Surely you know Tom Lehrer’s song “The Elements”:
But seeing that video, you can also see that there have in fact been many more that have since been discovered. So what we need now is an updated elements song that includes all the subsequently discovered elements. And it should also be in atomic number order, with a digression where the periodic table splits. Fortunately, such a song exists:
I for one did not know there were now elements with three-letter symbols. You learn something new every day. By the way, it was Olivia that showed me this video. She’s in the fourth grade. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have any chemistry in school till I was in the seventh or eighth grade. Kids today, I tell you. And now, for something completely different, here is Daniel Radcliffe singing the Tom Lehrer elements song:
And you thought Hermione was the smart one.
The three letter element symbols are abbreviations for temporary placeholder names for elements that have not yet been synthesized, or whose synthesis is too recent to have been named officially. Once they are synthesized and get permanent names, they’ll get two letter symbols.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_element_name