Here is a web site developed by person who was interested in having the sounds of wildlife, especially birds, when he opened programs/files, etc. He turned this passion into a web site which features bird songs and wildlife songs especially it "sounds" from the SW United States (where he lives) and Costa Rica where he now goes to record. The site address is http://www.naturesongs.com

Rock Music Rolls into Classrooms

August 31, 2000, Salt Lake City: The National Energy Foundation (NEF), non-profit developer of innovative energy and natural resource education materials, is pleased to announce the completion of Rock Music, a K-6 integrated music and arts-based approach to teaching earth science and minerals education concepts.

The centerpiece of the Rock Music project is a music CD that includes eleven original schoolhouse tunes on such topics as the uses of rocks and minerals, the production and use of electricity, the rock cycle, the geological time scale, Mohs‚ hardness scale, abandoned mine safety, the uses of aggregates, the types and location of coal, and mining reclamation. An accompanying songbook and teacher‚s guide provides learning activities built around the songs, employing hands-on science methodology, plus arts-related genres such as dance, theatre, creative movement, and creative writing to drive home the science concepts.

Response to the educational music has been outstanding. Said one teacher from the Jordan School District in Salt Lake City, "I had heard of the power of music, but I never would have guessed that music could make rocks and minerals so real, important, and fun to learn about. I recommend the Rock Music materials to any elementary or middle school teacher who has to teach rocks and minerals."

Original music and lyrics for the CD were created by Gary Swan, and the CD was produced under the expert direction of Emmy-nominated producer Douglas Spotted Eagle. To obtain your copy of the Rock Music materials, please call the National Energy Foundation at 1-800-616-8326, or e-mail your request to info@nef1.org. The complete set of Rock Music materials (CD,

Songbook/Teacher‚s Guide, and Poster) is available to educators for the specially-discounted price of $15.20, plus $5.00 s/h. The Rock Music CD is also available separately for the educator price of $10.00 plus s/h. For more information, call Gary Swan at the National Energy Foundation, (801) 908-5800, or e-mail gary@nef1.org.

The following material was extracted from and e-mail sent to the Physics Teacher Resource Agent listserv (AAPT-PTRA).

Three good sources of physics songs are:

Space Songs, Hy Zaret, Momentum Records, 1959, sung by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans. I've been told that it has been re-issued as a CD, but have not found it.

Physics Song Bag, Michael Offutt, sung by the composer, tapes available from him for $12 at MOFFUTT@aol.com.

Physics Pholk Songs, Dave and Ginger Hildebrand, CD available from the artists for $15 plus shipping at Davenging@aol.com. They sang many of these at the 1995 summer AAPT meeting in College Park. This includes Tom Leher's "The Elements," "Song of the Universe" that is in your list, my "Newton's Laws," and my wife's "How Colors Delight." The words to "Newton's Laws" have been polished a bit since it was recorded. The current version follows.

I haven't listened to all of the songs--we had a snippet played of the Doppler song. Anyhow, you might be able to get your own disc copy by contacting: astrocappella@athena.gsfc.nasa.gov

website is: http://www.pagecreations.com/astrocappella/

The songs are original--not familiar tunes-and I am sure they would enchant other physics people.

Another contact I just noticed is: Alan Smoke or Pady Boyd, NASA/GSF Code 662, Greenbelt, MD 20771. Pady Boyd is the person who instigated the whole thing. She is an astrophysicist with NASA.

If none of this pays off, I can make a cassette copy of the disc and I also have the words I can copy for you--you'd never know what the melody was though....

I agree that music makes it fun AND easier to remember. I taught biology and had all sorts of songs for biology type things. Haven't done any songs for physical science though we do the "Molecule Dance" to show kinetic energy and temp!

