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It's funny. Laugh. Science

Chemical Haiku: Elements' Qualities in a Few Syllables 177

Posted by timothy from the atomically-pithy dept.
Frr pointed out this interesting approach to the periodic table: Haiku. This might even help you remember the elements.
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Chemical Haiku: Elements' Qualities in a Few Syllables More

Chemical Haiku: Elements' Qualities in a Few Syllables

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  • Other kinds of poems might be better? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DeepDarkSky ( 111382 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:47AM (#5522794)
    Poems rhyme and have a regular meter and that's what makes it easier for us to remember (songs with catchy, rhyming lyrics are the same). Haikus are not exactly easier to remember because they don't rhyme (although the fixed number of syllables help).

    I could be wrong, but I think it might be better to use another kind of poetry for this?

  • Too late... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Capt'n Hector ( 650760 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:47AM (#5522798)
    I already memorized the Tom Leher song.

  • that's gonna help? (Score:4, Offtopic)

    by larry bagina ( 561269 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:47AM (#5522800) Journal
    So instead of having to remember 100 elements, now you can make life easier and remember 100 elements + 100 elements * 17 syllables?

  • Haiku about aforementioned haikus (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:50AM (#5522809)
    Come on WTF?
    Some of those are not haikus
    chemists are retards

    Hint: read heliums...

  • I got one for you.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:50AM (#5522811)
    Science and Poems
    Merged in novel harmony
    But for what purpose?

  • I still prefer Lehrer's approach... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Exantrius ( 43176 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:51AM (#5522812)
    Lyrics and all can be found here:
    lyrics and quicktime versions of Tom Lehrer's Elements song [maricopa.edu] /ex

    • Comic genius (Score:4)

      by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @04:14AM (#5522868)

      I still think some of his finest work was embodied in the old classic poisoning pigeons in the park. [hyperborea.org]

      I love that one...

      • Re:Comic genius (Score:3, Informative)

        by Exantrius ( 43176 )
        Yeah... Up until recently (I think, he migh still be teaching, but I didn't see his name) he was a teacher of a core class at UCSC-- The first time I'd found out who sung poisoning pigeons in the park...

        *sigh* memories... /Ex
      • Ah yes, he used cyanide, when he could have used arsenic.

        I personally am partial to "So Long Mom, I'm Off To Drop The Bomb," which deals with other elements, altogether.
        • > I personally am partial to "So Long Mom, I'm Off To Drop The Bomb," which deals with other elements, altogether.

          Coupled with "We Will All Go Together When We Go.", yes?
        • I propose Clementine as best showing his talents, where he plays that hoary old song Clementine as if it had been written by various different people, Mozart, Gilbert and Sullivan, I think 4 or 5 total. Shows his writing and playing and singing talents very well, he's not just sarcastic fluff, he's intelligently done sarcastic fluff.

  • I have always done that... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dracken ( 453199 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:52AM (#5522816) Homepage
    periodic table
    with rhythm of haiku
    I remember

    ducks ;)

  • funny one! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:52AM (#5522817)
    This one for barium just cracks me up!

    the bitter cocktail
    of a colonoscopy --
    grin and barium

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Haiku? (Score:3, Informative)

      by rev.felix ( 657179 )
      Well, the 5-7-5 is often adhered to in Japanese haiku, but as I understand it, the idea of the haiku is to express some thought with a certain sort of spontenaity. It's more about method than form. The idea is to be contemplating some idea, and then simply write the haiku immediately without deliberating about how to fit it into some arbitrary form. My understanding is that the 5-7-5 myth is akin to "Columbus discovered america" that I also learned in 4th grade -- it's so oversimplified that it is no lon
      • Well, that's interesting. Maybe, like the 'word' "irregardless" the common usage has actually made it an entity unto itself? These are no longer 'haiku' per se, but their own genre of poetry?
    • No, it's not you, most of the entries are horrible "poetry". Read some real haiku. Westerners don't "get" haiku, they just think any syllables can be strung together. Frankly, for comedy I prefer the limerick, but the nonexistent skill it takes to produce a bad haiku seems to indicate that limericks will languish for some time yet.

  • hmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:53AM (#5522823)
    Element poems
    Until Slashdotted link.
    I am sad.
    • Not this
      Late at night
      How many syllables is a $@&!*ing haiku supposed to have?

