Electronic circuits make life nice,

TV’s, radios, phones, microwaves,

Computers with data storage device,

We really love our robot slaves.

Cameras, appliances, video games  —

Name it — electronics at our command,

Cell phones, palm pilots and mainframes,

Critical controls that respond to demand:

Nuclear missles and power generation —

Medical equipment using x-rays,

Satellites for TV and communication,

Circuits glued in lead-tin arrays.

Lead in landfills is bad activity,

So toxicity fix mandates pure tin.

But the way to perfect conductivity

Is impaired by whiskers on its chin!

Tin sans lead is crystalline sociopath.

Willy-nilly sprouts tiny metal hairs —

Random diversion for electron path,

Creates subversive state of affairs.

Circuits and goal not as one,

But rather, tend toward failures,

Arc of fire — intent undone,

And project loss assures.

Perhaps we’ve only had a taste

As circuits have run amuck,

Made of hosts industrial waste —

Their masters thunderstruck!

For as it has now become known,

Other metals have same tendency

And tin, as culprit, is not alone,

Cadmium, zinc — same impendency.

Gold and silver suffer the same.

The presence of a particular gas

Can drive electronic circuits lame

    Due to metal flow as electrons pass.

This, new design must account,

Solder alloys meticulously test,

For disasters will surely mount

‘Lest metal whiskers we divest.