Web Site Search

Ask us now

Chemistry

Lighten Up! - Chemistry Humor

Anne Langley, Subject Librarian

226 Bostock Library | anne.langley@duke.edu | 919.660.1578

  • The Periodic Table of Comic Books - A very cool site documenting appearances of the elements in comics. Good stuff!
  • The Elements Song - Tom Lehrer is a genius, and this proves it. Who else can sing the table of the elements to the Major General's patterson from Pirates of Penzance? Prof. Lehrer is a mathematician, and has a lot of songs about math too, but you'll have to browse to get to them. :) This site has all the lyrics to his songs, but unfortunately no music to go with them. But Anne could probably sing them for you if you asked nicely.
  • Create Your Own Unsafe MSDS - Kind of like a Mad Lib for chemists.
  • Humor in Chemistry - Maintained by some students at Connecticut College. Has a bunch of links to other humor sites including TWINKIES and the Coalition to Ban Dihydrogen Monoxide.
  • Molecules with Silly Names Humor only a chemist could love! (Actually, it's quite funny even if you aren't one.)
  • Songs of Cesium Yes folks, that's about thirty songs all on the inspiring topic of... cesium.
  • Lab Rats A comic strip about the life of a chemistry major.
  • The Ig Nobel Prize To quote their website, "Each year, ten Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded. The selection criterion is simple. The prizes are for "achievements that cannot or should not be reproduced." Examine that phrase carefully. It covers a lot of ground."
  • The Science Humor Webring - If you're not familiar with the concept of a "webring", it is a series of similar sites which are linked to each other in somewhat linear but random order. If you choose this link, you will go to a random site on the Science Humor Webring. I can't guarantee that it'll be about chemistry, but biologists can be pretty funny too.