      • 5 7 5 (Score:3, Insightful)

        by PatientZero ( 25929 )
        when writing haiku
        there's just one thing you must do
        that's five, seven, five

        But I haven't found one haiku on the website. :( Is there a joke I'm not getting? At first I thought the varrying syllables were an encoding of orbital numbers, weights, or something as a mnemonic, but I didn't see a pattern.

  • What a waste of mental effort (Score:4, Insightful)

    by The Tyro ( 247333 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @03:55AM (#5522829)
    Is anyone actually forced to memorize the periodic table these days? Talk about a pointless rote memorization task...

    I thought "learning" like this went the way of the dinosaurs in the 80's (of course, I teach on the university level, so I'm a bit removed from elementary education). Can any education types confirm that this kind of thing still goes on?

    I subscribe to the penguin theory of learning. After a certain point, your brain only holds so many recallable facts, just like an iceberg can hold only so many penguins. After that, for each new one you add, an old one must be shoved off (or at least relegated to subconscious long-term storage). I know memory is theoretically infinite, and that everything we learn is supposedly deep down in there somewhere, waiting for the right moment to be dredged up... but this kind of memorization is a waste of space on the iceberg.

    No way in sacrificing childhood memories for the periodic table... too easy to just go look up a copy.

    • Re:What a waste of mental effort (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ramzak2k ( 596734 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @04:29AM (#5522888)
      Your argument sounds like

      "why waste precious use of mental resources by making students multiply and divide instead of handing them over calculaters ?"

      There arent many who subscribe to the iceberg theory that you have mentioned. Memory is just like any other muscle - train it , keep it sharp and it will help you. Knowing to memorize something like the periodic table after all involves knowing what exactly helps your brain remember things - for some it might be a rhyme like the haiku and for others it could be pictures for association [johnpratt.com]. Either way, it helps develop a skill!
      • That is EXACTLY my argument. Understand the hard way... appreciate its nuances... pay homage to dogma... then do it the EASY way.

        Understanding how to do long division and multiplication is fine to help in mastering the concept... but doing all your daily math problems that way is a bit of a waste. If you are converting numbers between different base systems, you could do it by hand... but why? Use of a calculator is more efficient.

        I don't disagree that understanding the way the periodic table is stru

      • Your argument sounds like

        "why waste precious use of mental resources by making students multiply and divide instead of handing them over calculaters ?"

        We'd be nuts as a society not to teach our children basic arithmetic, so that's not a good example. I am currently taking a higher algrebra class (rings, fields, primes, error/crypto codes, etc), and since everyone has calculators that can contain formulas, you can't use them on exams. For calculus classes, the few calculations you do are made to be

    • To quote the original poster:

      Is anyone actually forced to memorize the periodic table these days? Talk about a pointless rote memorizatiotask...

      *knowledge* is power, not the ability to get back to somebody on something...

    • The only memorization I recall in connection with teh periodic table was being able to tell an Element from its symbol and vice-versa. Which is something that the haikus would be totally useless as a learning or teaching aid.

      Actually, reading the authors comments, I didn't see a mention anywhere that the table was intended to be a learning tool. I think it was just intended to be a geek/poet fun thing, and for that it's pretty good.

    • Re:What a waste of mental effort (Score:4, Interesting)

      by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @04:45AM (#5522917) Homepage Journal
      Is anyone actually forced to memorize the periodic table these days? Talk about a pointless rote memorization task...

      I thought "learning" like this went the way of the dinosaurs in the 80's (of course, I teach on the university level, so I'm a bit removed from elementary education). Can any education types confirm that this kind of thing still goes on?

      I'm from India, and I can confirm that such pointless torture of students is the norm here :(

      I was forced to memorize the periodic table when I was in high school.

      Not only that, no calculators allowed until you are in university. Every time someone tries to change it, the luddites start screaming that use of calculators harms the students' powers of mental arithmetic and so on.

      In the case of the periodic table, though, I'm actually not sure it is completely pointless: the properties of the elements are to a great extent dependent on their position in the table. If you involuntarily "see" an element in its position in the table whenever it is talked about, then you get to correlate its properties to its position much better, and you understand it better.

      At least, that's the idea. The question is whether the purported gains are worth the effort.

