“The metals are elements wondrous:
At room temp, most, solids; dense; lustrous;
Also ductile, conductive.
But this form’s reductive;
In textbooks: more info, illustrious.”
The 22 October 2019 limerick was part of the National Chemistry Week 2019 sequence, focusing on another aspect of “Marvelous Metals.”
“The metals are elements wondrous: /
At room temp, most, solids; dense; lustrous; /
Also ductile, conductive…”
Chemistry textbooks compile much technical information in a relatively small space; this limerick takes this a step further, cataloging several traditional definitions and properties of metals via the syllabic constraints of a limerick.
Metals exist in the solid phase at room temperature, with the notable exception of mercury. Metals’ densities are high: even a small volume of a given metal has a significant mass (and these densities are characteristic to specific metals, as commemorated in Archimedes’s famous realization). Metals are lustrous, reflecting light and appearing shiny. They are ductile and can be turned into wires; they can conduct heat and electricity. [As a sidenote, textbooks generally mention ductility (a metal’s ability to be made into a wire) and malleability (a metal’s ability to be flattened into a sheet) in the same sentence, but I couldn’t fit the latter property into this space.]
“But this form’s reductive; /
In textbooks: more info, illustrious.”
The last two lines are a bit contradictory: they acknowledge the limits of the limerick and point an interested reader towards the more expansive information discussed in textbooks… even as the inspiration for the limerick arose from the brevity with which these books address metals’ many interesting properties, in introducing the periodic table.
Usually, however, a textbook will include more extensive discussions of descriptive chemistry as well; these chapters expand on the general discussion of metals provided in the early overview, examining particular groups’ chemical and physical properties. Likewise, some of the other limericks written for this week will address specific metals in more detail.
Chemphasis 