(This reprint is from the front cover of Chem 13 News, December 1995. This clever poem came to us from Fiona Walker of North Vancouver BC, via Tony Anderson, our colleague in the Physics Department at UW. Fiona does not recall where she found it. If you know the source, please write and tell us. We asked this 20 years ago and we were not able to track down the author.)
‘Twas the night before Christmas,
The lab was quite still.
Not a Bunsen was burning
Nor had they the will.
The test tubes were placed
In their racks with great care,
In hopes that Father Chemistry
Soon would be there.
The students were sleeping,
So sound in their dorms,
And dreaming of fluids
In crystalline forms.
Lab aides in their aprons
And I in my smock,
Were sitting, recov’ring
From the semester shock.
When outside the lab
There arose such a roar,
I leapt from my stool
And fell flat on the floor.
Out to the fire escape
All of us flew.
What was the commotion?
Not one of them knew.
The flood lights shone out
O’er the campus so bright.
It looked like Old Stockholm
On Nobel Prize night.
My fume-blinded eyes
Then viewed (dare I say?)
Eight anions pulling
A water trough sleigh.
And holding the bonds
Tied to each one of them
Was a figure I knew
As our own Papa Chem.
With speeds in excess
Of most X-rays they came;
As they dopplered along,
He called each one by name.
“Now Nitrate, now Phosphate,
Now Borate, Now Chloride,
On Citrate, on Bromate,
On Sulfide, and Oxide.
Forget what you know
Of that randomness stuff.
Let’s go straight to that roof
If you’ve got quanta enough”.
Just a microsec later
Electroscopes showed
Charged particles coming
To our lab abode.
We raced back inside
And what do you think?
Down the fume-hood Pop Chem fell
Right into the sink.
He was dressed in a lab coat,
Quite ragged and old,
With removable buttons,
The style, we were told.
A tray full of beakers
He clutched to his heart
And under his arm
Was an orbital chart.
His eyes through his goggles
I just couldn’t see
His hands were all yellow
From H-N-O-3.
His head was quite bald
With a fringe all around,
Like a ring test for iron
That same shade of brown.
He was thin as a match
And not terribly tall.
He wasn’t the type
I’d expected at all.
But a look at his clothes
In the lab’s harsh white light,
With their acid-burn holes,
He’s a Chemist all right.
He didn’t say much,
He had no time to kill;
He filled all the test tubes
With nary a spill.
Then placing them back
On the benches with care,
He dashed to the fume-hood
And rose through the air.
He called to his team
And his ions took off.
And Kinetics took care
Of Pop Chem and his trough.
But I heard him cry out
As he flew down the street.
“Merry Christmas to all!
May your stockrooms stay neat!”
