Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be chemists.
Don't let 'em read PhysChem or teach the Bio;
Let 'em be cowboys and lawyers and so.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be chemists.
When you see a commotion, there's been an explosion
An experiment did awry go

Chemists aren't easy to understand and harder to know
when they speak of "yield" they do not mean that they will go
With stained old lab coats and them old test tube racks
They speak of the van der Waals forces -
And if they're "in-solvent" it doesn't mean they're broke
They've just inhaled it too much!

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be chemists.
Don't let 'em read PhysChem or teach the Bio;
Let 'em be cowboys and lawyers and so.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be chemists.
When you see a commotion, there's been an explosion
An experiment did awry go

Chemists love glassware and plastics and steel, hydrocarbons
Equations and formulae, substances, plots and the stills
And when they are working in lab, they live in a danger
of intoxication, perhaps an explosion!
Their clothes are all tinged, and their hair has been singed
From experiments that did not go well

Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be chemists.
Don't let 'em read PhysChem or teach the Bio;
Let 'em be cowboys and lawyers and so.
Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be chemists.
When you see a commotion, there's been an explosion
An experiment did awry go!