In the early 1900s the Cavendish Laboratory at
An alpha ray was I, contended with my lot;
From Radium C
I was set free,
And outwards I was shot.
My speed I quickly reckoned,
As I flew off through space,
Ten thousand miles per second
Is not a trifling pace!
For an alpha ray
Goes a good long way
In a short time t,
As you easily see,
Though I don't know why
My speed's so high,
Or why I bear a charge 2e.
And in my wild career, as swiftly on I flew,
A rarefied gas
Wouldn't let me pass,
But I pushed my way right through.
I had some lively tussles
To make it ionize,
But I set the small corpuscles
A-buzzing round like flies.
For an alpha ray
Hasn't time to stay
While a trifling mass
Of expanded gas,
That stands in awe
Of Maxwell's law,
Obstructs the road when I want to pass.
An electroscope looked on, as I made that gas conduct;
Beneath the field
The gas did yield
And the leaf was greatly "bucked."
But in my exultation
I lost my senses clean,
And I made a scintillation
As I struck a zinc-blende screen
For an alpha ray
Makes a weird display
With fluorescence green
On a zinc-blende screen
When the room's quite dark,
You see a spark
That marks the spot where I have been.
But now I'm settled down, and move about quite slow;
For I, alas,
Am helium gas
Since I got that dreadful blow.
But though I'm feeling sickly,
Still no one now denies,
That I ran that race so quickly
I've won a Nobel Prize.
For an alpha ray
Is a thing to pay,
And a Nobel Prize
One can not despise,
And
Has greatly scored,
As all the world now recognise.
Are you going to tell us what the tune is or do we have to guess?
Ian
It was sung to the tune of 'A Jovial Monk Am I', Ian, not a tune with which I am familiar, but one which is downloadable to your MP3, so I understand.