Tag Archives: science poems

You’re Invited to Poetry Zoo!

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YOUR POEM could be published on the Science Rhymes Blog for NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK 2024.

This year, we’re creating a POETRY ZOO.  Search “National Science Week Poetry Zoo” or access the PDF called LOVING LIVING THINGS on the Science Rhymes / National Science Week page to help with some ideas. 

Please submit by Monday 29th July via email to: feedback@sciencerhymes.com.au. 

We prefer poems of 1 to 5 verses that rhyme.  Children are especially encouraged to participate: just make sure you correspond via an adult’s email address so we can reply.  Poems authored by children will be acknowledged by first name with School name, Town and State where supplied (no surname).

Anyone using AI to create poems: please acknowledge ChatGPT or AI equivalent as co-author of your submission.

Thank you to ACP poets and readers for participating and sharing this invitation!

Water Droplets by Celia Berrell

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Where liquid water meets the air
it has a surface tension.
An outer layer of molecules
that all have strong attraction.

Water droplets round in shape
like beads will often form,
hanging on a cobweb’s threads
like jewels in the dawn.

And on a pond small insects simply
walk along its top.
Their tiny feet don’t break that layer.
Along the top they hop.

A raindrop on a window-pane
will slide towards the ground
as water is a fluid that
can easily move round.

It leaves behind a trailing tail
as it goes trickling past
because that surface tension makes
it stick upon the glass.

I like to pick out two big drops
and guess their moving pace
to see which one will trickle first
and win the window race.

Poem from The Science Rhymes Book. Illustration by Amy Sheehan

Who? by Graham Seal

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Now UFOs are UAPs,

can someone please explain 

who was it who decided

UFOs must be renamed?

Of course, I do not have a clue

who might have been that author,

but I have a question for them:

what’s wrong with ‘flying saucer’?

“The Strange Boat Drifted Ashore on the Fief of Lord Ogasawara” from Hyoryu Kishu (Archive of Castaways), Japan, ca. 1868 or before.

Note: Unidentified Flying Objects, or UFOs, are now officially known as Unidentified Aerial (or Anomalous) Phenomena, or UAPs.

Science Questions Everything by Norah Colvin

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An infinity of questions

To ignite imaginations

To wonder

How and what and why

And where it all began

First observations

Then explorations

Sought answers

To these central questions

Posed by curiosity

Behold –

A single singularity

Big bang!

That’s where it all began

From one united infinity

Now diverse plurality

A myriad variety

Evolving

Throughout history

A complicated tapestry

Including all

The large and small

Everything and

You and me

Questing for elucidation

Clearing any obfuscation

Defying myths

And superstition

Disproving pseudo- explanations

Based on weak interrogation

Of the vast enormity

Of the universe miscellany

Engaging disputation

Sparks

Research investigation

Inspires ingenuity

Seeks understanding, clarity

Until with evidence

Reveals

The mysteries no longer sealed

No longer fraught with

Trepidation due to

Ignorant misperception

For Science and discovery

Unveils what is

For all to see

We Are The Champions by Dannielle Viera

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Some called us lost from Earth’s great zoo
Extinct beyond a doubt
But we are here to claim our prize
As champs of hiding out

Men sought us over Lord Howe Isle
(And brought their rats as well)
So we jumped ship and hid upon
A stack that spikes the swell

Beneath a tea-tree clinging to
The stark Balls Pyramid
We waited to be found by folks
Before we flipped our lid

It took some eighty years before
Two scientists arrived
But even then they couldn’t see
Our black butts had survived

That night we nosed out from our nook
To let them know we’d won
The longest game of hide-and-seek
Insects had ever run

And now we’d like our trophy, please
We phasmids are for real
If you do not acknowledge us
We’ll give you stick – so deal!

Fantastic Feathers

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Fantastic Feathers

 

Compared to fur or human hair

feathers are a smart affair.

As down, their fluffy unzipped form

of under-feathers, keeps birds warm.

 

But barbs and barbules, shaft and quill

hide clues to how birds fly with skill.

Their contour feathers, zipped and long

make wafting wings so light yet strong.

 

From dowdy mums to vivid males

with crazy crests and splendid tails;

for camouflage or bright display

feathers have lots of roles to play.

 

by Celia Berrell

First published in Double Helix (September 2015)

Reproduced with permission of CSIRO

www.doublehelix.csiro.au

 

Take Note: from pillows to pens, feathers have helped humans sleep well and become educated!  Recently we learnt that some dinosaurs were feathered too.  Compared to fur, feathers are fascinatingly complex and some are almost magically colourful.  I find feathers fabulously beautiful.

Poem of the Day

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Blueberry Pancakes and Parachutes

Silvery streaks of morning-time rain

puddling into the mud

reminds me of blueberry pancakes

and circular see-through parachutes.

 

Raindrops aren’t teardrops.

There’s no pointy tip.

Those free-falling globules

are blueberry round.

 

But if they meet-up

as they fall through the sky

a middle-sized raindrop

as-flat-as-a-pancake

might suddenly start to appear.

 

Bigger and larger and bulkier still

fast-falling raindrops

past pancake proportions

with stretch in the centre

and drag through the air.

 

For less than a second

becoming a dome

these small glassy parachutes

wobble then burst

to break into

blueberry droplets again.

Celia Berrell
  • Submitted in response to Poetry Prompt #11

Celia said: I was delighted to learn that raindrops make all these weird shapes as they fall to the ground.  This year I hope to receive Your Poems about the wonders of water for the Science Rhymes website.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2009/07/how-raindrop-exploding-parachute