Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Welcome to the first edition of Tuesday Afternoon Physics Poetry. It might very well be the last edition as well, so you’d better enjoy this one.
Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
By John Updike. Via Cosmic Variance. I used to only know the first three lines, had no idea it was this long.
11 reacties »
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beautiful (and funny)
funny (and beautiful)
John Donne 17th century metaphysical poet could not have done better
he liked to combine physics ideas with wit and humor and a bit of sex but his physics is so out-of-date that we don’t recognize it any more.
I don’t know of any physics poem that tops this.
I hope you post more poems on other Tuesday afternoons.
I like this one also because of the elegant way it rhymes. and the delicate but regular four-beat rhythm. I think people will probably still like to quote this poem in their blogs a hundred years from now when the formless “modern” poetry of the 20th century has mostly been forgotten.
where are you Florine? I hope in Utrecht—I am a fan of the physics department there: especially the people working to get a quantum gravity theory.
Reactie left on 13 december 2005 @ 19:09
It is my belief that there is a trite poem or literary verse for every subfield of physics. Cosmology has that “fire and ice” poem, Neutrino physics has this one. There is that quote about the 4th dimension “obviously” being time from HG Well’s “Time Machine.” And there are surely far more that I wish I knew.
Reactie left on 13 december 2005 @ 21:19
Thanks for commenting, I’ll see if I can find stuff to make the series really a series…
I am in Utrecht, but not at the physics theory department.
Reactie left on 14 december 2005 @ 10:28
Ryan, trite is not quite the word
droll perhaps, or light.
BTW check out the structure, it is all done on two rhymes
(unusual for a poem of 19 lines to have only two endings)
and it breaks down into a triplet plus four quatrains:
Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge and have no mass
And do not interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
They snub the most exquisite gas,
Ignore the most substantial wall,
Cold-shoulder steel and sounding brass,
Insult the stallion in his stall,
And, scorning barriers of class,
Infiltrate you and me! Like tall
And painless guillotines, they fall
Down through our heads into the grass.
At night, they enter at Nepal
And pierce the lover and his lass
From underneath the bed - you call
It wonderful; I call it crass.
what I fear is that Florine will not be able to come up with anything else to match this.
Reactie left on 14 december 2005 @ 23:15
But, but, neutrino’s do have mass, I don’t understand…
;-)
Reactie left on 15 december 2005 @ 18:20
… yeah, I knew you wouldn’t. ;-)
By the way: your comments keep ending up in moderation, although you have previously approved comments (in which case they should appear right away). Something to do with your browser preferences maybe?
Reactie left on 15 december 2005 @ 18:58
Wilfred, would you like this better?
Neutrinos they are very small.
They have no charge, almost no mass
And hardly interact at all.
The earth is just a silly ball
To them, through which they simply pass,
Like dustmaids down a drafty hall
Or photons through a sheet of glass.
……
…..
Reactie left on 16 december 2005 @ 03:57
Doesn’t that kill the rhyme and meter?
Reactie left on 16 december 2005 @ 15:25
Wilfred, you can try to make it better. Please try!
If you look in a common dictionary like Webster’s you will see that the word “almost” can be accented two ways: as ALmost
and as alMOST.
you asked about the meter
what I suggested may not be the best correction but it does NOT kill the meter. it does not even change the meter. You can read it
They HAVE no CHARGE, alMOST no MASS
and then it is the same iambic tetrameter as the original Updike line
They HAVE no CHARGE and HAVE no MASS
how can you be so dense, Wilfred? I assume you are simply pretending to be a simpleton for the sake of droll humor.
Reactie left on 16 december 2005 @ 22:09
[…] Maybe it’s not as great as Cosmic Gall, but still, here it is: the next physics poem. This one is by Erich Hückel, and speaks about Erwin Schrödinger and his wavefunction (called psi). […]
Pingback left on 20 december 2005 @ 12:56
Fish shaped sex toy….
Sex with fish. Fish dildo sex. Fish shaped sex toy. Fish sex. Do fish have sex….
Trackback left on 21 mei 2008 @ 00:58