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English Pages [134] Year 2020
AL-FARABI KAZAKH NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
PRACTICAL TASKS FOR SIW, SIWT Teaching Manual Stereotypical publication
Аlmaty «Qazaq university» 2020
UDC 80/81 (075.8) LBC 81.2 Англ. – 922 P 90
Recommended for publication by the Scientific Council of Philologyand World Languages faculty and EPC of Al-Farabi Kazakh National University (Protocol #4 dated 09.04.2015)
Reviewers: candidate of philological science, senior lecturer B.D. Kisikova candidate of philological science, senior lecturer I.A. Baymuratova Compilers: A.A. Zhautykbaeva, B.N. Bekmasheva, G.S. Maharova
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT: teaching manual / com.: A.A. Zhautykbaeva, B.N. Bekmasheva, G.S. Maharova. – Ster. pub. – Almaty: Qazaq university, 2020. – 134 p. ISBN 978-601-04-1326-9 Teaching Manual «PracticalTasks for SIW and SIWT» consistsof 15 lessons, includingtexts, vocabulary, grammarandintroductorytasks. This programme is designed to study the functional and technical aspects of the English language. The material allows students to acquire communication skills in science and technology. The textbook is aimed for students of the Physico-Technical Faculty. Пособие «Practical Tasks» состоит из 15 уроков, включающих тексты, лексику, вводные и грамматические задания. Данная разработка пред назначена для изучения функционального, технического аспекта англий ского языка. Представленный материал позволяет овладеть навыками общения в научно-технической сфере. Методическая разработка пред назначена для студентов бакалавриата физико-технического факультета.
UDC 80/81 (075.8) LBC 81.2 Англ. – 922 ISBN 978-601-04-1326-9
© Zhautykbaeva A.A., Bekmasheva B.N., Maharova G.S., 2020 © Al-Farabi KazNU, 2020
INTRODUCTION
T
he purpose of this textbook is a lingual adaptation to the English professional communication through the development and improvement of speech in the process of reading, translation, listening comprehension the texts. The textbook material allows students during learning the English language receive special physical information in English. The structure of the textbook is traditional for any educational process. 15 lessons contain not only of special physical texts but also include a system of tasks aimed at improving the linguistic and professional competence of students. Training material in this textbook is presented in the form of lessons (Units), including texts on various topics. Each lesson (Unit) contains keywords that are important for understanding the text, and also texts and exercises of the translation elements of scientific texts. Practical exercises on translation include a translation of phrases and sentences from English into Kazakh and Russian. The content of the proposed textbook consists of three parts. In the first part of the work, there are the texts, exercises, and also vocabulary and grammar exercises. The second part is devoted to further reading and translation of technical texts for the improvement of the functional style of speech. The third chapter includes the biographies of famous scientists. 3
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The textbook was created in the framework of functional and communicative, linguistic and didactic model in the aspects of the syntax of verbal communication on professional themes. This textbook is intended for SIW and SIWT with students of the first and second years of the Physics-Technical Faculty.
Unit
1
Text: The Origin of Life The origin of mater
The universe is energy. Energy comes in a variety of forms that include everything, from an atomic particle to a group of galaxies. Everything around us is matter and matter is made from atoms. 5
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We know over one hundred kinds of basic atoms. They correspond to basic elements like nitrogen, oxygen, carbon, and others. An atom is a unit of matter. Atoms form groups called molecules. Different combinations of atoms or molecules created different kinds of matter. An oxygen molecule, for example, is made from two oxygen atoms. A carbon dioxide molecule is made from two oxygen atoms and one carbon atom.
There are two basic types of molecules: small molecules and macromolecules. Small molecules are in non-living matter -minerals, air, water. Macromolecules are made from many small molecules. They exist in living matter, i.e. in plants and animals including people. Macromolecules also exist in some synthetics like polythene and nylon. Carbon is present in all living things Macromolecules are not living matter but they combine to create cells. Cells are basic units of life. This combination of non-living matter to form living matter is called «the miracle of life». Some living matter like bacteria are made from one cell. Plants and animals, on the other hand, are made from millions of cells.
Unit 1
A cell can produce more cells. A human being comes from only one cell. A person is an intelligent form of energy. He or she observes the universe and thinks about the origin and meaning of life.
Before you start Key words: universe – вселенная made from – сделан energy – энергия form – форма particle – частица atom – атом matter – материя molecule – молекула living/non-living matter – живая/неживая материя cell – клетка life – жизнь
– – – – – – – – – – –
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Reading Before you read. Look at the title and the drawings. Read the first two and the last two sentences of the text only. Try to guess what the text is about. Exercise 1 Now try to guess the answers to these questions 1. Which of the following sentences best describes the article? a. Matter and energy work together. b. A human being comes from only one cell. c. Everything is energy. 2. What are the two basic types of molecules? 3. What is a cell? 4. What living organism thinks about its origin? Exercise 2 Read the text and check your answers. Vocabulary Exercise 3 Match the words from the text. 1. macro a. matter 2. living b. particles 3. atomic c. energy 4. basic d. elements 5. intelligent e. molecules Grammar Exercise 4 Circle the correct form of the verbs in brackets. 1. Everything (is/are) matter. 2. Macromolecules (exists/exist) in polythene and nylon. 3. How (do/does) non-living matter form living matter? 4. (Is/Are) carbon atoms present in your body? 5. People (think/thinks) about the origin and meaning of life.
