So here's a song I wrote with my good buddy, Clif Flynt, back in 1981. We were asked to write a song about mad scientists. Instead, we ended up writing a song about scientists who were certainly annoyed. It was a wonderfully designed experiment. It just didn't measure what it set out to measure.
Words: Bill Roper and Clif Flynt
Music: Anne Passovoy (Mary O’Meara)
Copyright 1981
Michelson-Morley
Ah, Michelson-Morley,
Your experiment’s poorly
Designed to discover light speed.
With all the equipment
You got in this shipment,
You can’t tell approach from recede.
It’s quite disappointing indeed.
Search for the aether
That pervades the starlanes.
Keep searching until you turn blue.
And if you can’t find it,
Then kindly remind that
It’s sure not the fault of you two,
For failures can win Nobels too.
So start spinning mirrors
To see the beat clearer,
Then shine a light beam through the air.
And set your source moving
So that you’ll be proving
The difference you seek’s really there.
Did I tell you that physics ain’t fair?
No difference detected,
Your theory’s rejected,
And aether goes right out the door.
Einsteinian physics,
Relativity will fix
Results that you just can’t ignore.
‘Cause that’s what new theories are for.
Sleep well in your dreaming,
Experiments scheming,
Though all of your work was in vain.
You failed in your searching,
But left the world lurching,
Newtonian physics your bane.
And you got your Nobel just the same.