Science can sometimes be a dry, dense subject able to intimidate even the brightest students. But in recent years, artists and scientists alike have taken to YouTube to fuse scientific learning with catchy tunes.
Students in the 10th-grade honors chemistry class at Granada Hills Charter High School were asked to make a video illustrating a scientific concept, so Eli Cirino chose ionic bonds.
“The PCR Song” by Bio-rad
Natalia Blank, a chemistry professor at Norwich University in Vermont, uses “PCR Song” in her Introduction to Forensic Science. Blank plays the clip, she says, “to provide a little comic relief and an emotional connection to the otherwise dryish science lecture.”
“Science is Real” by They Might Be Giants
John Flansburgh and partner John Linnell of band They Might be Giants became giants in the educational music video world when they launched a parallel career in children’s music, bringing their infallibly catchy songwriting to a series of DVDs.
“Chemical Party” by Marie Curie Actions
Another instant classic of the genre is “Chemical Party,” in which actors portray chemical elements to illustrate, among other concepts, hydrogen’s attraction to carbon with two actors who lustfully latch on to each other.
“What is a Flame” by Ben Ames
The stereotype of the scientist as mired in the incomprehensible has more than a grain of truth, but that lack of comprehension is the gap that the Center for Communicating Science at New York’s Stony Brook University sought to bridge with its “Flame Challenge” contest.