Unit 1
Exercise 5 Complete the sentences with the correct form of the verbs in brackets. 1. A cell _____ (result) from a combination of macromolecules. 2. An atom _____ (not/be) living matter. 3. Macromolecules _____ (not/be) present in the sun. 4. A plant _____ (have) millions of cells. 5. An atom _____ (not/have) life. 6. Carbon atoms _____ (not/form) oxygen. Exercise 6 Fill in the gaps with these words: study, and, studies, are, has, aren’t Science 1 _____ the variety of forms. Some forms 2 _____ intelligent and some 3 _____ Biologists 4 _____ living matter. Biology 5 _____ two basic branches of study: Botany 6 _____ Zoology. Extension Exercise7 Complete this task. The carbon atom is present in all living matter. Label the carbon 12 atom with the following words: – nucleus – proton – neutron – electron – orbit
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Unit
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Text: The Cosmic Web Cosmologists use linear time to explain the birth and growth of the universe. Our universe is probably between 12,000 and 15,000 million years old. It starts with a Big Bang and includes the following events and projection: at zero second, before time begins, everything is together at a point of infinite density. This causes an extreme temperature that produces an explosion – the Big Bang. The universe starts expanding and energy, forces, matter and space-time emerge. Then, the temperature goes down and the basic forms of matter appear and evolve. At 50,000 million years, the cosmos holds its expansion and starts a contraction. 1,000 million years later it collapses in a ball of fire similar to the Big Bang – a Big Crunch. Right after the Big Bang, particles called quarks unite in groups of three to form the first nucleons: neutrons and protons. Other particles like neutrinos, positrons and electrons also appear. Time passes and the nuclei of hydrogen (deuterium), helium and licium take form. After that, the first atoms and molecules of hydrogen gas emerge.
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Unit 2
The pull of gravity forms clouds of gases and these clouds become stars and galaxies. The stars bake the nuclei of helium, carbon, silicium and iron that form the stardust This dust makes up the asteroids and planets. Some cosmologists don’t agree with this theory. They explain that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. Another theory says that the universe is in constant reproduction. This means that there are infinite «universes». There isn’t one absolute theory, but an important observation is that the universe works in a rhythm of expansion and contraction.
The universe has only one basic component: energy. All the forms, from atoms to rocks, plants and people are different aspects of the same energy.
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Before you start Key words: density – плотность expansion – расширение увеличение contraction space-time – сокращение промежутка времени linear time – линейное время birth – происхождение, рождение growth – рост nuclei – ядра stardust – звездная пыль аspect – вид
– – – – – – – – –
Reading Before you read. Exercise 1 Look at the drawings. Read the text carefully and match the drawings with the text. Exercise 2 Read the list of topics (a-f) and match them with the paragraphs (1-5). There is one extra topic. a. the forces of expansion and contraction _____ b. theory of the origin of the solar system _____ c. nature _____ d. energy and its forms _____ e. linear time _____ f. particle physic _____ Vocabulary Exercise 3 Look for the words on the left in the text. Then, match them with the correct meaning. Example: 1 -c.
Unit 2 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
density Big Bang Big Crunch growth rhythm unite aspect
a. b. c. d. e. f. g.
explosion evolution compactness harmonious movement extreme contraction appearance get together
Grammar Exercise 4 Complete the following questions with a/an/the. Put an ‘x’ when no word is necessary. 1. What is _____ linear structure? 2. How does _____ universe begin? 3. Why do _____ cosmologists use a linear structure? 4. Where does _____ energy come from? 5. What is _____ atom? 6. What causes _____ expansion and a contraction? 7. What makes up _____ nucleus? Exercise 5 Complete the following sentences with these words: become, moves, makes up, unite, comes 1. Quarks _____ to form nucleons. 2. The universe _____ in a rhythm of contraction and expansion. 3. The clouds of gases _____ stars and galaxies. 4. Stardust _____ the asteroids and planets. 5. Life _____ from stardust. Exercise 6 Correct the form of the verbs when necessary. 1. People uses time to describe the past, present and future. 2. Gravity attracts objects to the centre of our galaxy. 3. The cosmos stop its contraction and begins its expansion. 4. There is a black hole at the centre of our galaxy. 5. The basic forms of matter appears and evolve when the temperature goes down.