RUDOLPH, THE RED-NOSED LASER

(tune: “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer”)


RUDOLPH, THE RED-NOSED LASER
Was a sight for you to see
It only could make red light
And of just one frequency

Excited helium atoms
With neon atoms did collide
When they decayed to ground states
Then the red light was supplied

All the waves went up and down
As if in lock step
When two laser beams drew near
Interference did appear

The light was collimated
And would never ever stray
That’s why on foggy Christmas
Rudolph guided Santa’s sleigh.

John L. Roeder

KINETIC AND POTENTIAL ENERGY

1. The rolling boulder crashing down the mountain That’s Kinetic Energy
The boulder sitting high up on the mountain —
That’s Potential Energy

Chorus. Energy in motion is Kinetic
Energy that’s waiting is Potential
But whether it’s Kinetic or Potential
Both of them are energy! (Ole!)

2. You stretch a rubber band and then release it —
That’s Kinetic Energy
You stretch a rubber band and then you hold it —
That’s Potential Energy

3. The heat that comes when gasoline is burning —
That’s Kinetic Energy
The energy that gasoline has stored up —
That’s Potential Energy

— from “Ballads for the Age of Science,” by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer
— recorded by Tom Glazer and Dottie Evans, “Energy & Motion Songs”
Motivation Records MR 0314, Argosy Music Corporation, NYC

SONG OF THE UNIVERSE

Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
It’s orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
A sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm at forty thousand miles an hour
In a galaxy we call the Milky Way

Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It’s a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle sixteen thousand light years thick
But out by us it’s just three thousand light years wide
We’re thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go ‘round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe

The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all the of the directions it can whiz
As fast as it can go, the speed of light you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is
So remember when you’re feeling very small and insecure
How amazing and unlikely is your birth
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space
‘Cause there’s damned little down here on earth.

— from Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life”

WE SIX QUARKS

We six quarks fine particles are
Bearing charm we travel afar
Through ups and downs, though strange it sounds
Beauty and truth’s our star

Chorus: Oh, quarks are wondrous, quarks are light
Quarks have colors clear and bright
Still misleading, still exceeding
All the physicists’ delight!

We six quarks trade bosons all day
Bosons are messengers made in this way
W’s, photons, Z’s and gluons
The graviton’s a mystery (Repeat Chorus)

Trios make a baryon state
Paired with anti’s mesons we make
Always hiding, always biding
Never without a mate (Repeat Chorus)

— tune: “We Three Kings of Orient Are”

— words by Larry Josbeno with assistance from John Roeder
at the 1988 Woodrow Wilson Institute on High School Physics
— adapted from The Official Oberlin College Songbook

Glory, Glory, Albert Einstein

Oh Albert Einstein changed the ways of things both bound and free
With his general and his special types of relativity
We only wish that these applied to things that we could see
His light goes speeding on.

Chorus: Glory, glory, Albert Einstein
What a genius, Albert Einstein
As we travel on our time line
In space-time we’ll remain.

He told us if we got close to a certain value “c”
The universe would flatten out but only in 1-D
At .8c a four by five would seem like four by three
His light goes speeding on. (Repeat chorus)

Though warped time-space the human race completely disregards
The ‘nomalies Einstein’s theories predict in our regards
We can’t see the curvature here in our own backyards
His light goes speeding on. (Repeat chorus)

— tune: “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
— from The Official Oberlin College Physics Songbook

The Ideal Physics Song

Masses slide down frictionless inclines
Wheels will spin eternally
Light rays converge from perfectly straight lines
And functions change incrementally

Everybody knows things really don’t behave this way
And still we all pretend they do
Tiny tops have no spin, so they say,
And we convince ourselves it’s true

We know it’s true only to first order
That crystals act as if they haven’t any border
And only freshmen have to try
To see that E and B point just in x and y

Remember one is on the order of infinity
And dividing by zero ain’t so bad
With these helpful hints, all is simplicity
It’s the real world (it’s the real world)
It’s the real world that’sad.

— tune: “The Christmas Song”
— from The Official Oberlin College Physics Songbook

Photocells

Dashing through time-space at the speed of light
Through vector fields we race with our colors bright
Keeping constant speed with everyone in sight
Oh what fun it is to be a photon in the night.

