Isotopes - Elementary Cloning! Poem by John Knight

There are not many poems on scientific themes which is a pity. When i was a Lecturer in Science I wrote some poems in 'sonnet form' to better enable my students to understand Scientific Terms and Principles. Atomic Structure and Isotopes - is a difficult topic so i wrote this poem to make it a little more accessible. The poetic discipline of the sonnet imposes certain linguistic constraints:

1. Each line has to have ten syllables
2. Each line has to make sense
3. each verse has to be self contained in fourteen lines.


Chemical Elements are nature's tools
From them everything physical is formed
From Hydrogen through to Uranium
The ninety-two natural elements.
They all consist of the same building blocks.
These are Protons, Electrons and Neutrons.
Eah successive element has one more..........
Proton (positive) balanced by one more............
Electron (negative) and variable..............
Numbers of Neutrons producing Isotopes.
Carbon - The most important element
Has six Protons - also six electrons.
Carbon-12 also contains six Neutrons
Carbon-14 has eight neutrons - SIMPLE!

Isotopes are forms of the same element.
We always had a problem with Chlorine
Its Atomic Mass was thirty-five point-five
Insread of being a nice whole number!
The Mass Spectrometer has shown us why.
Chlorine has two isotopes - thirty-five
And thirty-seven in precise ratio
Three to one - thirty-five point-five - SIMPLE!
Isotopes are nature's generous bonus.
Radioactive isotopes cure cancer
Monitor pollution and control processes.
Carbon-14 enables us to study
Biosynthetic pathways in plant life.
Daily we find new uses for isotopes.

Scientific words can cause difficulty.
The names of all the Chemical Elements
Have very interesting origins!
Helium named from the Sun - HELIOS,
Chlorine from its colour - CHLOROS - yellow
Uranium form the planet - URANUS.
But why ISOTOPE - it seems an odd word?
All Scientists study Latin and Greek.
Isotopes of an element occupy............
The same place in the Periodic Table.
The Greek for 'same place' is ISO - TOPES,
That is how we name Scientific Terms!
EXO - THERMIC means giving out some heat
ENDO - THERMIC means taking in - SIMPLE!