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Extension Exercise 7 Try this. Circle the words that show natural forces of expansion and contraction. 1. lung 2.heart 3.light bulb 4.balloon 5. wood Choose one of the examples and draw a graph showing the expansion-contraction process.
Unit
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Text: From Inert Matter to Intelligent Life
Our solar system is 4,500 million years old. In a solar system, the sun and the planets form at the same time. They form from a cloud of gases called nebula. A nebula rotates in space and the force of gravity pulls material to its centre. The nebula contracts and its centre gets hot. This hot centre becomes a star. The outer part of the nebula is not so hot. When the temperature goes down the gases condense into particles of dust. The dust slowly sticks together and forms the planets. Life on our planet begins from the dust of a dying star. 15
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Chronology of Life on Earth 4,500 million years A.C.: the planet temperature is very high. There are many volcanoes but there is no biological life. Meteorites fall from outer space and volcanic eruptions prepare the Earth crust. Gases from the volcanoes form the initial atmosphere. The temperature goes down, oxygen and hydrogen join and form the first lakes and oceans. Scientists believe that life begins in these waters.
The first waters contain many kinds of small molecules that change their composition. Radiant energy from the sun and electric energy from lightning recombine the small molecules into complex molecules. These complex molecules contain carbon, an essential element for life. Time passes and the first macromolecules of DNA appear. These macromolecules self-reproduce and join others to make up cells, the basic units of life. This theory explains that there is potential for life in inert matter. In humans, inert elements produce the sperm and the ovule. The sperm and the ovule form a unicellular egg (one cell) and from this cell, around sixty billion cells (6012) come to life. The combination of inert parts to form a living whole shows the basic dynamics of life.
Unit 3
Before you start Key words: solar system – солнечная система – сloud – облако – nebula – туманность – rotate – вращать – space – космос – contract – сокращать – star – звезда – join – соединение, соединять – asteroid – астероид – meteorite – метеорит – radiant/electric energy – электрические силы – atmosphere – атмосфера – dynamics – динамика –
Reading Exercise 1 Read the title and look at the drawings. Exercise 2 Now read the article and put the following events in chronological order. a. The first macromolecules of DNA appear. ______ b. The gases condense and form particles of dust. c. The nebula contracts. d. Gases from the volcanoes form the initial atmosphere. e. Gravity pulls material to the centre of the nebula. f. The dust forms the asteroids and the planets. Check your answer with your teacher. Vocabulary Exercise 3 Complete the following sentences using words from the text. 1. A star and a group of planets form a _____ .
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT 2. The _____ and the planets form at the same time. 3. A theory explains that there is potential for life in _____ matter. 4. A _____ egg is a combination of a sperm and an ovule. 5. Another way to say deoxyribonucleic acid is _____. Grammar Exercise 4 Complete the following questions with: When, What, How, Where 1. _____ old is our solar system? 2. _____ do the planets come from? 3. _____ makes the nebula contract? 4. _____ do the gases condense and form particles of dust? 5. _____ do macromolecules do to make up cells? Exercise 5 Fill in the gaps with: there isn’t, there aren’t is there, are there, there are 1. _____ a macromolecule in the sun? 2. _____ any young nebula in outer space? 3. Gases from the volcanoes form the initial atmosphere but _____ an ozone layer. 4. _____ many different natural elements in the universe. 5. _____ only a few cells in our body. Exercise 6 Fill in the blanks with: have, has, there is, there are 1. A cell _____ life. 2. The planet temperature is very high and _____ no biological life on it. 3. DNA macromolecules _____ carbon atoms. 4. _____ potential for life in inert matter. 5. _____ carbon atoms in all living things. Extension Exercise 7 Look for a picture of a black hole and write some information about it. Then, work in groups to combine the information and report it to the class.
Unit 3 Guide questions: – What’s a black hole? – Are there many black holes? – Is there a black hole at the centre of our galaxy? – What is there inside a black hole? – Who discovered black holes?
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Unit
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Text: Brain and Knowledge The American psychobiologist Roger Sperry shared a 1981 Nobel prize for his discoveries about the human brain. He studied the two brain hemispheres and presented laboratory proof of many interesting facts. According to him, the left hemisphere separates the information into parts and studies each part. This hemisphere also looks for the similarities among all the parts. This complete process is called analysis. Our left hemisphere is very curious and is always asking questions about everything. It dominates the right hemisphere.
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Unit 4
The right hemisphere is different. It looks for unity and connects all the parts that the left hemisphere separates. This complete process is called synthesis. Analysis and synthesis determine reasoning and the learning process. The separation and connection of information into parts and wholes show the basic dynamics of thought. Our senses are windows to the world. The information enters through the senses and travels through nerve fibres. These long fibres of nerve cells are our body’s electric circuits. When we read, for example, our sense of sight detects changes in the levels of light on the paper (black on white). These changes form the letters and the words. Our eyes perceive the changes and convert them into electric signals that take turns with chemical signals to transmit the information. A nerve cell has three main parts: dendrites, nucleus and axon. The dendrites receive the information and send it through the axon. At the end of the axon the electric signals become chemical signals, cross to the next cell and continue the relay. There is a kind of intelligence in the cells. They organize and cooperate to perform a task. Intelligence gives us the ability to construct a mental model of the world, live in it, solve problems and accumulate knowledge.
