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Chemistry and Song: A Novel Way To Educate and Entertain Cory C. Pye Department of Chemistry, Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, NS, Canada B3H 3C3;
[email protected] Picture this! You are driving to work and a song plays on the radio. No matter how hard you try, for the rest of the day, you cannot get that song out of your head. For example: “On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair, warm smell of colitas, rising up through the air…” (“Hotel California”, The Eagles). Now picture this! You and a friend are talking, and the conversation turns to music of common interest. The two of you recite lyrics together, even though it has been 20 years since that song was popular. (This also applies to Monty Python skits.) Now don’t you wish, as an instructor, that your introductory chemistry lectures were like those songs, sticking in your students’ heads? For instance, using the above example: “A little 5f electron, waving through the air, interacts with a photon, and lets us know that it’s there.” What follows is an account of how the author incorporated such songs into his lecture. Chemistry in Music There has been some discussion of how chemistry and, in particular, thermodynamics appears in contemporary music (1, 2). Numerous examples of chemistry in music exist; these include band names (Chemical Brothers, Golden Earring, and Iron Maiden; ref 3; Appendix 1 of the Supplemental MaterialW) and album names (Live’s Throwing Copper, 1994; SemiSonic’s All about Chemistry, 2001). Numerous chemical song names also exist (“Iron Man”, “Cocaine”, “Lithium”, “C11H17N2O2SNa (Sodium Pentothal)”, “Neon Knights”, “Liquid Mercury”, “The Chemicals Between Us”; Appendix 2 of the Supplemental MaterialW). It is clear that chemical ideas and vocabulary are being expressed in contemporary music. What I have done is to use contemporary music, along with my own lyrics, to teach chemistry. The pioneers in this area include Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements” (An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer, 1959), Flanders and Swann’s “First and Second Law” (At the Drop of Another Hat, 1964), and Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s “NaCl” (Pronto Monto, 1978). Teaching Chemistry by Song The course that I teach and describe in this article is General Chemistry for Engineers. I generally follow the content of the course text (4). At the end of each chapter that I cover, to summarize the main points, I ask the students to write a one-minute paper (5) and then involve the class in a brief discussion of the concepts learned, based on their responses in the papers. I then follow this with a song, which is based on music from some contemporary artist (either current radio hits, classic rock, or folk songs work well here), whose lyrics have been substituted by those relevant to the chapter being summarized. This formula has been successfully employed in a commercial setting by artists such as “Weird Al” Yankovic. www.JCE.DivCHED.org
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Although I usually sing this a cappella, one could easily use a karaoke machine, if available. One technique I employ is to ask the class to keep the beat by banging their fists on their writing surface, an example of “physical” chemistry. Another useful technique is to play the original song before class starts, especially helpful for older or obscure songs. Other improvisations include the use of props and body gestures to sing “in character”. Some examples are, for Michael Jackson, wearing a white latex or cotton glove and twirling a leg (Warning: Avoid certain Michael Jackson moves, as you run the risk of offending some students or hurting yourself ), and for Guns and Roses, wearing a bandanna while swaying side-toside. Attendance at lectures improves significantly. There are many other techniques that could be tried, such as using midi files, playing instruments, and writing and performing songs as assignments, as suggested by an anonymous reviewer. The latter option was suggested and rejected by my 2000–2001 Chem 203 class, presumably because not everybody is willing to perform in front of the class, at least at the first-year level. Live and a cappella has the virtue of being simple to execute. A list of songs modified in this way follows: “Roadman” (Smashmouth), “The Night Pat Murphy Died” (Great Big Sea), “I Disappear” (Metallica), “Hotel California” (The Eagles), “What’s My Age Again?” (Blink 182), “Billy Jean” (Michael Jackson), “Purple Haze” (Jimi Hendrix), “Welcome to the Jungle” (Guns and Roses), “Mambo #5” (Lou Bega), “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” (The Beatles), “We Didn’t Start the Fire” (Billy Joel), “Crazy Train” (Ozzy Osbourne), “Smoke on the Water” (Deep Purple), “Bohemian Rhapsody” (Queen), “ABC” (Jackson 5), “Battery” (Metallica), “You Shook Me All Night Long” (AC兾DC). The full revised lyrics to all songs are presented in Appendix 3 of the Supplemental Material.W Student Response I took an informal survey (anonymous index cards in a suggestion box) at about midyear (2000–2001) asking students to comment on my teaching style and course content. Twenty-five students responded out of a class of about 60 students. Four students made specific comments about the songs that are listed below (verbatim): • Keep on singin’! • The songs are good—They rock! • …the songs are great… • Songs are great and don’t hesitate to sing more Beatles!
