A Physics Songbag

hv (aitch noo)

1. All black-body radiations

All the spectrum variations

All atomic oscillations

Vary as “hv”

2. Ultraviolet vibrations

X-and gamma-ray pulsations

Ordinary light sensations

All obey “hv”

Chorus:

Here’s the right relation

Governs radiation

Here’s the new

And only true

Electrodynamical equation

Never mind your d/dt²

V times e or half mv ²

(If you watch the factor c ²)

E equals “hv”

3. Even in matters calorific

Such things as the heat specific

Yield to treatment scientific

If you use “hv”

4. In all questions energetic

Whether static or kinetic

Or electric, or magnetic

You must use “hv”

Chorus

5. There would be a mighty clearance

We should all be Planck’s adherents

Were it not that interference

Still defies “hv”

Around 1920, not so long after Max Planck proposed his eponymous constant, this song emerged at Cambridge University in the UK. The rival quantum and wave theories seemed inconsistent, yet both were necessary. As Sir William Bragg said, “We teach the wave theory on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and the quantum theory on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays.” The author of this song is Gilbert Stead, a lecturer at the Cavendish Laboratory, who also wrote the textbook Elementary Physics in 1924 (published in updated editions for 50 years). The song was among those sung by Cavendish students and faculty after their annual dinners. The tune is “The Men of Harlech.”

How nice to be a physicist

by Arthur Roberts

How nice to be a physicist in 1947,

To hold finance in less esteem than Molotov does Haven,

To shun the importuning men with treasure who would lend it,

To think of money only when you wonder how to spend it,

Oh,

How nice to be a physicist in this our year of grace,

To see the scornful world at last admit your rightful place,

To see the senators defer to every wise pronouncement

To fascinate the women’s club, and star at each commencement,

Oh,

But have you sought a physicist and place for him to dwell,

And searched the town in vain to find a vacant dungeon cell

Or tried to teach a thousand students who can’t do a sum

The girls who’d like to be Greer Garson finding radium?

Oh,

Oh did you write a book on fission which you tried to sell?

Or wonder while you lectured what you could or couldn’t tell?

Or try to get declassified some nuclear equations,

Or wonder if the work you do was done at secret stations?

Oh,

How nice to be a physicist in 1947,

How nice … ?

How long do you think it would take to learn something about, uh, butterflies?

Physics professor Arthur Roberts of the State University of Iowa (now the University of Iowa) was commissioned by Mariette Kuper to write “How Nice to Be a Physicist”for the MIT Radiation Laboratory reunion party held during the Washington, DC, meeting of the American Physical Society in May 1947. Robert’s songs were well known in the physics world from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. He passed away last year (see Physics Today, January 2005, page 68 ). A 1947 performance of this song is available on our website.

This undated ditty was written by George Gamow (1904–1968), pioneer of big-bang cosmology. The protagonists, British astronomers par excellence Martin Ryle (1918–1984) and Fred Hoyle (1915–2001), were often publicly at odds over their respective visions of the cosmos. Hoyle pioneered the steady-state theory.

A liter and a gram

(Music: “A Bushel and a Peck”by Frank Loesser)

Many of Tom Lehrer’s songs, such as “The Elements” or “The Vatican Rag,” have acquired legendary status (at least for those of us of a certain age). Lehrer wrote “The Physical Revue (a music drama in one scene)” and staged it in January 1951 at Harvard University, where he was then a graduate student in mathematics. According to the program, the scene was “The last class of a mythical course, Physics 11a. (There will be a three-year intermission at the end of Scene 1.),” and these songs were included. Most if not all of the songs from there and then have never been commercially available.

I love you a liter and a gram,

A liter and a gram, and it’s crazy that I am,

A meter and a yard and a newton and a watt,

A newton and a watt, and I wanna know a lot

About you, about you

(A meter and a liter, nothing could be sweeter.)

’Cause I love you a liter and a gram,

And it’s crazy that I am for you.

I love you a poundal and a dyne,

A poundal and a dyne, and I wanna make you mine,

A foot-pound and an erg and a joule and a calorie

A joule and a calorie, and I wanna spend my salary

On you, on you

(Centigrades and Fahrenheits,

You lift me up to darin’ heights.)

’Cause I love you a poundal and a dyne,

And I wanna make you mine, I do.

The professor’s song

(Music: A. S. Sullivan — “If You Give Me Your Attention,” from Princess Ida)

If you give me your attention, I will tell you what I am.

I’m a genius and a physicist (and something of a ham).

I have tried for numerous degrees, in fact, I’ve one of each:

Of course, that makes me eminently qualified to teach.

I understand the subject matter thoroughly, it’s true,

And I can’t see why it isn’t all as obvious to you.

My lectures all are masterpieces, excellently planned,

Yet everybody tells me that I’m hard to understand,

And I can’t think why

My diagrams are models of true art, you must agree,

And my handwriting is famous for its legibility;

When I write “gravitation,” say, or any other word,

For anyone to say he cannot read it is absurd.

My demonstrations all get more remarkable every year,

Though, frankly, what they go to prove is sometimes less than clear,

And all my explanations are quite lucid, I am sure,

Yet everybody tells me that my lectures are obscure.

And I can’t think why

Consider, for example, oscillation of a spring:

The force that acts upon it is a very simple thing,

It’s kx ³, or kx ² — no, just kx I’ll bet,

The sign in front is plus (or is it minus? … I forget)

Well, anyway, there is a force, of that there is no doubt;

All these problems are quite trivial, if you only think them out.