As human knowledge increased we divided it and organized it into branches. Knowledge is one large subject that includes many divisions
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with a common objective: to understand our origin, reason for being and place in the universe. Before you start Exercise 1 Check you understand the key words. Which ones can you see in the pictures? Key words: brain – мозг – left/right hemisphere – левое/правое – полушарие process – процесс, обработка, – обрабатывать analysis – анализ – synthesis – синтез – reasoning – рассуждать, – обсуждать, убеждать learning – учение, ученость – sense – направление (силы – вращения), смысл nerve cells – нервные клетки – electrical/chemical impulse – электрический / – химический удар, толчок knowledge – знание – branch – отрасль – philosophy – философия – relay – переключатель – (передавать) Reading Exercise 2 Read these sentences and choose the closest meaning to the underlined word. Check your answers with your teacher. 1. The brain has two hemispheres: the left and the right. a. specializations b. parts c. names
Unit 4 2. In the 70’s, R. Sperry presented information to the brain and monitored its process. a. what it b. how it c. how it looked like worked separated 3. Analysis and synthesis determine reasoning and the process of learning. a. exploring b. observing c. understanding 4. The dendrites receive the information and send it via the axon. a. photos b. data c. report Vocabulary Exercise 3 Find the nouns of these verbs in the text. Example: inform – information 1. analyse – __________ 2. connect – __________ 3. learn – __________ 4. know – __________ Exercise 4 Fill in the blanks with the proper form of the words in brackets. 1. People use both _____ ( analyse) and _____ (synthesis) to solve problems. 2. It is easy to see the _____ (connect) between Philosophy and Science. 3. Man created the _____ (divide) of knowledge. 4. _____ (learn) is a lifetime process. Grammar Exercise 5 Complete the following sentences with the right form of the verbs in brackets. 1. In the 70’s R. Sperry _____ (study) hemisphere two brain hemispheres work. 2. He _____ (present) data to the brain. 3. He _____ (observe) that the left hemisphere separated the information into parts. 4. He _____ (discover) that the right hemisphere connected the parts. 5. He _____ (receive) a Nobel Prize for his discoveries in 1981.
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Exercise 6 Fill in the blanks with: in, and, between 1. Andreas Vesalius produced the first modern anatomy of the brain _____ 1543. 2. Franz Anton Mesmer pioneered the use of hypnosis _____ 1800 _____ 1815. 3. _____ 1861 Paul Broca detected the main speech area in the left hemisphere. 4. _____ 1969 _____ 1980 Sperry discovered hemisphericity.
Extension Exercise 7 To solve a problem, do you consult your left brain or your right brain? Before you start, read this information about the brain. The left hemisphere is good at analysis, Language, Science, Mathematics and Logic. The right brain is good at synthesis, Music, Art, Creativity, Athletics. Now do this with a friend: Ask him or her ten questions that require a little reflection. For example: What did you have for breakfast? What did you do yesterday morning? Your friend’s eyes will move to the left or to the right before answering. This always depends on which hemisphere your friend is consulting. Most people consult their favourite hemisphere eight out of ten times. People who move their eyes to the left are consulting their right hemisphere. People who move their eyes to the right are consulting their left hemisphere. Some people consult them both! Left hemisphere: analytic and methodic Right hemisphere: creative and mechanical
Unit
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Text: Composition of Matter Matter and Energy Matter is anything that has mass and occupies space. It is found in three different states: solid, liquid and gaseous. Matter, as Albert Einstein explained in his Theory of Relativity, can also be described as a condensed form of energy. In Einstein’s own words: «Mass and energy are two different aspects of the same thing».
We can see this in nuclear fission. The energy condenses to form a nucleus. When we bombard the nucleus with a neutron, the nucleus separates and releases some of the energy in the form of heat. Atoms An atom, a basic unit of matter, is a packet of energy with electric charges. Except for hydrogen, which has no neutrons, atoms are 25
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composed of a nucleus with neutrons and protons and a cloud with electrons orbiting the nucleus.
The protons have a positive (+) charge. The electrons have a negative (-) charge. The neutrons have no charge. Opposite charges attract and like charges repel. The Vibration of Matter The energy contained in atoms and molecules makes them vibrate and this vibration produces heat. Matter expands with heat.
Unit 5
In an iceberg (solid matter), for example, the molecules absorb radiant energy from the sun and vibrate even more. Their temperature increases, they expand and form water (liquid matter). The molecules in the water vibrate until they evaporate and go up in the air (gaseous matter). When the temperature decreases, their vibration slows down and they condense into drops that fall as rain. Water is a liquid composed of two gases: oxygen and .hydrogen. Plasma In a gas atom like hydrogen, when the vibration increases the heat makes the atom expand more and lose its electron. The hydrogen atom becomes two separate charged particles :proton (+) and electron (-). Each of these particles is called plasma – a positive plasma and a negative plasma.