Jingle bells, photocells, spectrographic plates
Oh what fun it is to slip by all diffraction grates.

- tune: “Jingle Bells”; from The Official Oberlin College Physics Songbook

If You Throw a Ball on High

If you throw a ball on high, central forces bring it nigh
If it starts out upward bound, further east will it be found
Cor . . . iolis, in acceleration
Cor . . . iolis, in acceleration

Using Lorentz’s transforms now; yes, I see dee tee dee tau
Relativity is fun, it’s easy for everyone
Lor . . . entz, in transformation
Lor . . . entz, in transformation

Radioactivity is a thing you cannot see
Geiger-Mueller counters show where the little photons go
Law . . . rencium, in accelerators
Law . . . rencium, in accelerators

If you send your twin away, he will have a slower day
If you watch each other’s clocks, then you have a paradox
Ein . . . stein, in time dilation
Ein . . . stein, in time dilation

Superconductivity: there’s no resistivity
But it stops at ninety K; we hope there’ll be more some day
Bed . . . norz and Mueller, showed it could go higher
Bed . . . norz and Mueller, showed it could go higher

— tune: “Angels We Have Heard on High”
— adapted from The Official Oberlin College Physics Songbook

The Lab Assistants’ Song

It’s almost 4:30 and it’s time to go
Way-hey, blow the lab down
So ditch all those test tubes, go play in the snow
Give ‘em some time, they’ll blow the lab down

Ethanol’s plentiful and fun to drink*
But it’s denatured, quick head for the sink

Ammonia and iodine in the same place
Spontaneously will end up in your face

Assistants are human, they all have their price
They’re willing to give you so much more than advice

Exam time is coming and papers are due
No more nights on the town
So hand in those labs and let us study too
If you don’t soon, we’ll grade your labs down

*Indented lines from the first verse are to be sung with all other verses except the last.

— tune: “Blow the Man Down”
— from The Official Oberlin College Physics Songbook

SUBLEVEL SONG

I’m dreaming of how sublevels
Of electrons ‘round atoms grow
First the1s fills up, then 2s builds up
To 2p in the second row

I’m dreaming of how transitions
And lanthanides fill f and d
And the gases noble you’ll see
When eight electrons fill s and p.
— tune: “White Christmas”
— words by John Roeder, inspired by Lisa-Beth Levy and Betty Chan

MOLES TO GRAMS

Avogadro’s number makes one
Mole of atoms or of molecules;
Changing it to grams is easy,
Only if you know what things to use.
Multiply it by a fraction
(Gram-m’lec’lar mass o-ver one mole)
Then you calculate your answer,
Cancelling like terms, you’ll reach your goal.
— words by Tracie Finley
— tune: “Deck the Halls”

O CHEMISTREE

O Chemistree, O chemistry
I have so much to learn from thee.
O Chemistree, O chemistry
How intricate your branches.
The elements we all must learn;
The compounds that we Bunsen burn.
O Chemistree, O chemistry
My grades are a catastrophe

O Chemistree, O chemistry
Mass and weight and density.
O Chemistree, O chemistry
Specific heat capacity
Sodium perchlorate
And calcium diphosphate
O Chemistree, O chemistry
I’ll try to pass you with a “C.”
— words by Paige Davis
— tune: “O Christmas Tree”

ACCELERATION (more or less)

Acceleration, more or less
It’s a velocity change
When net forces are applied,
>From front or back or side,
There’s an acceleration more or less . . .
— from Jim and Jane Nelson
— tune: “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt”

SILENT LABS

Silent labs, difficult labs,
All with math, all with graphs.
Observation of colors and smells,
Calculations and graph curves like bells:
Mem’ries of tests that have passed;
How long will chemistry last?

Silent labs, difficult labs,
All with math, all with graphs.
Lots of equations that need balancing;
Gas pressure problems that make my head ring.
Santa Chlorine’s on his way.
Santa, please bring me an “A.”

