there’s antipathy, anodyne, linoleum, imodium,

and antigen and collagen and grenadine and belgium…

the periodic table of rejected elements.

lyrics to the real song “the elements by tom lehrer” are found here.

this little flash animation will sing the original song to you and answers the final chorus of:

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.

with the list of elements discovered since the song was recorded in 1959, which is something like this:

• lawrencium (1961)
• rutherfordium (1964)
• dubnium (1968)
• seaborgium (1974)
• bohrium (1981)
• hassium (1984)
• meitnerium (1982)
• ununnilium (1994)
• unununium (1994)
• ununbium (1996)
• ununquadium (1999)
• ununhexium (2000)
• ununoctium (2002)

do you begin to think that they are making these up? “artificial radioactive element” makes me think that too. they seem to have given up on naming them after things and are going with a latin naming scheme based on their atomic numbers. my source for all those is this website which also features names that didn’t make it.

[found via write only media]