      I subscribe to the penguin theory of learning. After a certain point, your brain only holds so many recallable facts, just like an iceberg can hold only so many penguins. After that, for each new one you add, an old one must be shoved off (or at least relegated to subconscious long-term storage). I know memory is theoretically infinite, and that everything we learn is supposedly deep down in there somewhere, waiting for the right moment to be dredged up... but this kind of memorization is a waste of space on the iceberg.
      I'm not sure about the waste of space part. Sure, brain space is finite. However, you remember a zillion important details about your everyday life. The more things you consciously memorize, the faster the useless things are going to get dumped out of your brain. And memorizing more actually makes you better at storing and recalling things. OTOH, this kind of memorization is a huge waste of time, and is hence unjustifiable.

      BTW, some people might _want_ to memorize completely pointless things by rote for whatever reason. For instance, I memorized 1000 digits of pi [cjb.net] :-)

      • Not only that, no calculators allowed until you are in university. Every time someone tries to change it, the luddites start screaming that use of calculators harms the students' powers of mental arithmetic and so on.
        Quick question, which country is having all its jobs sucked out by which country? Quick hint: I'm in the country that's losing the jobs.

        I'm not saying, I'm just saying, ya know?
    • Ah, but I wish that I'd been encouraged to memorize more stuff as a kid. It's the tough tasks your brain takes on early in life that prepare it for later. The more you challenge a young brain, the better off it'll be later in life.

      When I was a kid, I read a lot of books. Like, non-stop, no-social-life, all-day in class. I attribute any and all intelligence bonus I have, at this point, to my early reading. Of course, once highschool started, and especially now in college, I had no time to read for fun,

    • It's geeky. 'Nuff said.

    • "Is anyone actually forced to memorize the periodic table these days? Talk about a pointless rote memorization task..."

      Compared to what? Compared to rote memorization of multiplication tables? When I ask you "What's twelve times twelve?" do you sit and add twelve twelves in your head, or do you just spit out the answer you had to memorize in grade school?

      If grade school is too long ago for you, there's always things like "square and cube roots," "pi to six digits," "trigonometric functions of angles di
    • We had to memorize the first 20 elements and it made our life much easier.
    • Is anyone actually forced to memorize the periodic table these days?

      Yes.

      Talk about a pointless rote memorization task...

      Believe me, we did. Third year inorganic chemistry. I've forgotten it all again, except for the bits I actually use--which I knew before I took the class and crammed the table in for exams. I don't know about the penguin theory, but I do know that there is no point to rote memorization (except under certain very limited circumstances.)

      If I really needed to know some collection

  • Frr pointed out this interesting approach to the periodic table: Haiku.

    You can't tell us there is nothing but this in the queue!
    Haiku.. Sheesh

  • "56 Barium
    the bitter cocktail
    of a colonoscopy --
    grin and barium"

    lesson for us all:
    nerds good at periodic,
    bad at humorous.

  • 5-7-5 (Score:3, Informative)

    by Captain Beefheart ( 628365 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @04:10AM (#5522860)
    And it would be even better if 5-7-5 wasn't just a Western convenience [millikin.edu].

  • Personally.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by nukey56 ( 455639 )
    ..I'd rather wear one of these [scienceteecher.com] than read through that thing.

    Seriously though, memorizing the periodic table in school was far easier for me than things like the MLK speech, the pre-amble, the 'To be or not to be' soliloquy, and whatnot. Flashcards will do wonders for small bits of information that you can later forget and look up on tshirts.
    • Oh man, you shouldn't have linked to that site. I'm very tempted to buy this [scienceteecher.com] because its such a terrible pun. Guaranteed to make your sarcastic hipster friends jealous.
    • i had a horrid image of going to school monday and seeing scores of t-shirts....craig wearing '2He4', chris wearing 82Pb208', brett wearing '22Ti48', sarah wearing '80Hg200'. although, it might make cheating on an exam much easier, "I was just stretching my neck, honest!"
  • The ones authored by "Mary Margaret Serpento" are clearly not haikus.
  • This could help out a lot of people who have problems remembering things. I remember when I was first learning the elements on the periodic table I would use computer terms, and sex to memorize things. This just makes it more generic and not as "dirty". Just becuase you do not like the idea doesn't mean it could not help a lot of children around the world and even some older people remember the periodic table elements.

  • If you want to get technical... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Cyno01 ( 573917 ) <Cyno01@hotmail.com> on Sunday March 16, 2003 @04:20AM (#5522877) Homepage
    None of these are true haikus. A true haiku has 5-7-5 sylables and must have a kigo or seasonal theme.
  • More appropriate near St Patrick's day..

    There once was an element named Zinc
    {child posts please continue}

    • OK, I'll bite:

      There once was an element named Zinc
      which had had one too many a drink.
      It consumed (more appropriate
      near St Patrick's day) opiate
      and was forcibly sent to a shrink.