— from George Hague
— tune: “Silent Night”

THE THERMODYNAMICS FINAL

1. Free energy and entropy were whirling in his brain
With partial differentials and Greek letters in their train;
For delta, sigma, gamma, theta, epsilon, and pi
Were causes of distraction as they danced before his eye.

Chorus: Glory, glory, dear old thermo
Glory, glory, dear old thermo
Glory, glory, dear old thermo
I’ll get you by and by.

2. Activity and fugacity revolved within his mind,
Like molecules and atoms that you never have to wind.
With logarithmic functions doing cakewalks in his dreams,
And partial molal quantities about to make him scream.

3. They asked him on the final if the mole of any gas
In a vessel with a membrane through which hydrogen could pass
Were compressed to half its volume, what the entropy would be
If two thirds delta sigma equaled half of delta P.

4. He said he guessed the entropy would have to equal four,
Unless the second law would bring it up a couple more.
But then it might be seven, if the thermostat was good,
Or it might be almost zero if once rightly understood.

5. The professor read his paper with corrugated brow,
For he knew he’d have to grade it but he didn’t quite know how
Till a sudden inspiration on his cerebellum smote,
And he seized his trusty fountain pen and this is what he wrote:

6. “Just as you guessed the entropy, I’ll have to guess your grade,
But the second law won’t raise it to the mark you might have made
For it might have been a hundred if your guesses had been good
but I think it must be zero ‘til they’re rightly understood.”

— tune: “Battle Hymn of the Republic”

IONS MINE

1. In the dusty lab’ratory
‘Mid the coils and wax and twine
There the atoms in their glory
Ionize and recombine.

Chorus: Oh my darlings! Oh my darlings!
Oh my darling ions mind!
You are lost and gone forever
When just once you recombine!

2. In a tube quite electrodeless
They discharge around a line,
And the glow they leave behind them
Is quite corking for a time.

3. And with quite a small expansion,
1.8 or 1.9,
You can get a cloud delightful,
Which explains both snow and rain.

4. In the weird magnetic circuit
See how lovingly they twine,
As each ion describes a spiral
Round its own magnetic line.

5. Ultraviolet radiation
>From the arc of glowing lime
Soon discharges a conductor
If it’s charged with minus sign.

6. Alpha rays from radium bromide
Cause a zinc-blende screen to shine.
Set it glowing, clearly showing
Scintillations all the time.

7. Radium bromide emanation
Rutherford did first devine,
Turns to helium, then Sir William
Got the spectrum — every line.

— words by J. J. Thomson
— tune: “My Darling Clementine”

I’M DREAMING OF A WHITE PRECIPITATE

I’m dreaming of a white precipitate
Just like the ones I used to know
Where the colors are vivid
And the chemist is livid
To see impurities in the snow.

I’m dreaming of a white precipitate
With ev’ry chemistry test I write,
“May your equations be balanced and right
And may all your reactions be bright.”
— from George Hague
— tune: “White Christmas”

HERE IN STATIC EQUILIBRIUM

All my moments have canceled
Sum of forces is equal
I’m fully inert, and doing no work
Here in static equilibrium.

Every push meets another;
Every pull has a counter;
The state I allude is true lassitude
Here in static equilibrium.

All my forces balance out exactly
You can even put me to a test
Push me out in any old direction
And you’ll find I’ll no longer be at rest.

Can’t you see that I’m happy
Sitting here, calm and mellow
Don’t want to go home, so leave me alone
Here in static equilibrium.

— tune: “Winter Wonderland

GRAVITY

A comet hits the earth,
It’s made of methane ice.
It makes a giant force.
Now isn’t that so nice?
So what made it come here?
What made it hit the earth?
The answer’s very clear, my friend,
It fills you up with mirth.

Gravity, gravity
Keeps us on the ground
An apple fell on Newton
He said, “What goes up comes down.”
Gravity, gravity
Mass times nine point eight.
Remember, travel very fast
If earth you must escape.

