February 8, 2012

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The Best Pop Science Song of All Time

By Fred Guterl

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This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

Yesterday we ran a story about calculations that confirmed earlier news that physicists may be on the verge of discovering the existence of the Higgs boson, which, if it turns out to be true, would be one of the biggest science stories of all time.

What concerns me here, though, is not science so much as popular song.

For reasons that are obscure to me, the article triggered a memory of the old Johnny Cash tune, Folsom Prison Blues, which began rolling through my head. (I hear the Higgs a comin'/ It's rollin' round the bend / And I ain't seen the sunshine / Since I don't know when / I'm stuck in the Hadron C'lider / And time keeps draggin' on / But that Higgs keeps a rollin'...)

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Folsom Prison Blues makes a pretty lame science song, but there must be a million better ones, existing or yet to be. Which brings me to this question of the day: What is the best science song of all time?

Tell us what you think. Or perhaps you want to write your own?

To get the ball rolling, here are my nominations:

Tom Lehrer's Elements, in which the Harvard-trained mathematician rattles off the entire Periodic Table to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune.

They Might Be Giants' The Sun, which explains with remarkable clarity the basic physics of our nearest and dearest star. (Full disclosure: I used to sing this to my kids back when they were tykes, so I might be biased here.)

Any better ideas?

NB: This will become a bona fide contest if and only if we are overwhelmed with responses. If that happens, we reserve the right to start handing out worthless prizes.

UPDATE: See Ryan Reid's post on 10 Random Songs Inspired by Science.

Fred Guterl is the executive editor of Scientific American and author of The Fate of the Species (Bloomsbury). Guterl is former deputy editor of Newsweek. His writing and editing have contributed to numerous awards and nominations from the American Society of Magazine Editors. His article "Riddles in the Sand," in Discover, was named best magazine article in 1998 by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and his Newsweek article "The Wasteland," on Russia's plan to accept the world's nuclear waste, was honored by the Overseas Press Club for environmental writing.

More by Fred Guterl

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