credit to cricketjeff

The periodic table of poetry (Up to Selenium now)

First Hydrogen the lightest gas That makes up for its lack of mass By forming most of all we see In this or any galaxy In chemistry it isn't placid Its cation does the work of acid In bombs it leads to greater slaughter But most important it's in water! Then Helium at number two Finds very little it can do Inert in almost every way So I have little else to say Now Lithium that's soft and bright Makes alloys that are very light Its salts can make your fireworks red There's not much else needs to be said Beryllium has such toxic dust That special measures are a must It used to be used quite a lot In copper alloys that got hot But now we know it makes you ill Few industries will use it still Boron's always black and hard And stuff you shouldn't disregard In borax it will wash your eyes In fibres it's a great surprise A golf club or a lightweight tank May have this element to thank Carbon, of course, is here for life And diamonds make the sharpest knife In pencils people call it lead Which shows they must be off their head It forms long chains, all on its own And complex shapes that can be shown Nitrogen's next, it's bland and clear And forms most of our atmosphere Ammonia, and stuff for bombs And fertilizer for your toms All need this elemental stuff I'm pleased to say we have enough There's oxygen at number eight We like it in its gaseous state Although it lets our buildings burn We need it as we quickly learn The third most common stuff there is It gives much chemistry its fizz Fluorine is very bad for you It changes skin to useless goo In non-stick teflon it's the part That mean adhesion cannot start Alone reacts with anything Perhaps the elemental king Neon gives an eerie glow To signs as all of you will know So noble in it's chemistry There are no compounds you can see Sodium burns with yellow flame Ignites in water what a game You can be sure it's never damp Inside that eerie yellow lamp With chlorine it makes salt for chips And's softer than your fingertips Magnesium flashes into light Few other flames are half as bright In alloys used in cars and planes It leads to unexpected gains Plants put it into chlorophyll Without it you'd be very ill! Aluminium it's called (Americans will be appalled) It's strong and light and forms a skin That stops corrosives getting in Like all the rest it's made in stars We use it in our planes and cars A tetravalent metalloid It seems nobody can avoid The modern world needs Silicon With clever patterns etched upon Although these chips seem quite enough It gives us glass and other stuff Now phosphorus which has a glow Gives every safety match its go It's used for flares and screening smoke Its acid give the fizz to coke Since it is in all life on Earth You know quite what the stuff is worth Now sulphur compounds often smell As brimstone it's a sign of hell A pretty yellow on its own More allotropes than any known In life it takes a major role Makes dirty smoke when burning coal Next chlorine gas that's murky green Its use on troops was very mean It kills the bugs in swimming pools It's found in many molecules In paint stripper and cleaning stuff That man has used more than enough The argon verse is hard for me It has so little chemistry But we may sometimes use this fact As filler so things won't react Potassium has symbol K An element that likes to play A soft and silvery metal which Reacts upon the slightest twitch It even burns in nitrogen Which can confuse unlearned men We need a fair bit to survive It's part of everything alive. If you have written things with chalk Or if you like to stand and walk Then calcium is in your life Its all around and use is rife A carbonate is called limestone Its phosphate makes up most of bone It furs your kettle, and your pipes So fuels a lot of plumbers gripes Transition metals form a block Whose properties we'll now unlock First scandium is rather rare Has just one use that I'm aware In aluminium alloys The aircraft industry employs Its strength for weight the highest known Will be in many things you own Titanium is common stuff But most rocks don't contain enough It's oxide is the white in paint So many uses that you best Go look it up, I'll be impressed Vanadium's another one I hope you find this journey fun It's used in steels for tools and such There's some in you, but not too much You all know Chromium by shine So plated parts can look quite fine Its compounds come in every hue Perhaps we've time to list a few The very orange dichromate Can change its oxidation state And then a deep and dirty green Will be the colour you have seen Makes rubies red and mauves untamed You'll see how chromium was named So now give Manganese a turn A metal that we cannot spurn Essential to the life we live With many other gifts to give You need it to make stainless steel It can give glass a "rose appeal" Some feminists may whisper "please Can we now have Womanganese?" It's Iron next which had an age That set us on this modern stage A revolution came to be In Britain's iron industry Producing steel that changed the world And empire banners soon unfurled You can't make tanks or guns or planes Without this metal's famous strains It's also part of me and you (Anaemia should give a clue) The final fuel of dying stars It gives the rusty hue to Mars Of all that's underneath the sky It has the stablest nuclei! Who hasn't heard of Cobalt blue Perhaps it's nature's finest hue Prosthetic hips or so I'm told Need cobalt or they can't be sold Magnetic metals and in planes (In super alloy turbine vanes) We need it too for vitamins Without B12 nobody wins! A metal with so many uses Doesn't need to make excuses We put it into coins and steels In forks and spoons and alloy wheels A catalyst for many things And helps to toughen wedding rings So buy some Nickel mining shares We need it for so many wares Ten thousand years ago, or so A copper pendant went on show Though meteroic iron and gold Are many dozen times as old We think that copper was refined Before most other things were mined It's soft and yellow when it's pure But Zinc or Tin effect a cure And Bronze age people found this out It gave their weapons added clout. A great conductor (not of bands) It's useful in so many hands. I wonder if you ever think About the ways that we use zinc In galvanising iron and steel In sheets on roofs (that bad guys steel) Deodorants and fancy paints And statues of some famous saints It protects iron exposed to seas A lot is used in batteries Pure Gallium just loves to melt The strangest metal ever felt A first as hard as any plate Then suddenly in liquid state Its arsenide makes diodes glow Its nitride puts bright blue on show Thermometers with lots of range Makes other metals turn quite strange Germanium is not a flower Its used to capture solar power Transistors, diodes lots of stuff Fibre optics all that guff These days it isn't used as much Replaced by silicon and such If you have read detective tales You'll know that Arsenic derails The lives of victims by the score Of poisoners we should deplore Napoleon, some think, was killed By poison his wallpaper spilled The ink contained some "Paris Green" (Perhaps he just missed Josephine) Computer makers use a lot And strangely some is in lead shot. Selenium can make things stink It's more important than you think We have to eat a little bit To keep out bodies fighting fit Replacing lead in plumbers brass And making reddish tones in glass