Plasma is not only produced by heat but also by particles bombarding the atoms. We can find plasma produced by heat in the sun, and plasma produced by particles bombarding the atoms in the ionosphere. We can also find artificial plasma during electric welding and inside flourescent lamps. 5
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Interstellar space, the stars, and most of the universe is plasma. Our planet is a tiny mass vibrating in a sea of plasma. Before you start Key words: absorb bombard charge condensed liquid mass plasma solid state temperature vibrate
– впитывать – – бомбардировать – – загружать, заряжать – – конденсированный – – жидкий, жидкость – – масса – – плазма – – плотный, прочный – – определять, состояние, государство – – температура – – вибрировать, колебаться, дрожать –
Reading Before you read. Look at the drawings and the different headings. Exercise 1 Read the text carefully and pay special attention to the first two lines of each paragraph. Exercise 2 Read the list of topics (a-g) and match them with the paragraphs (1-6). There is one extra topic. a. The stars are plasma. _____ b. Vibration produces changes in the states of matter. _____ c. Matter is a condensed form of energy. _____ d. Plasma can be natural or artificial. _____ e. A neutron is plasma. _____ f. The composition of an atom. _____ g. The vibration of energy. _____ Check your answers with your teacher.
Unit 5
Vocabulary Exercise 3 Match the verbs on the left with their meanings on the right. 1. go up a. make more concentrated 2. slow down b. move to the top 3. condense into c. caused by 4. produced by d. decrease the velocity Grammar Exercise 4 Complete the following questions with the missing words. 1. Who _____ Albert Einstein? 2. When _____ he born? 3. What _____ he prove? 4. _____ you know that the Big Bang came from a positive plasma? 5. _____ there televisions before Einstein? Exercise 5 Fill in the blanks using these linking words and expressions: suddenly, when, but, and, one day, in the end, then Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879. 1 _____ he was a child, he was not a very good student 2 _____ he liked Physics very much. 3 _____, his father showed him a compass. The compass made him wonder about the connection between the needle 4 _____ the north pole. 5 _____ his interest in Physics increased even more. He moved to Switzerland to study and finished his studies in 1900. In 1913, he became director of Physics in an institute in Berlin. In 1916, he published his Theory of Relativity which 6 _____ made him famous all over the world. It was difficult for Albert to prove his theories but 7 _____ he succeeded. He received the Nobel prize for Physics in 1921. He died in Princeton in 1955. Exercise 6 Read again about Einstein and underline the verbs in the past. Write their infinitive forms. Example: was – be
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Extension Exercise 7 First match the scientists on the left with their corresponding contribution on the right. 1. Isaac Newton a. Black Holes 2. Max Planck b. Laws оf Motion 3. Stephen Hawking c. Quantum Concept of Light Then, choose one of the scientists above and write a short biography on him and report to the class.
Unit
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Text: Chemical Bonds The Greek philosopher Leucippus (450-380? ВС) founded the Atomist School. This school taught that the universe includes plurality and unity. Leucippus believed that every object was a combination of different small parts called atoms. According to him, atoms were made from three main particles. His theory is still valid today.
Atoms usually have vacant spaces in their outer orbits and can accept more electrons. To form H20 (water), for example, the oxygen nucleus attracts the electrons of two hydrogen atoms. The hydrogen atoms have vacant spaces too, so they share their electrons and form the molecule. This sharing of electrons to form molecules is called chemical bond. An interesting fact is that seventy percent of our body and eighty percent of our environment is water. 31
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Chemical bonds result from the force of attraction between the different charges. The protons in one nucleus attract electrons from another atom. This force of attraction is called electromagnetism. Electromagnetism is one of the four basic forces of nature. It makes the atoms and the molecules combine and also keeps them together.
There are uncountable combinations of atoms. For example, 4 carbon atoms combine with 10 hydrogen atoms to make up a butane molecule. A glucose molecule is made from 6 carbon atoms, 12 hydrogen atoms and 6 oxygen atoms. Cellulose, the principal molecule in the plant cell walls and also in wood, paper, cotton, and many other materials, is a chain that can include up to 12,000 glucose molecules. A sugar molecule is made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen atoms grouped in specific positions. When these same atoms are grouped in different positions they can form alcohol or starch. The different proportions and positions of the atoms produce the different forms of matter. These different forms make up for variety. Is there a purpose for variety?
