Celia was a lively cat
She lived with Mr. Hooke
She sat inside the kitchen
To catch the bits dropped by the cook.
Mr. Hooke sat by his microscope
And the things he saw he sketched
Celia dug her claws into the floor
And then her body stretched
Mr Hooke said “The more you pull
The longer you become
Then go back to your normal size
When your exercise is done
I wonder if the same applies
To bits of rope or wood
If a pull always gave the same result
That would be very good”
And so he tested out his thought
In St. Pauls, with a long, long wire
He put on weights; the wire went down
He took them off; it went back higher.
And Celia came along to help
Some coiled up wire to bring
“Oh Celia, you clever puss –
You have made a spring!
If we take some metal and use a key
So that it is tightly wound
When it unwinds we can use the force
To make clock-hands go round.
And if in future a material is made
Both stretchy and quite plastic
We can use little strips of this
And call them Bands Elastic
And they can use this stretchiness
Scientific girls and boys
To devise a whole variety
Of elastic band powered toys.
Author’s Note: Robert Hooke 1635-1703 was a remarkable scientist who discovered the Law of Elasticity, now known as Hooke’s Law. He helped Christopher Wren build St. Paul’s cathedral, and there are reports of him using the long drop beneath the dome to experiment on the elasticity of wires. He used these ideas to design balance springs for pocket watches, increasing their accuracy enormously – prior to Hooke’s work a good watch could be “out” by 15 minutes a day. After the invention of the balance spring watches could be within 15 seconds a day.
However, both the prediction of elastic bands and his possession of a cat are poetic licence. Celia’s name is given in recognition of Hooke’s work with the microscope – he catalogued many microscopic organisms (in a volume called Micrographia; all the drawings were done by hand). Hooke was also the first person to name the “little rooms” he saw in plants and animals cells.