Yet people tell me: “I have memorized the whole term through,

Everything you’ve told us, but the problems I can’t do.”

And I can’t think why

Laura Greene, professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, wrote this song in 2001. The melody is that of “Cheek to Cheek.” Says Greene, “Maybe the apologies should have been to Irving Berlin, who wrote the original song, but I copied the words and style from the Ella Fitzgerald / Louis Armstrong rendition, trying to follow Ella’s phrasing as much as possible. I am also a great fan of Ella in general.”

[Editors’ note: This melody was very popular in 1951, having been drawn from the hit 1946 movie The Road to Utopia, with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, and Lauren Bacall.]

RELATIVITY

(Music: “Personality” by James van Heusen)

When Isaac Newton wrote

The laws that we all quote,

It’s now extremely apparent that he

Neglected to consider — Relativity.

What focused our attention

On the fourth dimension?

(We’d been doing so well with just three.)

’Twas Mister Einstein’s brainchild — Relativity.

And who would think

And who’d forecast

That bodies shrink

When they go fast?

It makes old Isaac’s theory

Look weary.

And so if you are near

When atom bombs appear,

And you’re reduced to a pile of debris,

You’ll know it’s largely due to — Relativity.

[Editors’ note: This melody was also well known at the time, drawn from the 1943 musical One Touch of Venus, which ran for 567 performances on Broadway with Mary Martin as Venus. In 1948, it was made into a movie with Ava Gardner.]

DON’T MAJOR IN PHYSICS

(Music: “The Trouble with Women” by Kurt Weill)

(1st student)

(Chorus)

(Chorus)

When you’re in k-space

(Lyrics by Dr. James D. Livingston

Tune: “Makin’ Whoopee,” by Walter Donaldson)

The bound’ries of the Brillouin zone

Just represent a law you’ve known

The satisfaction of Bragg diffraction

When you’re in k-space

Those bound’ries on the k-space maps

Are where you’ll find energy gaps

That’s one attraction of the abstraction

When you’re in k-space

And there’s the Fermi surface

Contour of energy

Things happen when that surface

Reaches the boundary

Dimensions in momentum space

Are inverse of the normal place

Just keepin’ busy can make you dizzy

When you’re in k-space

Jim Livingston had a long career as a research physicist and, since his retirement from General Electric Co, has been a senior lecturer in the department of materials science and engineering at MIT. He wrote these lyrics around 1997, as one in a series of songs for each chapter of the textbook he was teaching from. The melody hails from the 1928 Broadway musical Whoopee!

Solid state of mind

A parody of Billy Joel’s “New York State of Mind” written and performed by Lynda Williams

Some folks like astronomy and study galaxies in the local group.

Some like quantum gravity, pulling super strings from the cosmic soup.

But I’m pointing my laser, at an earthly crystalline.

I’m in a Solid State of Mind.

I’ve heard all the theories on the Higgs boson and supersymmetry.

Been around the cyclotrons and down the beam lines of high energy.

But I can build what I’m needing — I don’t need to wait for time.

I’m in a Solid State of Mind.

I really dig crystallography and the symmetries of lattices and point groups.

Is it orthorhombic, hexagonal, or face-centered cube?

X-ray diffraction is a great way to spend some time.

I’m in a Solid State of Mind.

It is so easy to get work today.

If Solid State is the physics you do.

Hard drives, cell phones, computers, hearing aids.

The Solid State — it pays.

Semiconductors have changed the way that we live today.

Junction transistors gave birth to our computer age.

Electronic switching — getting faster all the time.

I’m in a Solid State of Mind.

It is so easy to get work today.

If Solid State is the physics you do.

MOSFETS, ICs, LEDs and wafer substrates

The Solid State is here to stay.

Superconductivity at High T_c is super cool

Superfluidity of He-3 is super smooth

So many super mysteries

We’ll solve them one phase at a time.

I’m in a Solid State of Mind.

I’m building a quantum dot laser out of indium arsenide.

I’m in a Solid, or Amorphous, State of Mind.

© 2005 Lynda Williams

The World Year of Physics, which celebrates the centennial of Einstein’s miracle year of 1905, is now half over. This song was written to help celebrate the WYP by Marian McKenzie and her husband, Walter Smith, a physics professor at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania. Smith also hosts an extensive collection of physics-related songs at http://www.physicssongs.org .

Lynda Williams teaches physics at Santa Rosa Junior College in Santa Rosa, California. As “The Physics Chanteuse,” she has performed at many scientific meetings and other venues for the past eight years. The composition presented here and on our website is included in her new CD collection, Parody Violation, available through http://www.scientainment.com .

A lyric-writing contest

Bring out your inner muse! To help celebrate the World Year of Physics, we asked Michael Mendelson to “write an appropriate piece of music for us to publish. It will need to be sophisticated, fun, somewhat difficult, and infinitely rewarding—just like physics!” He came up with this Argentinian-style tango. Now it’s your turn to write lyrics for it. To guide you, an almost-accurate sound file is available to subscribers on our website.

Submissions must be received by 15 October 2005. They may be either e-mailed to lyrics-contest@aip.org or mailed to our editorial office address, given on page 6. The most captivating and engaging entry or entries, as judged by our editors, will appear in the December 2005 issue of Physics Today.

Mendelson got his physics bachelor’s degree in 1971 from the University of California, Berkeley, where he also enjoyed the folk-music scene. He followed that with a master’s degree in comparative folklore and mythology from UCLA, then a long and continuing career working with computer systems and networks. All along the way, he has composed and played music.