Science’s answer to the Backstreet Boys

By Michael Banks

Outreach raps or songs about science are all the rage these days. Last year we had the Large Hadron Rap by Kate McAlpine and more recently she released a rare-isotope rap for the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory.

Indeed, Steven Rush — aka Funky49 — recently released a rap about the Tevatron for Fermilab entitled Particle Business.

Not to be outdone, Australia’s national science agency — The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization — has teamed up with Sydney University’s Science Revue to release a song about seemingly every science topic.

Featuring “Chem”, “Bio”, “Psych”, “Phys” and “Maths”, they have done a take on the Backstreet Boys’ hit single: Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).

However, Instead of using “everybody” in the song, they have replaced it with climatology, oceanography, or indeed anything else that ends in -ography.

It is a well put together music video and they have upped the ante for science/geeky songs.

My favourite bit is when “Maths” appears wearing a chain around his neck with a rather large pi symbol attached to it singing the words “am I irrational”.

As they all seem to be students, I guess that “Maths” has had some help from “Chem” to make his rapper-like chain to appear to look like gold.