Butane molecule
Glucose
Unit 6
Before you start Key words: atoms bond chemical electromagnetism electrons force orbit outer share
– атомы – – соединять, связывать – – химические продукты, – аптекарские товары – – электромагнетизм – – электроны – – форсировать, перегружать, – ускорять, сила – орбита – – внешний, наружный – – разделить, делить –
Reading Exercise 1 Read the multiple choice questions and guess the answers. 1. Who founded the Atomist School? a. Demetrius b. Plato с. Leucippus 2. What charges attract each other? a. positive-negative b. negative-negative c. positive-positive 3. How do atoms form molecules? a. sharing electrons b. sharing protons с. repelling electrons 4. What force keeps the molecules together? a. gravity b. electromagnetism c. does not say Vocabulary Exercise 2 Match the adjectives on the left with the nouns on the right. 1. Greek a. charge 2. uncountable b. philosopher
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT 3. different c. bonds 4. negative d. forms 5. vacant e. space Grammar Exercise 3 Fill in the blanks with: a, an, some, any, a lot of 1. _____ atom is a packet of energy. 2. There are _____ molecules in the dot at the end of this sentence. 3. _____ molecule is made from atoms. 4. There is _____ water in our body. 5. We’ve got _____ questions about life. 6. Are there _____ atoms without neutrons? Exercise 4 Fill in the blanks with: in, on 1. _____ Earth , atoms are always in pairs or in groups. 2. Leucippus was born _____ Greece. 3. There are a lot of interactions of atoms and molecules _____ space-time. 4. There is always a mystery _____ Science. 5. Science depends _____ experiments. Extension Exercise 5 Work in groups to prepare a poster showing the chemical bonds of one, two or more different molecules. Indicate electromagnetism. Examples: hydrogen, oxygen, ozone, carbon, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, sodium chloride.
Unit
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The Electric Charge Text: Opposite Charges and Interactions 1. Benjamin Franklin, inventor of the lightning rod, explained that positive (+) and negative (-) changes are opposite types of the same thing. Opposites are a basic characteristic of nature. They interact to show nature’s duality: positive-negative, good-bad, (1) __________ 2. An interesting experiment to se the interaction between opposite electric charges is that of the plastic comb and the piece of paper. Rub a plastic comb on your hair. When you do this, your hair frees electrons. These free electrons flow from your hair to the comb and, as a result, there is an excess of electrons on the comb. Next, put the comb near a small piece of paper. The comb attracts the piece of paper because the electrons in the comb repel the excess electrons and protons in the paper attract them. This happens because different charges attract and (2) ______ 3. Another example of interaction between electric charges is that of lightning. During an electric storm, water and ice particles collide inside cumulonimbus clouds. As a result, the positive charges move to the top of the clouds and the negative charges move to the bottom. This movement generates static electricity. When the negative charges flow back to (3)______ they produce heat and emit light. Lightning is an electric discharge in the air. Thunder is a wave of pressure that occurs when the hot and violent lightning expands the cold air. 35
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Electricity The electricity. We can generate electricity to illuminate our cities or we can store it in a battery to transport it. Electricity is a flow of electrons through a conductor. Copper is a good conductor so we use it in electric wires. PVC, on the other hand, is _____ and we use it to cover copper wires. A simple electric circuit includes a battery with chemical paste, a carbon rod, a wire аnd a light bulb. The chemical paste contains an excess of electrons so when you connect the two poles of the battery, the copper wire attracts electrons. The electrons in the chemical paste repel the electrons in the carbon rod and make them flow through the copper wire. When they arrive at the filament inside the bulb, they produce heat and emit light. That is why we say that _____ . The nature of the electric charge is a mystery but we know mat the interaction of the electric charges in space-time is responsible for the existence of nature.
Before you start Check you understand the key words. Key words: bottom cloud
– основание, фундамент – облако
– –
Unit 7 collide conductor duality electric charges flow free (v., adj.) insulator lightning opposite types store (v) thunder top
– ударять, сталкиваться – провод, проводник, громоотвод – двойственность – электрические заряды – прибывать, течение, поток (free flow – свободное течение) – освобождать, свободный – изолятор, изоляция – молния, искра, перенапряжение – противоположные типы, системы – запасать, снабжать – гром, грозовая атмосфера – возвышаться, верхний
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Reading While you read. Pay attention to the subtitles. Exercise 1 Try to understand the main idea of each paragraph. Exercise 2 Match the phrases (a-e) with the gaps in the text (1-5). a. the positive charges b. a good insulator c. something-nothing. d. like charges repel. e. light is a photoelectric effect. Vocabulary Exercise 3 The following words are adverbs. Look for their adjective form in the text. Example: positively – positive 1. freely – _____ 2. violently – _____
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT 3. electrically – _____ 4. chemically – _____ Exercise 4 Complete these sentences with one of the words in Ex. 3. 1. _____ charged protons are made of quarks. 2. Atoms are _____ neutral. 3. In water, electrons flow _____ . 4. Lightning is a _____ flash in the air. 5. We can store electricity _____ . Grammar Exercise 5 Read the following information about electricians’ safety at work. Electricians wear safety clothes like rubber shoes and gloves because accidents sometimes happen. Rubber is an insulator. Electrons can’t go through it. Electricians usually turn off the electric power before working. They don’t work outside when it is raining because water is a conductor. Electricians are not afraid of electricity but they respect its power. Exercise 6 Now use the note above to complete these sentences. When you work with electricity... 1. you can _____ accident. 2. you don’t have to _____ but you have to be careful. 3. you have to _____ the electric power. 4. you can’t _____ when it’s raining. Exercise 7 Fill in the blanks with: have to, don’t have to, can, can’t During an electric storm... 1. you _____ work with metals in the open air. 2. you _____ look for a shelter. 3. you _____ be afraid, you have to be careful! 4. you _____ go out in a city.
