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Oct. 2nd, 2009 @ 05:01 pm Songs of Science
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I've recently been informed that the Halloween party traditional at the annual department retreat may be replaced by "something that might resemble Oktoberfest and a short-sketch show possibly with group singing."  Being the sort of person I am, this immediately provoked a web search for science-based songs that I could sing. 

I was already familiar with a few, namely Tom Lehrer's Elements, Monty Python's Galaxy Song, and The Amphioxus Song (the latter stumbled upon when I was working at the genome center and doing amphioxus finishing).  And I knew a bunch of programmer/sci-fi filk songs (HAL's Song - it's in the comments, search for "I sent Frank to fix the antenna" and sing it to "My bonnie lies over the ocean", You Can Build a Mainframe From the Things You Find at Home), but those seemed inappropriate for the group.  Surely, surely there were more out there. 

Surprise!  There are!

The journal Nature runs a blog called The Great Beyond that has collected a whole lotta science songs, many with videos.  There's possibilities there.  They also link in one of those posts to rips of Singing Science records, a six-LP set for kids produced in the "late 1950s / early 1960s by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer. (Zaret's main claim to fame is writing the lyrics to the classic "Unchained >Melody" for the 1955 movie "Unchained", later recorded by the Righteous Brothers and more recently used in 'Ghost'.)"  I listened to much of "What is an Animal?" before I broke under the wave of saccharine cuteness-for-5-year-olds and turned it off.

Happy Friday!

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From:[info]shoutingboy
Date: October 3rd, 2009 01:17 am (UTC)

A million miles away, a butterfly flapped its wings

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A lot of Jonathan Coulton's stuff is pretty geeky. For straight-up math content, you can go with Mandelbrot Set. (It has one bad word, but you could change it to "freaking"...)

Though I guess That Spells DNA would be more appropriate?

I think you can buy instrumental-only background tracks from that site, to sing to. I've done "Re: Your Brains" and "Skullcrusher Mountain" a few times at karaoke...
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From:[info]amethyst73
Date: October 3rd, 2009 04:14 am (UTC)

Re: A million miles away, a butterfly flapped its wings

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Oooo! I'd forgotten about Coulton... and I didn't even know about the DNA song. That... could work. :D Thank you!
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From:[info]cerebralpaladin
Date: October 4th, 2009 06:42 pm (UTC)
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If you haven't heard They Might Be Giants's children's science songs, you should totally check them out as well. They are awesome. The best known is probably "The Sun (is a Mass of Incandescent Gas)" but "Mammals" is pretty well-known too, and they have others. Strongly recommended.
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From:[info]woodwindy
Date: October 5th, 2009 05:13 pm (UTC)
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Do you know Walter Fox Smith's physics songs? His website has a bunch of his originals and links to other songs as well.

ETA: I especially recommend "Ampere's Law"!

Edited at 2009-10-05 05:13 pm (UTC)

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