      There once was an element named Zinc,
      a nutrient they put in a drink
      like Gatorade ("Is It In You?")
      {child posts please continue}
      and in galvanized alloys and ink.
  • programmer by love
    unemployed by dot-com bust
    need change for dinner
  • 92 Uranium
    Fission or fusion?
    World leaders seek security
    As uranium time ticks away

    94 Plutonium
    burial markers
    destroyed by vandals
    unEarthing
    future plague
    legacy of death
    no prophet warnings

    95 Americium
    Fire's high-tech bane,
    radiation's toxic pain--
    Americium Dream

    96 Curium
    all the way to Mars
    before one human footstep
    curium spectrometer

    97 Berkelium
    just academic
    protesting commercial use
    feels it in his bones

    99 Einsteinium
    laughing with God
    eternal craps game
    betting GUTs
    ['If you want to give God a laugh, tell him your plans']
    ['God does not play at dice with the Universe']
    [Grand Unified Theory, a mystery he planned to solve]

    101 Mendelevium
    almost forgotten
    my Table lives after me
    a lesson on pride
    [The value of Mendeleev's table is that it predicted the gaps in the vertical rows, indicated the properties of the then-missing elements and suggested where to look for them in Nature. But all other knowledge of Mendeleev himself was nearly lost to time and indifference.]

  • A little chant... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Colz Grigor ( 126123 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @04:41AM (#5522910) Homepage
    My father, a chemical engineer, was forced to learn this chant in his days at RPI. He taught it to me during junior year chemistry in high school. It helped a lot in remembering valences. Heck, without it, I doubt I'd even remember what a valence was...

    HAgLiNaK HAgLiNaK
    CuBaCaFePbZnMg
    AlFeBiNiKr AlFeBiNiKr
    SiC SiC SiC

    Phoenetically:
    Haglinak, haglinak
    koobakafapibzinmig
    alfabiniker alfabiniker
    sick sick sick

    Yeah, so this isn't quite a haiku, but it got me by. Only other thing he taught me from his RPI days, the RPI Cheer:
    e to the x, dy/dx
    e to the x, dy
    cosine, secant, tangent, sine
    three point one four one five nine
    square root, cubed root, log of pi
    disintegrate 'em RPI!

    I guess what I really learned was that a bunch of nerds went to RPI.

    ::Colz Grigor

    • >"Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehen, daß er
      > nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird." -- Nietzsche

      If my little german+memory serves me right then that means:

      "Those who wishes to battle monsters, should take care that they do not themselves become monsters in the process"

      Something that I think those waging the "war on terror" ought to be wary of.

      • Re:A little chant... (Score:2, Informative)

        by cygnusx ( 193092 )
        The full quote is usually translated into English as "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you".

      • Interesting. Yes, I think Nietzsche can easily be applied to terrorism. The unfortunate aspect of this application to terrorists is that you never know who the monsters will be so you wind up treating everyone remotely like a monster as a monster. This makes it very easy for you to become a monster yourself.

        Rather than looking into the abyss, perhaps we're becoming the abyss.

        For reference, the original context of my application of Nietzsche was anti-death penalty, something else I feel very strongly ab

    • Re:A little chant... (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Why is Kr in with the valence threes?
      • Well done. You were modded down, I see, probably for sounding argumentative, but the fact is, you're probably right. I'm not a chemist, so I'm susceptible to making mistakes like this one:

        Kr (Krypton) has a valence of 0. It's a noble gas.

        Cr (Cromium) has a valence of 3.

        So the rhyme I taught should probably be:
        HAgLiNaK, HAgLiNaK
        CuBaCaFePbZnMg
        AlFeBiNiCr, AlFeBiNiCr
        SiC SiC SiC

        Pronounced the same way, of course.

        I appreciate your catching my error. Thanks.

        ::Colz Grigor

    • Re:A little chant... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Spunk ( 83964 ) <sq75b5402@sneakemail.com> on Sunday March 16, 2003 @09:52AM (#5523335) Homepage
      the RPI Cheer:
      e to the x, dy/dx
      e to the x, dy
      cosine, secant, tangent, sine
      three point one four one five nine
      square root, cubed root, log of pi
      disintegrate 'em RPI!

      The RPI Cheer, you say? Interesting. My Alma Mater calls it the WPI Fight Song. And supposedly we stole it from MIT anyway :-p

      ...