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Extension Exercise 8 Read the information below and find out how far away from you lightning occurs. Light travels at 300,000 km. per second. Sound travels at 340 km. per second. Light travels faster than sound. In lightning, you first see the light and then you hear the sound. The sound occurs first but light travels faster. When you see lightning, count the seconds that pass until you hear the thunder, (six seconds for example). Then multiply 340x6 to estimate the distance between you and the flash of lightning. Find out in what layer of the atmosphere lightning occurs. Can lightning help restore the ozone layer?
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Text: Duality
To understand duality we first need to understand totality. Everything is energy in its different forms and totality is the sum of all the forms. Each form has two parts that complement each other. Duality refers to these two parts. For example, energy needs a force to construct a form. Energy cannot work without a force and force cannot act without energy. Energy-force is a basic universal duality. The new model of the atom shows how energy forms a duality. First, energy accumulates to form a neutron without a charge. The neutron cools off, decays into a proton and obtains a positive charge. Finally, the proton decays into an electron with a negative charge, and a neutrino with almost no charge. Positive-negative is a duality. They are two parts of the same energy that interact to construct forms. 40
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Stephen Hawking explains that, after a long time, some protons decay into little black holes and disappear. Energy follows a cycle: it goes from zero (neutron) to positive (proton) to negative (electron) and back to zero.
Duality is the basic characteristic of nature that gives points of reference to locate and compare things in space-time. We can see duality in everyday life: man-woman, day-night, good-bad are all examples of duality. But, what is the origin of duality? Albert Einstein and a group of scientists discussed the origin of duality. They said that everything has a cause and an effect, and that this forms an infinite chain (cause-effect-cause...). They explained that there must be a single essence from where everything starts and follows a cycle. This one essence has no cause and they named it «the uncaused cause». The uncaused cause is spontaneity. Energy spontaneously emerges from a vacuum and creates parts with individual identities to form wholes. Is the universe then an act of spontaneity? There are four basic universal forces that interact for energy to contruct forms in space. They are the strong and weak nuclear, forces, electromagnetism and, gravity. At present, scientists are trying to prove that these four forces are different aspects of only оne fоrce. Before you start Check you understand the keywords. Key words: cool off – остывать cycle – период, цикл
– –
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT decay – разрушать energy – энергия force – сила parts – части space – космос spontaneity – спонтанность time – время totality – все целиком whole – полностью
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Reading Before you read. Look at the drawings. Exercise 1 Then read the following statements and tick the ones related to the reading. 1. Everything has two parts. 2. Energy needs force. 3. Positive and negative are two parts of the same energy. 4. Time is relative. Exercise 2 Now read the article and check your answers. Vocabulary Exercise 3 Go back to the text and find the words needed to form dualities. 1. energy _____ 2. space _____ 3. part _____ 4. positive _____ 5. cause _____ Grammar Exercise 4 Fill in the blanks with the proper form of the verbs in brackets. 1. Scientists _____ (try) to prove that there is only one universal force.
Unit 8 2. The basic forces _____ always _____ (interact) to construct forms. 3. Right now, millions of galaxies _____ (take) form. 4. At this moment, millions of neutrinos _____ (pass) through your body. 5. What _____ you _____ (think) about? Exercise 5 Fill in the blanks with: and, also, but, too 1. Energy and force work together to construct forms, _____ they need space to do that. 2. Science explains that space and time form a duality _____ . 3. Neutrons decay into protons _____ protons decay into electrons and neutrinos. 4. Potential and kinetic energy are _____ a duality. 5. Duality is the origin of good _____ bad. Extension Exercise 6 The duality of thought. The diagram below shows the duality of thought: linearcircular. Linear thought is prevalent in science. Science studies how the universe works. Circular thought is prevalent in Philosophy. Philosophers ask why the universe works. Famous thinkers balance the combination of both. Read the examples of linear and circular thought below the diagram
Linear thought
Circular thought
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Exercise 7 Answer the questions: 1. How did the dinosaurs disappear? 2. Why did the dinosaurs disappear? 3. How does energy form matter? 4. Why does energy form matter? 5. How do species evolve? 6. Why do species evolve? 7. What kind of questions do you usually ask yourself? 8. What type of thinker are you? 9.Can you draw a diagram that combines both linear and circular thought?
