A Visit from Father Christmas
(A Christmas Fable)
The Chemistry Teacher is Coming to Town
Deck the Labs
The students were sleeping
So sound in their dorms,
All dreaming of fluids
And Crystalline forms.
Lab-Aides in their aprons
And I in my smock
Were sitting, recov'ring
From semester-end shock.
The flood-lights shone out
And I in my smock
Were sitting, recov'ring
From semester-end shock.
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 Nitrite, Now Phosphate,
Now Borate, now Chloride,
On Citrate, on Bromate,
On Sulfite and Oxide.
Forget what you know
Of that randomness stuff,
Let's go straight to that roof,
If you've quanta enough."
As fluids Bernoullian
Behave in a pinch
Those ions said "Alchemists,
This is a cinch,"
So up to the lab-roof
Those "chargers" they sped
With Pop Chemistry safe
In his water-trough sled.