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Large Blue Butterfly Blues
She woke up one mornin she spread her wings and flew away,
But when I saw how she had changed I shoulda known she'd never stay,
We were close but then she grew, she grew large and she grew blue,
Now she's gone I know I was only being used,
I got the large blue butterfly blues.
She was a lonely caterpillar and I was a hungry ant,
I met her one evening neath leaves of wild thyme plant,
Then the wild times ensued, and things got pretty rude,
Every time I tickled her she gave me sweet honeydew,
And I knew I'd be forever true to the butterfly blue.
I picked her up and took her home to the colony’s nest,
Where I tickled her for days 'cause the fluid she secretes it tastes the best,
But then it started going wrong when her sweetness was all gone,
She hibernated, then she waked and ate our babies, and our spawn,
But I still kept hanging on to the Butterfly blue.
She wrapped herself in a cocoon and hid herself away,
And she finally emerged on that sad and fateful day,
I escorted her outside, I'd been taken for a ride
She just needed my protection before she just up and flied,
So I cried how I cried for my butterfly blue.
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2. |
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Within every single cell that's in all of us,
Is a tiny little thing called the nucleus,
But it's the stuff inside that really cause a fuss,
Cause it's the stuff that tells our bodies how to grow into us.
It's a very long and complicated molecule,
But for something so small it's very influential,
It can make you grow big, strong and tall,
Or if it's like mine it makes you hairy and small.
It's DNA, DNA,
Three little letters with a lot to say,
De-oxy-ribo-nucle-ic acid,
Hey that's DNA.
It comes in little packets called chromosomes,
You get half from your Daddy and your Mum,
It's a double helix ladder with a code made from,
Paired nucleic acids and it's very long.
The adenine pairs with the thymine,
And the guanine pairs with cytosine,
And when you got enough pairs you got a gene,
Which tells a cell how to make a protein.
It's DNA, DNA,
Three little letters with a lot to say,
De-oxy-ribo-nucle-ic acid,
Hey that's DNA.
Every time a cell divides it makes a replication,
But every now and then there is a mutation,
And a mutation may cause an innovation,
And that might make a situation,
Like a baby being born with eleven toes,
Or a blood disease or a massive nose,
And don't make babies with your cousin, cause you should know,
It multiplies the chances that the defects show.
It's DNA, DNA,
Three little letters with a lot to say,
Deoxyribonucleic acid,
Hey that's DNA.
DNA woh DNA
It could make you crazy, it could make you gay,
It could make your hair fall all away,
It could make it blond, brown, blue or grey.
DNA woh DNA,
It could make you want to fight or want to pray,
It could make you drop down dead today,
Oh that's DNA.
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3. |
Transuranics
04:24
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Transuranics
Down at the bottom of the periodic table are some elements that I'd like to introduce,
They're artificially made and some are weapons grade but mostly they don't have any use.
Round about 70 years ago, the table only numbered 92,
But we needed some more just to settle the score with Nazis back in World War 2.
So we took us a nucleus of uranium and in the cyclotron we fired a neutron in,
The neutron stayed and then it beta decayed, and then we had neptunium.
But neptunium it was no good for the bomb so they went back to the laborotories,
And when they found plutonium, they made up a ton and then we dropped it on the Japanese.
So when god made the elements he sold us short,
Because he only gave us 92,
But now that we make the element we'll keep making more,
Even if they got no practical use.
Now Americium isotope number 241, they found it only alpha decays.
So to prevent any harm it's in your smoke alarm and it's in your smoke alarm and it's saving your life everyday,
The next one along it is Curium, named after Marie and Pierre,
And it's sitting in the space probes on the Moon and Mars as the alpha source in their spectrometers.
Well Berkelium, it's good for nothing at all but Californium will neutron emit,
So if you're looking for something to start your nuclear reactor, Californium's the metal that fits.
Einsteinium and Fermium the next actinides were discovered in the H bomb debris,
And just like Mendeleevium, Nobelium, Lawrencium, there ain't no use for them we can see.
Chorus
Now the US of A and the USSR were in the middle of the old cold war,
And as a matter of pride both claimed the first transactinides - elements 107 from 104,
Because there's honour and fame in being able to name the elements that you claim to have found,
But the matter wasn't settled until 1997 when the IUPAC shared them out.
Dubnium and Bohrium went to the east and Rutherfordium and Seaborgium west,
And that's a hell of a tryst to name a thing that exists for a minute or ten at the best.
The Germans named Hassium, Meitnerium, Damstadtium, Roentgenium, Copernicium too.
Now there's Flerovium and Livermorium but ununtrium, ununpentium, ununseptium and ununoctium ain't got names, they're just too new.
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4. |
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The Christmas Power Ballad of Michael Faraday
It's Christmas time, a time to remember,
A man who gave his wisdom to the world,
He never gave sermons on the mount but he gave Christmas lectures,
Made accessible to every little boy and girl.
