| Previous News about Physics songs: |
May 18:2020: A really touching song by Melissa Rooney, a high school physics teacher, reaching out to her students. Give it a minute -- it grows on you! Here is an article about the song. | |
| March 19. 2020: Not a physics song, but describes the situation many physics instructors face amid the pandemic! Coronavirus version of "I Will Survive", by Prof. Michael Bruening! (Here's an article about the song from Inside Higher Ed.) | ||
| February 28, 2020: (Actually, this event was cancelled, one of the early results of the pandemic.) The annual "Rock 'n Roll Physics Sing Along" takes place this Wednesday, as part of the March Meeting of the American Physical Society, the largest annual gathering of physicists. The event is open to the public. Please come if you're in the Denver area! Live, five-piece, mostly-physicist band! Wednesday, March 4, 9:15-10:45 pm, Colorado Convention Center, Four Seasons Ballroom 4. Click here for a sample from a previous year. | ||
| July 11, 2019: If you are interested in using songs for science education, please consider submitting a proposal for a webinar, video poster, or panel discussion for the upcoming VOICES online conference on teaching STEM with songs. The submission deadline is July 24. (The conference is Sept. 22-23.) |  |
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| April 20, 2019: Fun new physics song about Fourier analysis! "Wonderful Wave", set to "Wonderful World", by Sam Cooke. Lyrics by my former student Kent Riley. (Part of our second Wednesday series of physics songs, just a bit late.) | ||
| March 13, 2019: If this doesn't make you smile, I don't know what will: "Alpha Decay" from the physics sing-along last week at the March Meeting of the American Physical Society. Set to "YMCA", led by APS fellow Prof. Robin Selinger, with Grace McKenzie-Smith leading the dancing! (Instead of "YMCA", she's leading them in "alpha D K".) | ||
| March 9, 2019: The annual "Rock 'n Roll Physics Sing Along" took place this past Wednesday, as part of the March Meeting of the American Physical Society, the largest annual gathering of physicists. We had a terrific turnout! Great performances by all-physicist guest vocalists Prof. Robin Selinger, Dr. David Ehrenstein, Prof. Charles Collett, and Grace McKenzie-Smith, as well as our all-physicist band, Dr. Victor Albert, Lev Krayzman, Lenny Campanello, Lucy Zhang, and Dr. Yuen Yiu. Here's a sample. | ||
| March 3, 2019: The annual "Rock 'n Roll Physics Sing Along" takes place this Wednesday, as part of the March Meeting of the American Physical Society, the largest annual gathering of physicists. The event is open to the public. Please come if you're in the Boston area! Live, five-piece, all-physicist band! Wednesday, March 6, 9:15-10:45 pm, Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel, Marina Ballroom. Click here for a sample from a previous year. | ||
| February 13, 2019: The Coulomb Song video! Fun and upbeat! You'll learn something whether you're an expert or a newcomer. Lyrics by Marian McKenzie, set to "Rave On" (made famous by Buddy Holly). Part of a series of physics songs videos released the 2nd Wednesday of each month. | ||
| January 10, 2019: Here's a fun new physics song video with awesome percussion (now correctly synced) and whistling, about Hooke and Newton, and how, despite their rivalry, they are forever linked in the physics of oscillators. We even obtained video of Hooke & Newton singing along! | ||
| January 5, 2019: Holy Smokes! Brian May, lead guitarist for Queen, and also an astrophysicist, has written a song about the New Horizons space mission! May has been a scientist on the New Horizons team for 3 years, and the PI, Alan Stern, asked him to write a song about it, commemorating its recent encounter with Ultima Thule, a Kuiper Belt object which is the furthest away thing that one of our spacecraft has ever encountered. Photos of the encounter have been released just within the last 48 hours. Video of the song here. Details about the song here. |
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| Dec. 12, 2018: A video of "Ohms Volts & Amps" (set to "Oh Holy Night"), from the Oberlin Physics Songbook, featuring heart-meltingly beautiful guitar, custom recorded by Jared Cattoor! The video is a series of "Lissajous" figures on an oscilloscope -- the physicists version of a lava lamp! 3rd in a monthly series of high audio & video quality physics songs, released on the 2nd Wednesday of each month. (There's also a karaoke version!) | ||
Dec. 8, 2018: A video of "Coaxial Waves", (set to "Jingle Bell Rock")! "Swing and wiggle in cylindrical sync -- that's coaxial waves!" From the 2015 sing-along at the March Meeting of the APS, featuring Dennis Dietz on guitar. |
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| Nov. 30, 2018: As promised, here are guitar chords for the suggested set of six physics carols, and a printer-friendly handout of the lyrics, all ready for your winter holiday physics sing-along! |  |
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| Nov. 14, 2018: A fun new physics song video, with 6-piece band, about the Kronecker delta from quantum mechanics. The 2nd in a monthly series of high-quality audio and video physics songs, released on the second Wednesday of each month. | ||
| Nov. 8, 2018: Time to organize your winter holiday physics sing-along! Here is a suggested set of six physics carols, in printer-friendly format (Word .. pdf). I will post guitar chords for all of these no later than December 9. (If you want more, here's a different set of carols.) | |
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| Nov. 1, 2018: Here's a song about "Classical Electrodynamics", by J.D. Jackson, which has instilled terror in the hearts of countless grad students. Lyrics written in the 1970s by Dr. Tom Klitsner of Sandia National Lab. Audio from the 2011 APS physics sing-along. | ||
| Oct. 19, 2018: This is the one-year anniversary of the first observation of an object from another solar system passing through ours. Here is a one-minute interview with the discoverer, followed by a delightful song about it, written by Marian McKenzie! | ||
| Oct. 10, 2018: 1. Check out this terrific new video by Walter Smith and Marian McKenzie, the first in a monthly series with high-quality instrumentals and fun videos! This one is about the "quality factor" Q that describes oscillators. | ||
| Oct. 3, 2018: The complete program for the second annual "VOICES" (Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song) conference is now available here. There were many highlights, but my very favorite part was the discussion about possible dissertation topics led by Tiffany Getty, one of the co-chairs of the conference, who will be doing her Ph.D. these on STEM songs for higher education. |  Tiffany Getty |
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| Sept. 27, 2018: The second annual "VOICES" (Virtual Ongoing Interdisciplinary Collaborations on Educating with Song) conference was held online on Wed., Sept 26. The entire video program will soon be available online, but meantime check out the website of our keynote speaker Tom McFadden, including this cute song about static electricity. | ||
| Sept. 20, 2018: Science historian Melinda Baldwin has written an outstanding article in Physics Today about the Physical Revue, a show including many physics songs, that Tom Lehrer put on in 1951 while a grad student at Harvard. The recordings of the show are hosted here on PhysicsSongs.org ! |  Photo from the final performance. Photo credit: Harvard Crimson |
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| August 16, 2018: Here is a terrific article in Physics Today, written by science historian Melinda Baldwin, about Arthur Roberts, the best known physics songster of the 1940s and 1950s. It gives a in-depth picture of the man and his times. as well as the circumstances under which several of his songs were written. (The article includes abbreviated versions of several of his songs. For the full versions, and more of his songs, click here.) |
 Photo used with permission of the AIP Emilio Segrè Visual Archives, George Tressel Collection |
Background image: spiral galaxy IC 2560, ESA/Hubble & NASA, Acknowledgement: Nick Rose