ the airts the wind can blaw,
I dearly like the west,
For there Silurian beds abound
The beds that I lo’e best;
There’s limestone blue, and sandstone too,
Wi’ slate and shale between,
An deep below, the coarse grits go,
Wi’ purple slates and green.

There’s trilobites in Bala bed,
Productas in coal shale,
There’s mony a fish in Auld, Auld Red,
Wi’ heterocercal tail;
There’s no a Mezozoic rock
Hauds trilobites within,
There’s mony a Palaeozoic block
Whar trilobites are seen.

Punch 25 (1853), p. 214.

The Cambridge Duet. As Performed Before the British Association.

PROFESSOR O. PROFESSOR H.

Professor O.
H_Y, don’t kick up a scrimmage,
Take these brains, and mark their shape:
Made in Providence’s image,
Man must not be called an Ape.

Professor H.
O-N, I am noways funky,
And maintain that this is true:
Man is really but a Monkey,
Save in moral points of view.

Professor O. Man’s no Monkey.
Professor H. Man’s a Monkey.

Both. From this fix there’s no escape.

Professor O. He is a drunky,
Professor H. He is a flunkey,

Professor O. Who asserts that Man’s an Ape.
Professor H. Who denies that Man's an Ape.


Punch, October 11, 1862, p. 155 .

Canzonet on the Comet

AIR – “Little Bo Peep”

THE Comet has flown,
Where? – it is not quite known;
But in two thousand years we may find him.
Says AIRY, he’ll then
Come and see us again,
And bring his tail behind him.

Punch, November 6, 1858, p. 185.

Song Competition launches!

The British Society for the History of Science Song Competition launches today! Please see here for further details, and to download our poster. All enquiries should be sent to historyofsciencesongs@googlemail.com.

The Scientific Simpleton; Or, An Insane Inventor's Ingenious Inventory Investigated.

1

A scientific simpleton who struggled fame to gain,
Was driven nearly crazy from invention on the brain,
He dabbled in mechanics, electricity of course,
And mastered all the mysteries of centrifugal force,
He took out patents every day, he’d always something new,
He vowed that he before he died some clever thing would do,
With his inventions (if they’d but succeeded,) you would say,
He would have made the mighty world roll round the other way.

(Chorus.)
Invention was his ruin, if you’ll listen unto me,
I’ll shew this scientific simplteton’s simplicitee
The catalogue is categorical as you can see,
Of this inventor’s most ingenious inventoree

2

He made, to show what man can do if he will persevere,
An eight-day clock that only wanted winding once a year,
An automatic German band that always played in tune,
A specially constructed gun, with which to shoot the moon;
A lift for raising Capital, worked by electric spark,
A pump for pumping secrets out of those who’d keep them dark,
A triple-barrelled telescope with which a man could see,
With half an eye what sort of day next Wednesday week would be.
(Chorus as before.)

3

He made a patent mousetrap next, you’ll say he was a flat,
Instead of mice it always caught he favorite tabby cat,
A spirit bottle stopper on the tipplers rather rough,
It stopped them having any more when they had drank [sic] enough;
A patent ten-ton nut-cracker that could’nt [sic] crack a joke,
Some onion seed, he made, when sown, it came up artichoke,
A patent penknife extra sharp to cut his corns in bed,
So extra sharp and patent it cut off his toe instead.
(Chorus as before.)

4

An old umbrella next he made you’ll think it very strange,
When left behind you found you’d got a new one in exchange,
And then a patent safety match for striking on the wall,
It was indeed so very safe ‘twould not ignite at all;
He made and he invented such a lot of things for pelf,
That finally he made a precious noodle of himself,
He made a patent pill to give you everlasting life,
He took one dose, and now his charming widow is my wife.


Written by J. F. McArdle and Frank Amos. Composed by Vincent Davies. London: Francis Brothers and Day, 351, Oxford Street. W.