      Holy crap. After searching google, quite a few other schools call it their own:

      Caltech, Georgia Tech, Rice, Purdue, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, Rose-Hulman, Northwestern

    • Give me an R!
      Give me a P!
      Give me an I!

      What's that spell?

      M-I-T Wan-na-be!

      (Yes, I was accepted to both schools mentioned, but attended neither, so no sour grapes accusations)
  • 20 Calcium
    Festering cows
    puss and antibiotics
    got milk, kids?

    Looks like they had a visitor from PETA...
  • Are we really that nerdy? Do we actually care about a new way to remember the periodic table? I hope not.

  • Hmm haikus (Score:2, Informative)

    by Phattypants ( 469233 )
    00
    It shames me to say,
    but there are some truly bad
    Haikus on the page
    01
    The page we just read
    contained incorrect haikus
    too few syllables
    02
    Those that follow rules
    all have seven syllables
    surrounded by five
    03
    Count my syllables
    and you will understand it
    An acquired taste

    • Re:Hmm haikus (Score:2, Interesting)

      by taliver ( 174409 )
      Now, IANAEMTG (I Am Not An English Major, Thank God), but we seem to be prety lax on this whole concept of Haiku.

      From the little I understand, part of the art of Haiku is to have the first two lines be completely unrelated, and the third tie them together.

      Bane of Chernobyl,
      First End of Life for our subs,
      Curse you, O Xenon!

      Also, I've often wondered how translatable 'syllable' to the original Japanese word are. I have absolutely zero knowledge of the language, but I'm certain an original Haiku would not

  • Please stop pluralizing haiku. (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Anyone who knows any Japanese should be aware that the Japanese don't use plurals like that. So we have one haiku and we have many haiku. No plurals. Please stop saying 'haikus'. Thanks.

    I hope it goes without saying that I expect and look forward to many nonsensical racist replies.
  • I've never really liked the Haiku format. So the what fuck if it has so many syllabus, it just doesn't sound interesting.

    Theyr'e not even easy to remember because their blank.

  • Offttopic (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Qrlx ( 258924 )
    im so drunk i cant even speell

    anyway, my sister came up with this one to remembet the planets (C) miriam pierce

    Mount
    Vesuvius
    Erupted
    Many
    Juveniles
    Smoth ered
    Under
    Nearby
    Pompeii

    i love her, but only as a sister, okay>?

  • Sesame-Street-Alphabet-Song method (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sanqui ( 448244 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @08:45AM (#5523209)
    I remember Big Bird singing a song about an incredible word: Ab-ca-def-ghi-jk-l-m-nop-... you get the idea. The day before my Grade 11 Chemistry Exam I used the same method, and can still bring it back 10 years later:

    H-HeLi-BeB-C-NOF-Ne
    NaM-gAlSiPS-ClArKCa
    Sc-TiV-Cr-Mn-FeCoNi-CuZn

    Not the most attractive (or pronouncable) words, but it worked for me...

  • Not Haiku... (Score:4, Funny)

    by krugdm ( 322700 ) <<moc.gurki> <ta> <todhsals>> on Sunday March 16, 2003 @09:27AM (#5523275) Homepage Journal

    When Hydrogen Tech played Oxygen U,
    the game had just begun,
    when Hydrogen racked up two fast points,
    and Oxygen still had none.

    Then Oxygen scored a single goal,
    and thus it did remain,
    at Hydrogen 2 and Oxygen 1,
    called because of rain.

  • And Then We Have The Element Song... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by the eric conspiracy ( 20178 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @09:59AM (#5523344)
    There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium,
    And hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium,
    And nickel, neodymium, neptunium, germanium,
    And iron, americium, ruthenium, uranium,
    Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
    And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
    And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium,
    And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

    There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
    And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
    And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
    And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.

    There's holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
    And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
    And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
    Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
    And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
    Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
    And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
    And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.

    There's sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,
    And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
    And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,
    And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, and sodium.

    These are the only ones of which the news has come to Ha'vard,
    And there may be many others, but they haven't been discavard.

    Sung to the tune from Gilbert & Sullivan's "Major General Song" from "Pirates of Penzance", it is an amazingly perfect parody by Tom Lehrer

  • oh dear (Score:2, Funny)

    by jazman ( 9111 )
    Disappointed
    Lithium rhyme
    not a haiku.

