The periodic table of poetry (Up to Molydenum now)
by cricketjeff on August 18, 2010. © Jeff Green, All rights reserved
First Hydrogen the lightest gas
That makes up for its lack of mass
By forming most of all we see
In this or any galaxy
In chemistry it isn’t placid
Its cation does the work of acid
In bombs it leads to greater slaughter
But most important it’s in water!
Then Helium at number two
Finds very little it can do
Inert in almost every way
So I have little else to say
Now Lithium that’s soft and bright
Makes alloys that are very light
Its salts can make your fireworks red
There’s not much else needs to be said
Beryllium has such toxic dust
That special measures are a must
It used to be used quite a lot
In copper alloys that got hot
But now we know it makes you ill
Few industries will use it still
Boron’s always black and hard
And stuff you shouldn’t disregard
In borax it will wash your eyes
In fibres it’s a great surprise
A golf club or a lightweight tank
May have this element to thank
Carbon, of course, is here for life
And diamonds make the sharpest knife
In pencils people call it lead
Which shows they must be off their head
It forms long chains, all on its own
And complex shapes that can be shown
Nitrogen’s next, it’s bland and clear
And forms most of our atmosphere
Ammonia, and stuff for bombs
And fertilizer for your toms
All need this elemental stuff
I’m pleased to say we have enough
There’s oxygen at number eight
We like it in its gaseous state
Although it lets our buildings burn
We need it as we quickly learn
The third most common stuff there is
It gives much chemistry its fizz
Fluorine is very bad for you
It changes skin to useless goo
In non-stick teflon it’s the part
That mean adhesion cannot start
Alone reacts with anything
Perhaps the elemental king
Neon gives an eerie glow
To signs as all of you will know
So noble in it’s chemistry
There are no compounds you can see
Sodium burns with yellow flame
Ignites in water what a game
You can be sure it’s never damp
Inside that eerie yellow lamp
With chlorine it makes salt for chips
And’s softer than your fingertips
Magnesium flashes into light
Few other flames are half as bright
In alloys used in cars and planes
It leads to unexpected gains
Plants put it into chlorophyll
Without it you’d be very ill!
Aluminium it’s called
(Americans will be appalled)
It’s strong and light and forms a skin
That stops corrosives getting in
Like all the rest it’s made in stars
We use it in our planes and cars
A tetravalent metalloid
It seems nobody can avoid
The modern world needs Silicon
With clever patterns etched upon
Although these chips seem quite enough
It gives us glass and other stuff
Now phosphorus which has a glow
Gives every safety match its go
It’s used for flares and screening smoke
Its acid give the fizz to coke
Since it is in all life on Earth
You know quite what the stuff is worth
Now sulphur compounds often smell
As brimstone it’s a sign of hell
A pretty yellow on its own
More allotropes than any known
In life it takes a major role
Makes dirty smoke when burning coal
Next chlorine gas that’s murky green
Its use on troops was very mean
It kills the bugs in swimming pools
It’s found in many molecules
In paint stripper and cleaning stuff
That man has used more than enough
The argon verse is hard for me
It has so little chemistry
But we may sometimes use this fact
As filler so things won’t react
Potassium has symbol K
An element that likes to play
A soft and silvery metal which
Reacts upon the slightest twitch
It even burns in nitrogen
Which can confuse unlearned men
We need a fair bit to survive
It’s part of everything alive.
If you have written things with chalk
Or if you like to stand and walk
Then calcium is in your life
Its all around and use is rife
A carbonate is called limestone
Its phosphate makes up most of bone
It furs your kettle, and your pipes
So fuels a lot of plumbers gripes
Transition metals form a block
Whose properties we’ll now unlock
First scandium is rather rare
Has just one use that I’m aware
In aluminium alloys
The aircraft industry employs
Its strength for weight the highest known
Will be in many things you own
Titanium is common stuff
But most rocks don’t contain enough
It’s oxide is the white in paint
So many uses that you best
Go look it up, I’ll be impressed
Vanadium’s another one
I hope you find this journey fun
It’s used in steels for tools and such
There’s some in you, but not too much
You all know Chromium by shine
So plated parts can look quite fine
Its compounds come in every hue
Perhaps we’ve time to list a few
The very orange dichromate
Can change its oxidation state
And then a deep and dirty green
Will be the colour you have seen
Makes rubies red and mauves untamed
You’ll see how chromium was named
So now give Manganese a turn
A metal that we cannot spurn
Essential to the life we live
With many other gifts to give
You need it to make stainless steel
It can give glass a “rose appeal”
Some feminists may whisper “please
Can we now have Womanganese?”
