Some science song lyrics I have written, starting with the only one I have so far recorded. All the lyrics on this page are shared under a creative commons licence – you are free to reuse them so long as author attribution is given. All recordings are copyright, please contact me if you wish to use them.
Grothendieck Song
Lyrics
When I was a young boy doing maths in class
I thought I knew it all.
Every test that I took, I was sure to pass.
I felt pride, and there never came a fall.
Up at university, I found what life is for:
A world of mathematics, and all mine to explore.
Learning geometry and logic, I was having a ball.
Until I hit a wall…
For I adore Euler and Erdős,
Élie Cartan and Ramanujan
Newton and Noether. But not to sound churlish
There’s one man I cannot understand.
No, I can’t get to grips with Grothendieck,
My palms feel sweaty and my knees go weak.
I’m terrified that never will I master the technique
Of Les Élements de Géométrie Algébrique.
He’s a thoughtful and a thorough theory-builder, sans pareil.
But can anybody help me find the secret, s’il vous plaît
Of this awe-inspiring generality and abstraction?
I have to say it’s driving me to total distraction.
For instance… A Euclidean point is a location in space, and that we can all comprehend.
René Descartes added coordinates for the power and the rigour they lend.
Later came Zariski topology, where a point’s a type of algebraic set
Of dimension nought. Well, that’s not what I thought. But it’s ok. There’s hope for me yet!
But now and contra all prior belief
We hear a point’s a prime ideal
In a locally ringed space, overlaid with a sheaf.
Professor G, is truly this for real?
No, I can’t make head nor tail of Grothendieck
Or Deligne, or Serre, or any of that clique.
I’ll have to learn not to care whenever people speak
Of Les Fondements de la Géométrie Algébrique.
But don’t take me for a geometrical fool.
I can do much more than merely prove the cosine rule.
I’ll calculate exotic spheres in dimension 29
And a variety of varieties, projective and affine.
I’m comfortable with categories (though not if they’re derived)
I’ll tile hyperbolic space in dimension 25
I can compute curvature with the Gauss-Bonnet law
And just love the Leech Lattice in dimension 24.
But algebro-geometric scheming
Leaves me spluttering and screaming.
And in logic too, you may call me absurd
But I wouldn’t know a topos, if trampled by a herd.
I’ve tried Pursuing Stacks but they vanished out of sight,
I’ve fought with étale cohomology with all my might.
And Les Dérivateurs. It’s 2000 pages long.
I reach halfway through line 3, before it all goes badly wrong.
No, I’ll never get to grips with Grothendieck
And I’m frightened that I’m failing as a mathematics geek.
All the same, I can’t deny the lure and the mystique
Of Le Séminaire de Géométrie Algébrique.
© Richard Elwes 2015. These lyrics are openly licensed via Creatice Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 .
Behind the Rainbow
(To the tune of “Over the Rainbow” by Harold Arlen with orginal lyrics by Yip Harburg.)
Somewhere behind the rainbow shines a light,
That splits into multi-colours, although it starts out white.
As light enters each raindrop, there’s refraction:
The change of both speed and direction, described by a certain fraction.
The ratio of sines of angles into and out from the surface tells us
That of the wavelengths fore and aft. And that’s the law of optics craft by Snellius.
Wavelength fixes light’s colour and (by Snell’s assertion)
Its angle change from air into water, causing chromatic dispersion.
© Richard Elwes 2023. These lyrics are openly licensed via Creatice Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 .
Look at Pi
(To the tune of “Misty” by Erroll Garner orginal lyrics by Johnny Burke.)
Look at pi
A Greek letter, but it’s so much more besides
Representing a ratio of lengths
The diameter from the circle’s circumference.
Pi and e
Are the two keys to trigonometry
Via Euler’s identity
Transcendent, with such grace
They grant access to complex space.
People pondered sums of squares of reciprocals
What’s the limit, as the sum gets long and difficult?
Euler’s mathematics wisely predicts
That its pi squared by six.
Pi and us
To the Philae lander, from the Ahmes papyrus
Indispensable to science and design
It’s yours and it’s mine
It’s the zero of the function sine.
© Richard Elwes 2023. These lyrics are openly licensed via Creatice Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 .
The Elements (New Final Verse)
(Tom Lehrer’s The Elements was written in 1959. Since then the following have been discovered.)
There’s Nihonium, and Dubnium, Moscovium, Darmstadtium,
And Tennessine, Roegentium, Oganesson, and Hassium,
Flerovium, Rutherfordium, Copernicium, Seaborgium
Lawrencium, Livermorium, Meitnerium, and Bohrium
These are all the ones we know of, numbered one to one-eighteen.
There may be more beyond, but who knows when they’ll first be seen.
© Richard Elwes 2023. These lyrics are openly licensed via Creatice Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 .
Simple City 