Walk around the earth;
Keep a steady pace.
If gravity weren’t here
You’d float away in space.
Call it what you want,
Call it any name.
But this force is a heavy weight,
Attraction is its game!

— tune: “Jingle Bells”

DECK THE PHYSICS LAB

Deck the physics lab with lenses, fa la la . . .
Light bends more when they are densest,
We can now observe reflection,
Not to mention its direction, fa la la la la la la la la.

Stroboscopes are swiftly turning, fa la la . . .
While our eager minds are learning,
Light diffraction we can now see,
See how fun our physics can be, fa la la la la la la la la.
— tune: “Deck the Halls”

TWINKLE, TWINKLE, LITTLE LIGHT

Twinkle, twinkle, little light,
Traveling on a line of sight,
Starting from an object pin,
Bouncing off a mirror thin,
Angle in and angle out,
They are equal, we all shout!

— from Jim and Jane Nelson
— tune: “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”

MOMENTUM SONG

Cart is going faster now, faster now, faster now,
Cart is going faster now, more momentum.

Mass has gotten larger now, larger now, larger now,
Mass has gotten larger now, more momentum.

Impulse equals F times t, F times t, F times t,
Impulse equals F times t, that's an impulse.

Impulse causes delta P, delta P, delta P
Impulse causes delta P, more momentum.

- by Jane and Jim Nelson
- tune: "London Bridge"

NEWTON'S LAWS

Isaac Newton, Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton had three laws.
Now we have them; if we use them
We can explain motion's cause.

Isaac's First Law, not his best law
Says things do what they know best.
If they're resting, they will stay there;
If they're moving, they won't rest.

Just a bit more on the First Law
That you really ought to know:
An outside force that's not canceled
Really changes the whole show.

Now let's talk about this net force
And just what that it can do:
It can change the object's speed
And or its direction too.

Alright, what's next? Law number two
One equation and you'll pass:
To get the acceleration
Take the net force over mass.

Last but not least, Newton's Third Third Law
Forces always come in pairs.
Always there are equal forces
Even for our cheeks and chairs.

- words by Karen Gill with assistance from Scot Gill, Bob Schurtz, and Robert Shaner
- tune: "My Darlin' Clementine"

Newton's Laws
Words by Bill Franklin 1998, tune by Ginger Hildebrand

In physics there s a law that objects moving
Keep moving until forces make them stop.
When Galileo found it, physics started,
So on your list, put it at top.

A second law was added by Sir Isaac:
Resultant force produces change; in fact,
If objects change in speed or in direction,
In every case, net forces act.

His third law deals with objects that are touching.
Well, actually they never touch, you see,
But still they push the same on one another.
Oh, how can that possibly be?

And each and every mass throughout creation
Attracts the other ones with gravity,
Decreasing with the square of separation,
A matter of geometry.

This law, for which Sir Isaac is most famous,
Explains the paths of planets round the sun,
And why the tides flow ceaselessly on beaches.
Joined Earth and sky, stunned everyone.

Two hundred years and more these laws were tested,
In every time and place they checked out right,
Til Einstein dared to dream of light-speed travel.
Changed everything, oh, he was bright.

Then Niels Bohr took a look at glowing atoms,
And could they little suns and planets be,
But found that changes they could not make smoothly
In radius, or energy.

And soon it seemed that chance controls electrons;
That probability rules everywhere.
Tho Einstein never found this to his liking -
Does God throw dice? Does He not care?

Today we see that Newton s laws stand firmly
For everything we deal with day and night,
Above the realm of atoms and electrons,
And well below the speed of light.

So learn them well, and they ll solve all your problems.
Well, not all, but certainly a lot -
All problems you might have involving forces.
Remember well! Forget them not!

An Impulse to Sing
by Judy and Bill Franklin (written for the Impulse and Momentum workshop in 1999)

(Sung to the tune of The Yellow Rose of Texas )

Momentum is a concept
As real as it can be;
The product of an object s mass
And its velocity.

