Fermilab in the house: atom smasher gets its own rap

Funky49, a.k.a. Steven Rush from Tampa Florida, performs the Fermilab rap, "Particle Business," for a Fermilab audience on Tuesday.

".rock stars of physics, particle business
smash matter, antimatter and witness
quarks, bottom to top they don't stop
'where the Higgs at?' yo that's their mark
'where the Higgs at?' "
- Funky49, "Particle Business"

Check it: sick rhymes and sweet beats meet hardcore science. Physics rap is in the house.

Before you say, "I've heard that before," listen up-this isn't the Large Hadron Rap, the surprise sensation that's already logged more than 5 million views on YouTube. There's a brand-new riff on particle physics, created by rapper and science enthusiast Funky49, a.k.a. Steven Rush. It's called the Fermilab Rap, or "Particle Business," and it's a tad slicker and a touch edgier than any physics rap you've heard before.

"I didn't want to do a facsimile of the LHC rap," Rush explained before the rap's premier performance Tuesday at Fermilab. "I wanted Fermilab to have its own voice."

So did Ben Kilminster, a physicist on Fermilab's CDF experiment and singer in CDF's resident rock band, the Drug-Sniffing Dogs. He read about Rush's previous project, an album promoting the Museum of Science and Industry in the artist's native city of Tampa, Florida, and suggested that the rapper turn his creative energy toward America's leading particle accelerator.

"It's true that the main motivation was to compete with the LHC rap, but overall I think just think it's a fun addition," Kilminster said. "Some people will never want to watch it, but for others, it might be the only way they learn something about Fermilab."

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-- Rachel Carr

Steven Rush, a.k.a. Funky49, gives a presentation on rap as an education tool.

Fermilab poetry

Editor's note: In response to the article in Parade on the search for the Higgs boson (see Fermilab Today, July 27, 2009), we received the following poem from Tom Greening, author of "Words Against the Void."

QUARK

I wandered lonely in the dark
until I came upon a quark.
Because I'm not a physicist
I told the quark I must insist
that it explain itself to me
and not remain a mystery.
The poor quark tried but quite in vain,
and thus it is I still remain
quite ignorant and very sad
that I can't work at Fermilab.

--Tom Greening, California

Registration now open for Workshop on Applications of High-Intensity Proton Accelerators

Registration is now open for the Workshop on Applications of High-Intensity Proton Accelerators, which will take place at Fermilab Oct. 19-21. Workshop attendees will discuss the challenges for building a high-intensity proton accelerator, focusing specifically on superconducting linear accelerators and their potential applications for such areas as discovery science, nuclear energy and waste transmutation. The workshop will help enable the design of Project X and other future accelerators that may use superconducting radiofrequency technology.

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Rapper Funky49 rocks out about Fermilab

From Daily Herald,
August 12, 2009

You could call Steve Rush's music "School House Rock" on steroids.

The 32-year-old science enthusiast and moonlighting rap artist from Tampa, Fla. was commissioned in May by Batavia's Fermilab to write and record a rap song about their National Accelerator Laboratory.

On Tuesday evening Rush, known by the moniker "Funky49" to the science rap community, came to Fermilab for a communication seminar on using rap as a teaching tool, he also performed the 'Fermirap' song. Rush will spend the next two days filming a music video for the song at Fermilab that will eventually be released on YouTube.

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