The Chemistry Teachers Coming to Town

You better not weigh
You better not heat
You better not react
Im telling you now
The Chemistry Teachers coming to town.

Hes collecting data
Hes checking it twice
Hes gonna find out
The heat of melting ice
The Chemistry Teachers coming to town.

He sees you when youre decanting
He knows when you titrate
He knows when you are safe or not
So wear goggles for goodness sake.

Oh, you better not filter
And drink your filtrate
You better not be careless and spill your precipitate.
The Chemistry Teachers coming to town.

The Geologists Come-All-Ye (a folksong) by Brenna Lorenz
Come all ye lads and you will hear
About the life that we love dear,

Refrain: With our diddle-air-re-oh, falling rock away, knock it down,
Fall-di-knock-a-rock-away, me laddie-oh!

Geologists all bold and strong,
We are the subject of this song.

We get up with the rising sun
And map until the day is done.

We walk two hundred miles a day,
And study rocks along the way.

We fight our way through brush and trees
And slog through bog up to our knees.

When flies are thick, then we dont walk,
They carry us from rock to rock.

We swing our hammers with a whack,
Take home an outcrop on our backs.

Nine hundred pounds of rock or more
Is just an average daily score.

If we run out of food to eat
Theres always rock beneath our feet.

Theres nothing quite like granite stew
Though graptolites are some good, too.

In the evening to the clubs we flock,
To drink Dominion and Old Stock.

Heres to your health and our health, too,
May your life prove as good to you,

As our…

Q: How many physical chemists does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Only one, but hell change it three times, plot a straight line through the data, and then extrapolate to zero concentration.

A super-saturated solution is one that holds more than it can hold.

Isaac Asimov said that if you want to find a chemist, ask him/her to discuss the following words: 1) mole 2) unionized. As he so eloquently put it, If he starts talking about furry animals and organized labor, keep walking.

Make it myself? But Im a physical organic chemist!

Definition: (Fe)male: Male with iron added, for greater strength, ductility, and magnetisim.

Acid is base.

Q: Why do chemists like nitrates so much?
A: Theyre cheaper than day rates.

Scale keeps forming inside the kettle, complained Tom, recalcitrantly.

We Three Students Of Chemistry Are

We three students of chemistry are
taking tests that we think are hard
Stoichiometry, volumes and densities
worrying all the time.

O room of wonder
room of fright
Room of thermites
blinding light:
With your energies
please dont burn us
Help us get our labs all right.

Q: What kind of ghosts haunt chemistry faculties?
A: Methylated Spirits!

Q: How many atoms in a guacamole?
A:Avocados number.

Q: What do chemists use to make guacomole?
A: Avogadros.

Free radicals have revolutionized chemistry.

These were printed on bumper stickers and given out at an American Chemical Society meeting 10 or 12 years ago: It takes alkynes to make a world.

Take plenty of the dark purple solution, Tom offered, managnimously.

This old pipe is rusty, said Tom, ironically.

Cesium Glows
(Tune, Loves a Rose – Neil Young)

Cesium glows, but you better not lick it,
Its fire grows when its on the tongue.
Lips full of holes, youll know youve kissed it,
Just take a bite if you want to die young.

I want to see whats never been seen,
I want to dream that Cesium dream.
Come on love, we can glow together,
Lets eat it all right now.
Take a bite right now.

I want to lie in a hole in the ground,
Six feet deep, and twelve feet round.
Sky blue light around me shinin,
Pale blue worms upon me dinin.

Cesium glows, but you better not lick it,
Its fire grows when its on your tongue.
Mouth full of holes if ever you kiss it,
Gimme a spoon cause I wanna die Young.

—Songs of Cesium #109

Lectropositive Mama
(tune, Lady Madonna)

Letropositive mama,
Cesium on your meat,
Wonder how you manage,
To stay on your feet.

How dya stand the smokin?
How dya bide the flame?
Do you think that lifes just
A burnin game.

Monday night your hungers a blue fire,
Tuesday morn youre cookin fore the sun.
Wednesday rain, youre only flamin higher,
Having your fun.

Lectropositive mama,
Cinders in your curls,
No way can compare you,
To ordinary girls.

Likin the explosions,
Rock you on your seat.
How can any woman handle
All that heat?

—Songs of Cesium #47

Chemists fast prayer:
Dear Lord, if I mix sodium
with concentrated HNO3,
and add to it Plutonium,
would you take care on me?

Sea-Floor Spreading Lament (folksong) by Brenna Lorenz

Refrain: Alas for the spreading of the ocean,
Alas for the spreading of the sea,
Alas for every year that passes by,
Taking you two inches more from me!

Oh, why did you leave our native plate,
Causing me to weep and to mourn?
With the plates diverging at such a rate,
To leave me alone and lorn?

If only the mantle would my counsel take,
If the Earth would but listen unto me,
Id say, Your convection cell remake,
And bring my darling back to me!

So dive you down, you ocean dark,
Part of the mantle be-
Fire you up, you island arc –
Subduct my darling back to me!

O Little Melting Particle
(to the tune of O Little Town Of Bethlehem)

Para Dichloro Benzene
how do you melt so well?
The plateau of your cooling curve
is really something swell.
We think the heat of fusion
of water is so nice
Give up fourteen hundred cals per mole
and what you get is ice.