  • Along those lines... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Tim Macinta ( 1052 ) <twm@alum.mit.edu> on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:24AM (#5523547) Homepage
    For further reading,
    Molecules With Silly Names [bris.ac.uk]
    is amusing too.
  • Chemical high, cool!

    OT: somehow I'm reminded of a day last June when I was returning from a chemically induced pattern-recognition exercise *cough*acid*cough*trip*cough* and checked Slashdot, where the latest headline was on Periodicity, Patterns and Chemistry.

  • Wrong! (Score:3, Funny)

    by limekiller4 ( 451497 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @11:37AM (#5523581) Homepage
    The helium entry [iscifistory.com] reads (formatting theirs):

    lighter than dream
    flight between worlds

    Deja Thoris
    serial rescues in
    afternoon sun

    Haiku is a 5 sylable, 7 sylable, 5 sylable structure. Am I just daffy or does this not even come close?

    • As some others have posted elsewhere, the 5/7/5 format is mostly a western convience. I've been given to understand that the real goal of a haiku is to use as few words as possible or in a "poetic" manner to convey the desired impression.

      So for all those saying that these aren't haikus because they don't fit with the 5/7/5 you learned in elementary school, well, get over it.

      • Cyclometh writes:
        "As some others have posted elsewhere, the 5/7/5 format is mostly a western convience. I've been given to understand that the real goal of a haiku is to use as few words as possible or in a "poetic" manner to convey the desired impression."

        Oh, cool. I didn't know that.

        Thanks for the info.
  • wow. all those onmouseovers. neato.

  • Memorizing the Periodic Table (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Arrgh ( 9406 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @12:27PM (#5523752) Homepage Journal
    In grade 8 we were asked to memorize the first twenty elements of the periodic table. Of course I put it off way too long and ended up cramming the night before the test. So I just made up a little mnemonic poem. Here it is in phonetic form:

    Hydrogen Helim Lithium Beryllium (that's as far as I got with the names)
    Bicknoffnee Namgal Sipsclarkca

    In symbolic form, that's H He Li Be B C N O F Ne Na Mg Al Si P S Cl Ar K Ca. Can't forget the damned thing after seventeen years.

  • A note about poetry (Score:3, Funny)

    by panurge ( 573432 ) on Sunday March 16, 2003 @01:22PM (#5524009)
    Haiku = Japanese form not directly translatable into English. OK?
    5-7-5 = rigid format which cannot be directly related to original Haiku. Also OK?
    Therefore the question has to be, does an attempt to represent the feel of haiku have to follow what are in effect arbitrary rules? I suggest not.
    Spirit of haiku != programming language syntax.

    In fact, the idea of a short poem based around a single feeling can manifest itself in other ways. I happen to like the limeraiku:

    In Arabia,

    baby, a girl just gets dust
    in her labia
    which is a long way from haiku but would never have existed as a form had the haiku not existed.

    Some of the element "haiku" are mildly amusing, some are thoughful, some belong with the Sweet Singer of Michigan, but the attempt to do something with a form is surely worth doing if only to see if it works. This is a mannered exercise in writing a very short verse on a single subject. Arguing about 5-7-5 or whether it works as a menmonic misses the file system checking point. Extending the Housman Test, I'd suggest that whether or not these verses work AS POETRY depends on:

    • Does reading one produce a sudden emotion?
    • Does it suddenly stick in your mind?
    • Does it feel as if it sprang naturally from its subject?

    Enough rant. Back to work.

  • Ebonics version
  • Ex Star-Trekkie guy Now he plugs Priceline dot com He gets half-price rates. *bows*
  • Remember how they were going to have a systematic nomenclature for the elements? I.e. name=number in Russian?

    But we just couldn't give up our selfish ends, so we had to change the names to the discoverer.

    Eventually we'll be naming the elements after people, but the people will be named after numbers, so we'll have
    10736ium and 99335237864ium, (the 178th and 179th elements, respectively).

  • NOT HAIKU! (Score:2, Informative)

    by dnahelix ( 598670 )
    I'm sorry to say, but most of them I read are NOT the correct form of Haiku. I believe it was posted earlier, but buried in a response, that the correct Haiku form is 5 syllables, 7 syllables, 5 syllables. The only one I can remember reading that is correct is Hydrogen.

    Even worse, most of them are nonsense freeform poetry that would certainly NOT help me remember the periodic table.

    Furu ikeya
    kawazu tobikomu
    mizu no oto

    A very old pond.
    Suddenly, in jumps a frog.
    The splash of water.

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