ITS OFFICIAL : CHEMISTRY LECTURES ARE A YAWN.
October 9, 1995

A scientist has come up with proof of something students have known for years — chemistry lectures are boring. In an article published in the current issue of Chemistry in Britain, a university chemistry lecturer introduced a guest lecturer to a class of 50 doctoral candidates.

Then, he and his colleagues studied variations in what he calls the HTFDR — head-to-floor distance reduction. After about an hour , the average HTFDR dropped from 135cm to 121cm, said the author of the study, who preferred to remain anonymous.

The HTFDR immediately bounced back to normal when the speaker uttered the magic words: And in conclusion . . .

The Marginal Basin Song by Chris Stillman
(melody: Lead us on, thou Heavenly Father)

On a margin runs a canyon down into the ocean dark;
Theres a basin slowly filling with detritus from the arc.

Refrain: For the drifting causes rifting,
Opens basins mighty fine
Which strike-slip will close in time.

With volcanics theres no problem; theyre erupting all the time;
Fill the thin with pillow lavas, sheeted dikes and serpentine.

Rising slowly from the ocean filled with gritties coarse and fine,
Are you fore-arc? Are you anti-arc? Are you just a geosyncline?

Newfoundland, My Newfoundland
(Oh, Christmas Tree, Oh, Christmas Tree) by Brenna Lorenz

Convections cell was at thy door, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Thy ancient heart to pieces tore, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Great faulted blocks came crashing down, and flood basalts the land did drown,
And clastics coarse fell all around, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

Iapetus began to spread, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Detritus from thy coast was shed, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Thy slope was draped, so proud and great, with massive banks of carbonate,
Grand bank to meet so sad a fate, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

For flysch encroaching from the east, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Devoured thy margin like a beast, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
The ocean floor was raised on high, its mafic head reared to the sky;
Its chromous threat was drawing nigh, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

Your once-proud bank was bowing down, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Subduction did thy margin drown, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
The angry mantle did desire to smother thee with ash and fire,
And close Iapetus entire, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

The island arc with fiery breath, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Did shower all the land with death, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Until subductions starving throat, on Grenville crust was made to choke,
The tyrants rule collision broke, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

The land subsided in its pain, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Olistostromes in chaos reigned, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Then in Caradoc time there came a shale everywhere the same
That blanketed thy wounds and shame, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

Behold! Upon thy ancient shore, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
A landmass was annealed once more, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland,
Alas! Thy trials go on and on, for rifting struck the Avalon –
The cycle must repeat anon, Newfoundland, my Newfoundland!

Cesium (Burning in the Dead of Night)
(Tune, Blackbird)

Cesium burning in the dead of night.
Take your sky blue lines and start to shine.
All my life,
I was only waiting for the moment you were mine.

Cesium burning on a lake of ice.
Lift your glorious flame up to the skies.
All your life,
You were only waiting for some water to arise.

Cesium burn.
Cesium burn.
Give your light to this coal black night.

— Songs of Cesium #133

We Wish You a Happy Halogen

We wish you a happy halogen
We wish you a happy halogen
We wish you a happy halogen
To react with a metal.

Good acid we bring
to you and your base.
We wish you a merry molecule
and a happy halogen.

Florence Flask was … dressing for the opera when she turned to her husband and screamed, Erlenmeyer! My joules! Someone has stolen my joules!

Now, now, my dear, replied her husband, keep your balance and reflux a moment. Perhaps theyre mislead.

No, I know theyre stolen, cried Florence. I remember putting them in my burette … We must call a copper.

Erlenmeyer did so, and the flatfoot who turned up, one Sherlock Ohms, said the outrage looked like the work of an arch-criminal by the name of Lawrence Ium.

We must be careful — hes a free radical, ultraviolet, and dangerous. His girlfriend is a chlorine at the Palladium. Maybe I can catch him there. With that, he jumped on his carbon cycle in an activated state and sped off along the reaction pathway …

— Daniel B. Murphy, Precipitations

REAL QUESTIONS ASKED IN SCIENCE CLASSES

Are the rivers flowing up the mountain or down the mountain?

Is that the ocean? (Asked while on a field trip to Marine Lab Beach on Guam (a small island in the Pacific).

How can the river be flowing north? Thats uphill!

How can mass wasting be an agent of landscape formation on the Moon? The Moon has no gravity!

How do I get water into this beaker?

At the physics exam: Describe the universe in 200 words and give three examples.

Q: What do physicists enjoy doing the most at baseball games?
A: The wave.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center was known as SLAC, until the big earthquake, when it became known as SPLAC. SPLAC? Stanford Piecewise Linear Accelerator.

A student recognizes Einstein in a train and asks: Excuse me, professor, but does New York stop by this train?

Researchers in Fairbanks Alaska announced last week that they have discovered a superconductor which will operate at room temperature.

The answer to the problem was log(1+x). A student copied the answer from the good student next to him, but didnt want to make it obvious that he was cheating, so he changed the answer slightly, to timber(1+x)

One day in class, Richard Feynman was talking about angular momentum. He described rotation matrices and mentioned that they did not commute. He said that Sir William Hamilton discovered noncommutivity one night when he was taking a walk in his garden with Lady Hamilton. As they sat down on a bench, there was a moment of passion. It was then that he discovered that AB did not equal BA.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends on your frame of reference.

Top ways to get thrown out of chemistry lab

4. Begin pronouncing everything your immigrant lab instructor says exactly the way he/she says it.

3. Casually walk to the front of the room and urinate in a beaker.

2. Pop a paper bag at the crucial moment when the professor is about to pour the sulfuric acid

1. Show up with a 55-gallon drum of fertilizer and express an interest in federal buildings.

The geology poem
Ode to Olivine in Thin Section, a poem by Brenna Lorenz

In basalt a lurid green
Bespeaks the savage olivine;
Mantles child, born of fire,
Restless in the open air,
Little beads of anger bear
The torture of desire.

Silica upon its face
It suffers, helpless, in disgrace,
Its powers of reaction bound
By solids bond and cage,
In agony confined to rage
Unstable and unsound.

Its birefringent power plays
The sifted light to rare displays;
The haunting, primal colors tell
Of fire and furys flag unfurled,
Flag of fluid, nether world,
Beneath the fragile shell.