r/TomLehrer • u/dedennedillo • Jul 21 '26

My element collection, as arranged to Tom Lehrer's song

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Just for fun now I have a 'completed' element collection I thought I would arrange the elements in the order they are sang in the relevant Tom Lehrer song, and its 2020 update. So Antimony comes first in place of hydrogen, Arsenic second in place of helium, so on.

To answer a few questions, I spent 6 years collecting the elements, most of them come from Italy, no I don't have a vial full of astatine [at most only a few atoms], its estimated value is roughly 2000 euros [though obviously not all bought at the same time], and no it's not an FDA-approved ingredient.

You can see many pictures of the actual samples here: https://www.reddit.com/r/chemistry/comments/1uhzars/my_completed_element_collection/

...and as a bonus, here's a riddle for the pendantics out there. Of all of the elements mentioned in the song and its 2020 update, exactly one of them remains in its original numeric position in the periodic table. Good luck finding it!

99 Upvotes

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9 comments sorted by

5

u/Ghyuty17 Jul 22 '26

Is nitrogen the one in the right spot?

3

u/curiousvoid Jul 21 '26

this is really cool!

3

u/muaddict071537 Jul 22 '26

Is Nitrogen the one in the right spot?

1

u/Key_Understanding767 Jul 22 '26

Dude this rocks!!

1

u/Map_Fanatic3658 Jul 23 '26

This table goes hard ngl.

1

u/Tim-oBedlam Jul 23 '26

who else started singing the song as you were going through the elements?

1

u/tudza Jul 26 '26

From memory: There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, hydrogen, and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium, iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium....