On MaryAnn's latest Pepsi Challenge Post, White Rabbit and I got into a discussion about James Clerk Maxwell and a Thursday OPP I did last December. Wabbit sai , with my quirky personality and knowledge of science, I should write more poems in thevein of Maxwell - and I reminded him that I have written more than a dozen such poems - here are three -

A Poem About Nothing
- by denny

The cosmos is a funny place
It’s really mostly empty space
Oh sure, there are those Galaxies
and all the cosmic oddities
with lots of nothing in between

The stars they think they are so great
Of how they learned to aggregate
forming pinwheels in the sky
but just between you and I
I’m fascinated by the void

’cause when you add up all that “stuff”
there simply ain’t enough
to hold the Universe together
so where’s the “magic tether”
that keeps it fixed in place?

They say it’s all that “emptiness”
that we all thought was “nothingness”
Dark matter is the clue
that forms the cosmic glue
and not those haughty stars

So when you gaze into the sky
and watch the twinkling stars go by
notice what’s in between
the stuff that’s never seen
’cause that’s where all the action is.


********************

The Atom Is Not A Ball -
by denny



The atom is something really quite small
some would propose it resembles a ball
You can pack ‘em and stack ‘em
to make what you’d like
A kitten, a hotdog or even a bike.

But when you look close, it’s not that at all
No the atom it seems is never a ball
It’s got Neutrons and Protons
and Electrons a batch
But wait, even here there’s a catch

The closer you look, the more that it’s changing
strange little things that keep re-arranging
The Neutrons and Protons
they’re coming apart
And so it appears, this is only the start

A strange little creature came out of the dark
I asked him his name and he said it was Quark
He and two brothers
were part of a set
break up a Neutron and three’s what you get.

Same with the Proton, Electron as well
All of these creatures inside of them dwell
So you see that the atom
is really quite small
But when you look close, it isn’t a ball.


*****************

Does It Matter?
An Ode to the Electron
- by denny

The electron is a curious thing
Around the nucleus in a ring
They whirl about in mad abandon
They give it charge
So it’s glad it had ‘em.

Now they’re off to find a mate
with the opposite electrical state
Molecular union they will seek
to build a bond
either strong or weak.

And so they grow in size
As their number multiplies
though small, they’re dreams are large
just watch them grow
it’s because of that charge.

And soon they’re swirling Galaxies
A Universe full of mysteries
All the things that we can see
and most important
even you and me.

The electron is a wondrous thing
Around the nucleus in a ring
They whirl about in mad abandon
They gave it charge so
I’m sure glad it had ‘em.

TAP

d;-)

Those are three fun poems.

NS

Whatever anyone else says, I think you've found your calling.

wr ()()

I post 3 poems on getting old - and three silly poems. How did I know you and Wabbit would prefer the "silly" poems ????

TAP

d;-)

and then you say my "calling" is to write "silly" poems. But I do haveto agree. And they are much more fun to write. I'll leave the morbid stuff to Ted..

Are we having FUN yet ????

TAP

d;-)

The Photon
An Ode to Light
- by denny

The Photon is a bit of light
It gives us warmth and gives us sight
Always with us, but not always seen
Even on the darkest night.

They travel very, very fast
The speed of light can’t be surpassed
It has no mass to hold it back
Before you know it, it’s gone past

But Oh! So beautiful to behold
In all the colors, bright and bold
Painting rainbows across the sky
in all their glory they unfold

They make the trees their vibrant green
And all of Autumn’s colors seen
From Red to Violet, it makes them all
And every color In between.

And passing through a cosmic lens,
Its dual nature's rather queer;
Its travels show the Universe
Somehow foresaw that we'd be here.(*)

(*) A famous insight by astrophysicist John Archibald Wheeler

wr ()()

Excellent last stanza Rabbit - something it was definitely lacking. I would change one thng - however -

And passing through a cosmic lens,
Its dual nature's rather queer;
Its travels show the Universe
Somehow foretold that we'd be here.(*)

(*) A famous insight by astrophysicist John Archibald Wheeler (any relationship ?)

d;-)

How about "foresaw" or, perhaps better yet, "foreknew"?

Dr. Wheeler's exact phrase was that the Universe "someknow knew we were coming", and after looking at the online tangle of cosmological arguments revolving around that idea just now, I figure that for the sake of the poem, it would be best to not go too far beyond that.

So far as I know, the late Dr. Wheeler and I have no close genealogical relationship. I used to quip that he if anyone had the authority to speak on the Big Bang, inasmuch as he was probably an eyewitness to it. :) He lived to a ripe old age.

My reply was meant to be just that: a reply, not an addition. But if you think it fits the theme...

wr ()()

The thoughts of Archibald Wheeler -

“In any field, find the strangest thing and then explore it.” - Archibald Wheeler

The Photon
An Ode to Light
- by denny

The Photon is a bit of light
It gives us warmth and gives us sight
Always with us, but not always seen
Even on the darkest night.

They travel very, very fast
The speed of light can’t be surpassed
It has no mass to hold it back
Before you know it, it’s gone past

But Oh! So beautiful to behold
In all the colors, bright and bold
Painting rainbows across the sky
in all their glory they unfold

They make the trees their vibrant green
And all of Autumn’s colors seen
From Red to Violet, it makes them all
And every color In between.

And passing through a cosmic lens,
Its dual nature's rather queer;
Its travels show the Universe
Somehow foreknew that we'd be here.(*)

(*) A famous insight by astrophysicist John Archibald Wheeler

d;-)

"For every one billion particles of antimatter
there were one billion and one particles of matter.
And when the mutual annihilation was complete,
one billionth remained -
and that's our present Universe"

- Albert Einstein

There Was A Time
by denny


Exploding out of nothingness
In this the infinitesimal
First fraction of time
The instant of all creation
Energy in all its guises
Burst upon the scene
And cast upon the Universe
The ever expanding consciousness
Of that which was to be.

Expanding ever outward
To find its place in time
Ten thousand million years ago
We burst upon the scene
And traveled at the speed of light
To take our place among the stars
That fill the vast uncharted void

Yet filled with mostly emptiness
That separates us from the rest
And so too in the microcosm
For as we look around
We find our lives are empty too
We’ve lost the sense of us

Forgotten whence we’ve come
A distant time when
all was one.

d;-)

Dr. Wheeler is an Astrophysicist at Princeton who helped explain nuclear fission with Bohr, argued quantum theory with Einstein, helped build the atomic and hydrogen bombs and pioneered the study of what he later dubbed black holes. Along the way, he indulged his taste for fireworks and mischief and became the hippest poet physicist of his generation, using metaphor as effectively as calculus to capture the imaginations of his students and colleagues and to send them, minds blazing, to the barricades to confront nature.

From Fall to Float
by Archibald Wheeler

Venture far
To see the nearby
With new eyes.
Perceive yesterday’s gravity,
Whether acting on man or mass,
As today’s free float.
In the movement of the mass
Grasp the message of the medium:
“I, medium that grips you,
Man or mass,
And takes you how to move
Am not space.
I am Spacetime.”

Revelation of Space
by Archbald Wheeler

Oh event,
Sparkling grain of sand
On the fabric of existence,
Oh interval,
Gossamer tie
Between event and event,
You tear away the clouds
Of “absolute space” and “absolute time”
And reveal to us spacetime-
Spacetime as doorway,
Doorway during traveller,
To the enormity
Of space and time

d;-)