These four responses were positive. I conducted a more extensive survey on September 19, 2001 based on the songs “Chem Man” and “Father Murphy” that I had performed. There were 67 students enrolled, of which approximately 60 were in attendance. I asked the students to comment positively or negatively about the songs if they desired, and about any other aspect of the course. Of
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Chemistry for Everyone
Welcome to the Gas Phase Guns and Roses “Welcome to the Jungle”, 1987
Nitrobenzene Michael Jackson “Billy Jean”, 1982
Welcome to the gas phase, it’s not all fun and games, PV = nRT, it’s enough to drive me insane, Laws of Boyle and Avogadro, and Charles, they would say, Measure volume and pressure, extrapolate to zero K.
It said that its name was nitrobenzene, as it caused a scene, Six carbons, two oxygens, nitrogen, five hydrogens, In a plane, delocalized, all around. It was organic, aromatic, with a functional group, No alkanes, alkenes, or alkynes to be found around here, Conjugated, nonchiral, pi-electrons.
Gas Phase, welcome to the gas phase, PV is N, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, n, R, T, T, T, Use it, along with stoichiometry. Welcome to the gas phase, where Dalton’s law rules, Calculate partial pressure, mole fraction is the clue, Kinetic theory is applied, gives speed root-mean-square, Effusion and diffusion rates, make me pull my hair.
My prof always tells me, about alkyl halides, And alcohols, phenols, and aldehydes, Oxidation gives ketones, or carboxylic acids. Mind your ethers and esters, amines, and amides. Nitrobenzene has no isomers, It’s just a molecule who knows that it only has one, Other functional groups? There are none.
Gas Phase, welcome to the gas phase, PV is N, n, n, n, R, T, Van der Waals’s, new equation, see. P + a兾Vm2, times Vm − b, is RT, for high P or low T.
the 18 responses received, 16 specifically mentioned the songs. A total of 14 of these I would classify as positive, whereas two I would classify as neutral. These responses are listed in Appendix 4 of the Supplemental Material.W Song Examples The two songs above were the most popular among the students that I polled. These two songs included the use of props to sing “in character” as mentioned above and may have contributed to their popularity. I try to emulate as close as possible the voices and accents of the original singers, which also helps. In some cases, I sing them as if I were a student thinking out loud. Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Chemistry 203 class of 2000–2001 for being the first group to be subjected to the original versions of the songs. I would also like to thank the class of 2001–2002 for providing their candid responses. I would like to thank my colleagues from Atlantic Canada for
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encouraging me to publish these results. I would like to thank the Quality of Teaching Committee, Saint Mary's University, for an instructional development grant to cover the costs of recording the audio tracks. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. WSupplemental
Material
Band names, song titles, song lyrics, audio recordings of the songs, and student responses are available in this issue of JCE Online. Literature Cited 1. Smith, W. L. J. Chem. Educ. 1975, 52, 97–98. 2. Kybett, B. D. J. Chem. Educ. 1975, 52, 752. 3. HMV. The World’s Best Music Store Online. http:// www.hmv.com (accessed Jan 2004) 4. Oxtoby, D. W.; Gillis, H. P.; Nachtrieb, N. H. Principles of Modern Chemistry, 4th ed., Saunders: Fort Worth, TX, 1999. 5. Harwood, W. S. J. Chem. Educ. 1996, 73, 229–230.
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