DO YOU SEE THE BENZENE RINGS??
Based on "Do You Hear The People Sing" from Les Miserables
Original Words and Music by Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schonberg and Herbert Kretzmer

 

Do you see the benzene rings
Forming a dodgy azo dye?
It’s the reaction of a phenol
Who will not esterify,
When your carbon-carbon bonds
Are all sp2 hybridised,
There’s a pi-bond of electrons
That’s delocalised!!

Will the toluene nitrate?
Who will explode with TNT?
Through polycarbonate
Is there a world that you can see??
Then join the pi-bond with its high electron density!!!

Do you see the benzene rings,
Lost in a world of Bakelite?
It’s a co-polymer of phenol
Bonded to formaldehyde;
For the aromatic groups
There is a ring that’s stabilised,
Even the aryl chlorides will
Not be hydrolysed!

They’re in acids stuck to antifreeze
In chains of Terylene,
They’re in aspirin and Dettol -
They’re in Oil of Wintergreen,
They’re in methyl orange, and Kevlar, and phenolphthalein!!

Will the toluene nitrate?
Who will explode with TNT?
Through all the polycarbonate
Is there a world that you can see?
Do you see the benzene rings,
With all their carbons hybridised,
It is the pi-electron thing
That’s delocalised!!
Will the toluene nitrate?
Who will explode with TNT??
Through all the polycarbonate
Is there a world that you can see?
Do you see the benzene rings,
With all their carbons hybridised?
It is the pi-electron thing
That’s delocalised!
Aa-aa-aahh - de-loc-al-iiiiiiiised!!!

 

 

© Aimee Hartnell, November 1999