The Elements

"The Elements" was written by Tom Lehrer in 1959 and only includes the elements that had been discovered up to that point. [I've included the more recent elements in green below.]  The song is sung to the tune of "Major-General's Song" by Gilbert and Sullivan.

The order of the elements in this song is for entertainment value only.  Not by number, not by discovery date, not in alphabetical order...but to keep the song moving and rhyming and entertaining you and me.

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 and protactinium and indium and gallium,
< gasp >
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 phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.

And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
< gasp >
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.

[There's borium, lawrencium, livermorium, rutherfordium
And darmstadtium, flerovium, seaborgium, meitnerium,
And capernicium, roentgenium, ubniu, finally hassium]

These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others, but they haven't been discarvard

(discovered).