The Elements (Tom Lehrer)

Now, here’s a song I always get requests for, but I can’t understand for the life of me why.
It’s simply the names of the chemical elements set to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune.
I think the only reason I do it is to see if I still can. I’ll try.

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium
And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium
And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium
And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium

Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium
And gold protactinium and indium and gallium
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium

There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium

There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium
And lead, praseodymium and platinum, plutonium
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium

There's gold in californium and fermium, berkelium
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc and rhodium
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium

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

Oh! Thank you.
You may be interested to know there’s an older, much earlier version of that song
Which is due to Aristotle, and which goes like this: There’s earth and air and fire and water.
Life was much simpler in those days. Yes.