The Christmas message that you bring,
Touched me more than Jesus or the Queen's,
'Cos Jesus only saved our souls,
But you gave science to the young and old,
And the Queen's speech is just dull.
Michael Faraday, you blew them all away,
With your presentations for the kids at the Institution,
You spoke scientifically, with such simplicity,
You drew them magnetically with your electricity.
It's Christmas time, the Christmas lights are on the tree,
And each one burns as a testament to you,
'Cos you showed us the way, the way to generate electricity,
With a coil of wire and a magnet moving through.
The Christmas message that you bring,
Touched me more than Jesus or the Queen's,
'Cos Jesus only saved our souls,
But you kind of invented rock n'roll,
'Cos a microphone works like a dynamo,
And the Queen's speech is just dull.
Chorus
You may have never done a miracle like turning water into wine,
But you developed electrolysis that makes chlorine out of brine,
And that's more useful anytime.
The Christmas message that you bring,
Touched me more than Jesus or the Queen's,
'Cos Jesus only saved our souls,
But you save people in the actual world,
Because the chemicals that you make possible,
Are in pharmaceutical,
And the Queen's speech is just dull.
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5. |
Relativistic Relatives
02:54
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Albert Einstein born in Ulm in 1879,
Turned the world of physics upside down, by the age of 25,
Just a humble patent clerk he made professors nervous,
By pointing out the speed of light's the same to all observers.
Now I know that sounds a very very very simple thing to say,
But then you have to throw all your ideas of time and space away,
Cos time can shrink and space can grow, depending on how fast you go,
That's ok, that's alright but you're never ever gonna break the speed of light.
Einstein named his special theory special relativity,
And showed that energy's the mass times the square of light's velocity,
Then he made the theory general, by redefining gravity,
As the curvature of space time in four dimensional geometry,
So as a beam of light is speeding right across the galaxy,
It thinks it's going straight but that's actually a fallacy,
Cos light will bend round nearby stars, depending on how big they are,
That's ok, that's alright but you're never ever gonna break the speed of light.
Now my twin brother Billy Bob he always was a bragger,
Saying he would be the first to take the speed of light and shatter it,
Nobody believed, they thought he was a gasser,
Until the day they signed him up to join the boys at NASA,
Then he got himself a rocket ship and flew away,
Put his foot down on the pedal, kept accelerating,
Getting faster, getting faster getting quicker everyday,
Til the Earth was just a dot a thousand million miles away,
I was following his rocket ship in my telescope,
And the faster that he went the thinner he would grow,
Getting faster, getting thinner, I hope he'll be alright,
But he's never gonna break the speed of light.
Now there's a helluva problem getting up to light speed.
And that's the closer that you get, the more fuel you need,
You'll be gaining mass and energy exponentially,
until you're going fast enough that you weigh infinity.
So Billy Bob was heavy as he's ever gonna be,
Pulling rocks and planet gravitationally,
And relative to me he was nearly at his goal,
But seemingly to Billy Bob, he wasn't any closer.
So back he came with his tail between his legs and eating on a humble pie,
Thinking the only thing he'd lost was a little dignity and pride,
But he'd lost 80 years of my life, whilst he'd been gone a night.
Now my twin's my younger brother and he never ever broke the speed of light.
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6. |
Archimedes
04:20
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Archimedes of Syracuse spent his life looking out at the sea,
With a twig in his hand he drew shapes in the sand, solving puzzles with geometry,
Now the king had a crown and suspected that it had less gold than he was told there would be,
He needed a way to determine its volume to calculate its density,
When Archimedes had a bath he discovered the answer was found easily,
For the volume displaced was the same that had raised and the goldsmith was hung from a tree.
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
The modern world without his inventions would be Archimedean screwed.
Well the King was concerned about the romans invading and needed to keep them at bay,
So Archimedes designed him a ship shaking claw, the catapult and even a death ray.
By getting the soldiers to polish their shields and stand in parabolic array,
And focus the light of the sun and that technology's still useful for renewable energy.
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
Without his ways of focussing rays we'd be Archimedean screwed.
Mathematics was always his passion, he came close to a figure for pi,
He puzzled for years over spirals and spheres, but its circles for which he'd eventually die.
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
As Romans invaded, he kept contemplating, and when asked to stop simply refused,
The roman saw his quiet defiance as being incredibly rude,
He was run through and so never knew if his circles could ever be proved.
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
Where would we be without the double pulley, and the bilge pump made out of a screw,
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
His violent streak was cheered by the Greeks, but the roman fleet frequently booed.
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
The man who bathed and shouted Eureka and ran through the streets in the nude.
Where would we be without Archimedes, antiquity's brainiest dude,
The modern world without his inventions would Archimedean screwed.
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