Since Tom Lehrer composed his The Elements song, Lawrencium (mentioned by Tom Lehrer during the performance to which I link) and fifteen other new elements have been discovered.
I think a new verse is called for:
There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.
There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorous and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and caesium
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium, and
Tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There's sulphur, californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium and nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper,
Tungsten, tin and sodium.
Proposed new verse:
Rutherfordium, Lawrencium, Seaborgium, Ununtrium
Livermorium, Darmstadtium, Flerovium, Meitnerium
Ununoctium and Hassium
Ununpentium and Bohrium
Ununseptium, Roentgenium, Copernicium, and Dubnium
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discovered.
This just about scans if you merge the first two syllables together each time. I am more than open to any suggestions for improvements from any scientists, musicians, or poets. The ones beginning "Unun" will get proper names in due course.
...in fact I think Brian Cox (who - thanks to his RT of @ElectroPig's original tweet - is responsible for my time-wasting efforts here) should waste some of his own time and try this out on his keyboard!
[1] Lyrics from Sing365 (I hope they don't mind my using them).
[2] New elements from Lenntech.
[3] Latest naming conventions from Wikipedia.