Its direction and its size are fixed.
They never change a bit,
Unless a force acts for a time
(An impulse acts on it).

It takes a mile to stop a train
That s loaded down with freight.
Although velocity is slow,
Its mass is very great.

A bullet from a rifle
Is rather short on mass.
But deadly speed it has to spare,
So duck and let it pass.

To set a thing in motion,
To get it off the dime,
We must apply an impulse;
We push it for a time.

It s just as hard to stop it.
Here, too, impulse we need.
Both time and force will slow it
And make it give up speed.

Momentum is a vector,
So objects will not swerve,
Unless some sideways impulse
Is used to make them curve.

Momentum is a concept
As real as it can be;
The product of an object's mass
And its velocity.

Twenty-Tree Factors of Ten, and Then Some
by Bill Franklin (21 Oct 99, revised 1 Feb 2000)

Avagadro counted atoms, striving for his goal
He must have lost a lot of sleep before he reached a mole
Six point oh two, multiplied by ten, and ten again
Keep multiplying till it numbs you reeling from the strain.

More than all the bullets ever fired in sport or war
And more than all the grains of sand on every ocean shore
More than all the insects in the air and on the ground
And more than all the grass blades even though we mow them down.

More than all the raindrops falling in an entire year
And more than all the stars around us, those both far and near
If you think these numbers seem to be too big by far
Then figuring out how big they really are's a bit bizarre.

Surely Avagadro didn't really count that high
But who did find his number, then, and when, and how, and why?
Can a gram of hydrogen so many pieces be?
It takes a lot of atoms -- just to make a me.

(Note: Bill's original stanzas contained five lines, the last three rhyming. I found that, by consolidating the last two lines, I could sing the remaining four-line stanzas to any number of Irish jig tunes, including "McMamara's Band, (You're Welcome as the Month of May in Dear Old) Donegal, and "Clancy Lowered the Boom." John Roeder)

OVER THE RAINBOW

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
Cosmic rays
Fields magnetic protect us
>From their disturbing ways.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
There is light
That's refract- and reflected
Truly an awesome sight

The purple strip is on the bottom
And the blue and green stripe right above it
Then yellow, just like lemon drops,
And orange and red upon the top
That's how we love it!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow
There's UV
Until ozone absorbs it
But only B and C.

by John Roeder, Judy Doyle, and other 1998 PTRAs
tune: "Over the Rainbow" (music by Harold Arlen)

FROSTY THE PHOTON

Frosty the Photon
Was a truly quantum sight
With a zero mass and an endless life
And a speed approaching light

Frosty the Photon
Had momentum h-bar k
Though he had the right to be known as light
He could be a gamma ray

There must have been some magic
In the physics lab one year
For when they studied X-ray beams
Ole Frosty did appear.

Frosty the Photon
Says he knows he's not that large
But he says one day, if he comes this way
He will give us all a charge.

Thumpety thump-thump, Thumpety thump-thump
Moving fast as light
Thumpety thump-thump, Thumpety thump-thump
Frosty's out of sight

THE PTRA SONG

Chorus: Hi Ho, Hi Ho, it's off to work we go
PTRA is one its way, Hi Ho, Hi Ho
Let's see the show, Hi Ho
We're always in the know
Heat, light, and sound, the laws abound
Hi Ho, Hi Ho.

Verse: We go to workshops all day long, it's taxing on our brain
Heat, ripple tanks, and Newton's Laws, like being on a train
Bizarres and dances clear our minds, 'til we begin again
But physics rules our minds always, in dreams it's the refrain.

Chorus: Hi Ho, Hi Ho, our leaders help us grow
Jim, Larry Bob make our hearts throb, Hi Ho, Hi Ho
We love them so, Hi Ho
We know we have to go
Present our workshops all around
Hi Ho, Hi Ho.

words by Judy Doyle

from Bill and Judy Franklin: