Important Matters

Aristotle made an observation profound,
That matter surrounded us - all around!
Scientists studied matter of kinds,
And they made some interesting finds.

In the 1600s you had Leeuwenhoek,
Who changed the world with his microscope.
He saw little creatures with only one cell,
Observing water that was taken from a well.

How profound! they all abound
In the water and on the ground.

"what made matter?" scientists thought
"what could it be - oh truly what?"
Two different ideas prevailed back then
One said 'particulate!', the other said "Men,
Isn't matter like a block of tin?
It can be hot or cold or thick or thin."

But that just didn't seem to be quite right,
Sparking off another fight.

Finally, a bloke named JJ Thomson came,
By solving this question, he'd earn his fame.

He discovered that atoms made it up
But Thomson wasn't done,  his time not up
He opined, and thought that "Hey!
How did atoms make weighty things weigh?"

He concluded at last, they have a mass;
they're made up of protons (now that's just class)
Thomson drew his model of an atom- O Fie!
It ended up looking like an apple pie!

Rutherford, who hailed from N-zee,
Discovered the core of positivity
He took some gold (wife's jewelry kit?)
And slammed it with alphas,  oh how they hit!
Most passed through, but he saw something strange,
Some of the particles bounced straight out their range
And so, the idea of a nucleus was born,
Kinda like the centre in an ear of corn.

Let's wind time back about 200 years,
When the winds of change began turning the gears
Joseph Priestley, scientist beyond compare
Discovered something called, 'dephlogisticated air'
It was renamed Oxygen by Lavoisier of France,
A vital element in the cosmic dance.

Hennig Brand - I'd better not miss,
He tried to make gold out of piss!
He let it ferment for many a moon,
And ground it and smashed it by using a spoon.
He heated it and 'woah'ed,
Whatever he had found, it glowed!
Phosphorus abbreviated to P,
Symbol describes it's discovery

Much later in Zurich in a patent office there
Sat a clerk with some crazy hair
He was working on Physics about space - time
Close to breakthrough covered in grime
When he released his findings nobody cared
To see his equation e=Mc squared
Albert Einstein he was indeed
He's the greatest, all agreed.


A German guy by name Max Planck,
Found something that many would thank.
Quantum Physics is what was its name,
It gained Max Planck considerable fame.
Electrons could do impossible things,
As if they were magical wizards with wings.
Time travel, being in 2 places at once,
These properties made scientists feel like a dunce.
How is this possible? How is it done?!
(Still working on it: Won't jump the gun)

Let's now look at a fellow named Bohr,

He was looking into atoms (we'll see what for...)

He found that atoms got energy in a packet,

Quanta, he called them, it made quite a racket!

He later wrote, in a news article,

That he had found a new particle!

Hantaro Nagoka, a Japanese guy,

Let the science world let out a sigh.
When he drew the atom's new shape,
A centred nucleus, with electrons like a cape.

Turn your sights to Murray Gell-Mann,
A Caltech scientist, for Nobel Prize ran,
With his discovery of something called 'Quark',
Proving to the world that he was no dork.
They made up atoms, the vital part,
Gave many new sciences life to start.

In 1953, in an English lab,
Some people made a discovery- very fab!
They had discovered DNA,
Nobel for them? Yes! Hooray!
DNA's structure: a double helix,
By Watson and Crick (not Felix)
In the past, a while ago,
The science of genetics began to grow.

William Morgan, a brilliant dude,
Was in a decidedly tedious mood.
He started a job that took years to end,
Years of careful work- fruit flies to tend!
He bred fruit flies to check for some traits,
Red eyes? White wings? He checked all mates.
Heredity was what his work helped out,
We understood genes that we didn't know about.

If you can be like these men; smart and clever,
Then your name just might be immortalized forever.

THE END