It’s Iron next which had an age
That set us on this modern stage
A revolution came to be
In Britain’s iron industry
Producing steel that changed the world
And empire banners soon unfurled
You can’t make tanks or guns or planes
Without this metal’s famous strains
It’s also part of me and you
(Anaemia should give a clue)
The final fuel of dying stars
It gives the rusty hue to Mars
Of all that’s underneath the sky
It has the stablest nuclei!
Who hasn’t heard of Cobalt blue
Perhaps it’s nature’s finest hue
Prosthetic hips or so I’m told
Need cobalt or they can’t be sold
Magnetic metals and in planes
(In super alloy turbine vanes)
We need it too for vitamins
Without B12 nobody wins!
A metal with so many uses
Doesn’t need to make excuses
We put it into coins and steels
In forks and spoons and alloy wheels
A catalyst for many things
And helps to toughen wedding rings
So buy some Nickel mining shares
We need it for so many wares
Ten thousand years ago, or so
A copper pendant went on show
Though meteroic iron and gold
Are many dozen times as old
We think that copper was refined
Before most other things were mined
It’s soft and yellow when it’s pure
But Zinc or Tin effect a cure
And Bronze age people found this out
It gave their weapons added clout.
A great conductor (not of bands)
It’s useful in so many hands.
I wonder if you ever think
About the ways that we use zinc
In galvanising iron and steel
In sheets on roofs (that bad guys steel)
Deodorants and fancy paints
And statues of some famous saints
It protects iron exposed to seas
A lot is used in batteries
Pure Gallium just loves to melt
The strangest metal ever felt
A first as hard as any plate
Then suddenly in liquid state
Its arsenide makes diodes glow
Its nitride puts bright blue on show
Thermometers with lots of range
Makes other metals turn quite strange
Germanium is not a flower
Its used to capture solar power
Transistors, diodes lots of stuff
Fibre optics all that guff
These days it isn’t used as much
Replaced by silicon and such
If you have read detective tales
You’ll know that Arsenic derails
The lives of victims by the score
Of poisoners we should deplore
Napoleon, some think, was killed
By poison his wallpaper spilled
The ink contained some “Paris Green”
(Perhaps he just missed Josephine)
Computer makers use a lot
And strangely some is in lead shot.
Selenium can make things stink
It’s more important than you think
We have to eat a little bit
To keep out bodies fighting fit
Replacing lead in plumbers brass
And making reddish tones in glass
You won’t spill Bromine if you’re wise
Its caustic vapours hurt the eyes
It’s liquid and it’s reddish brown
In compounds it slows fires down
It’s put in lenses and some pools
But other uses now break rules
A noble gas called Krypton’s next
Another verse that leaves me vexed
In discharge lamps it’s almost white
You’ll see it on large signs at night
It will react with fluorine, though
That’s not a lot to put on show!
Rubidium adds a purple flash
In fireworks that bang and crash
Explodes in water, burns in air
So handle it with utmost care!
In TV tubes to stop X-rays
(A use that’s rather rare these days)
It’s isotopes near Chernobyl
Have made a lot of people ill
But Strontium cures cancer too
To give this element its due
Next Yttrium, with symbol Y
An element that’s rather shy
In other metals’ ores it hides
(particularly the Lanthanides)
In garnets and in new alloys
This metal now makes quite a noise.
Zirconium is not that rare
And zircons turn up everywhere
As tiny bubbles locked n rocks
Which give us natures oldest clocks
In some old flash bulbs burned so bright
It gave photographers their light
And round the necks of gorgeous girls
Zirconias far outshine pearls!
Niobium has changed its name
Columbium should own the fame
But either name performs quite well
In alloys such as inconel
In jets and rockets takes the heat
No other metal has it beat
And some alloys when very cold
Are superconductors I’ve been told
In austenitic stainless steels
And as disulphide greasing wheels
Molybdenum is all around
So many uses have been found
Most living things contain a tad
Without it you’d be feeling bad
Author notes
This is very much a work in progress, I’d like to get it published after it is
eventually finished.
Out of order stanzas here until I get to them
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Technetium has no stable form
But still has roles it can perform
In tracers it helps fight disease
On almost every time it’s seen
Praseodymium makes green
But being such a curious fellow
It’s used to make ceramics yellow!
For MRIs your blood may be infused
And Gadolinium is often used
It’s also found in radiation shields
Reduction harmful thermal neutron yields
With Copernicium I’ll end
The rest are up to you my friend!
English