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Like physics? Like poetry?

 
 
Whisky Priestess
21:12 / 21.01.05
The Times is running a science poetry competition. You can win a telescope!

Like e e cummings meets Einstein
 
 
Whisky Priestess
11:22 / 22.01.05
Just to get you started:


Ode to multiple universes

By Terry Pratchett

I do have worlds enough and time
to spare an hour to find a rhyme
to take a week to pen an article
a day to find a rhyme for 'particle'.
In many worlds my time is free
to spend ten minutes over tea
And steal the time from some far moon
so words can take all afternoon,
Away beyond the speed of light
I'll write a novel in one night.
Aeons beckon, if I want 'em -
- but I can't have em', 'cos of Quantum
 
 
Whisky Priestess
11:23 / 22.01.05
Limericks not as easy as they look, top boffins discover:


There was a young alien from Mars

By Professor Monica Grady (Natural History Museum)

There was a young alien from Mars
Whose antennae reached up to the stars
A spacecraft flew by
And photographed his eye
Now he's a famous young alien on Mars


There once was a photon named Burton

By Paul Cornell (writer on the new series of Doctor Who)

There once was a photon named Burton,
Who explored the former Iron Curtain,
So now we know where,
Or what speed he made there,
But of both things, at once, we're not certain
 
 
Whisky Priestess
11:24 / 22.01.05
What's it all about, Patrick?

Futility

By Sir Patrick Moore

The deep futility of all ephemeral things
Which stir the soul to unimagined dreams
Of Brussels sprouts, and spinach in the snow.
The birds' shrill call in the translucent drawn
To embryonic beetles, and pale moths
Which hide their heads in the shallow troughs of earth,
Naked and fearful, as the world awakes
To thought transcendent life, and cosmic death.
The earthworm, crawling to his nameless tomb
All energy dispersed, to form new creeds
New auras of the spirits of the wild,
In the deep pool of life, which ceaseless flows
Through endless time and space, in rhythmic praise
Of all creative impulses, which dwarf
The puny concepts of the human mind.
All, all, shall pass into oblivion...
 
 
Whisky Priestess
11:26 / 22.01.05
And now a word from the real experts:

Science = nifty squared

By Dr. Bunsen Honeydew & Beaker (Muppet Labs)

Science, some say, can be terribly boring,
An unfortunate formula for cold-fusion snoring
But for those who think science is dull, dry and dreary,
Beakie and I have an alternate theory...
Whether you're five or the square root of fifty,
Science, say we, is empirically nifty.
Ask Einstein, Hawking or Sir Isaac Newton
Do they concur? And I quote: "Y'r darn tootin'!"
We've got physics with its various laws of motion,
Oceanography (ooh! "Jaws") down under the ocean.
There's botany for those in the know about greens,
And genetics engineered for those cloning genes
Paleontology, meteorology, biology, too.
There's even an -ology that starts with a "zoo".
Yet science still stymies and makes people queasy
So here's our theory of everything; science made easy:
Time flies, and it's relative. That is quite clear.
And Space-so says Spock-is the final frontier.
Energy's easy, you just make an "E"
By timesing an "M" and squaring a "C".
But if science you sigh still sounds too deep,
Just do like dear Beakie: shrug and say "Meep!"
 
  
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