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Text 9. Fields and forces
We know that an atom is made from protons and neutrons in a nucleus, and electrons spinning around this nucleus. The protons have a positive electric charge and the electrons have a negative electric charge. The neutrons have no electric charge. As the electrons spin around the nucleus, they produce small currents. These currents create a magnetic field around the electrons and the atom. This magnetic field makes the atom behave like a small magnet. Magnets can be natural or artificial. The Earth, for example, contains magnetic substances in its nucleus. These substances, which are also in our body, make our planet a big natural magnet. That’s why when you hang a bar magnet from a thread in a horizontal position, its north pole points to the geographic north pole of the Earth. A bar magnet is an artificial magnet. This type of magnets 45
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are usually made from a combination of elements that contain iron, cobalt or nickel. Iron does not always behave like a magnet and this is because its atoms are usually disorganized. A needle, for example, that contains iron is not a magnet (A) but when you rub the needle with a magnet, its atoms line up and the needle becomes a magnet (B). The needle can then attract other metals. This property of some substances to attract metals is called magnetism. Electromagnetism and gravity are two basic forces of nature. They are very similar and scientists are trying to unify them. Electromagnetism works in small objects -it attracts the electrons from the atomic nucleus and maintains them in place. Gravity works with big objects- the pull of gravity from the nucleus of the Earth maintains our atmosphere in place. Both, the electrons and the Earth, spin and generate an electric and a magnetic field around them. These fields make up our planet’s electromagnetic shield. All our senses work with electric impulses from and to the brain. These impulses create an electromagnetic field inside our body. Is there an electromagnetic shield around us?
Before you start Look at the drawings and check you understand the key words. Key words: behave current
– вести себя – – течение, поток, электрический – ток
Unit 9 electromagnetism – электромагнетизм generate – вырабатывать gravity – гравитация gravitational – гравитационный line up – выравнять, подвести под одну линию magnetic field – магнитное поле shield – защищать, заслонять spinning – обкатка, изготовление вращательным способом
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Before you read Exercise 1 Guess if the following statements are true or false. a. A needle is a magnet. _____ b. «Like» magnetic poles attract. _____ c. The centre of the Earth is a magnet. _____ d. Electromagnetic force holds our body together. _____ Reading Exercise 2 Read the article and check your guesses. Vocabulary Exercise 3 Look for words in the text derived from the nouns below. Identify if it’s a noun or an adjective. Example: gravity- gravitational (adj.) 1. Magnet – ____________ 2. Atom – ____________ 3. Geography – ____________ 4. Electron – ____________ 5. Sphere – ____________ Grammar Exercise 4 Circle the correct form of the verbs in brackets. a. We ( know / are knowing ) that the universe has two poles.
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT b. Right now we (stand / are standing ) on the surface of the Earth. с At this moment our planet ( spins / is spinning ) around the sun. d. Cosmologists ( believe / are believing ) that gravity and electromagnetism are only one force. e. Magnets (attract / are attracting ) metals. Exercise 5 Fill in the gaps with: one, ones a. Some substances can attract metals. The _____ we use to make magnets are iron, nickel and cobalt. b. A deuterium atom has a proton and a neutron. Which of these two nucleons is the _____ without a charge? c. Which force is the _____ that holds the atmosphere in space? d. Among scientists, physicists are the _____ who are trying to unify all the forces. Exercise 6 Fill in the blanks with these words: someone, somewhere, anyone, anything, everywhere 1. In the future _____ will prove all the forces are really one. 2. _____ you go, you are within fields forces. 3. Many scientists believe that _____ in our galaxy there are other planets with intelligent life. 4. Is there _____ smaller than an electron? 5. Does _____ in your class now about electromagnetism? Extension Exercise 7 Work in small groups. We use magnets to generate electricity. Find out how th happens. Draw a poster and report to the class.
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Text: Waves and Particles
Light is electromagnetic radiation from atoms. It is made from small packets of energy. Each packet is called a quantum or photon. In atoms the electrons are always travelling around the nucleus in different orbits. Each orbit has a different energy level. When a photon (a particle of light) hits an atom, one of its electrons absorbs extra energy and moves to a higher energy level. When the electron returns to its original orbit, it emits a light photon and loses some energy. The colour of the light depends on how much energy the photons contain. In blue light, for example, the photons contain more energy than in red, yellow or white light For many years scientists studied light. Some believed that it moved in waves and others that it moved in currents of particles. Juan Maldacena, a physicist from Harvard University, received a UNESCO prize for his theory Black Holes in String Theory. He proved that light waves are caused by of small strings that roll in and contain black holes like galaxies do. These so-called micro galaxies emit photons and these photons form currents of particles near the waves. Maldacena’s theory finally explained the dual behaviour of light – light behaves like 49
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both waves and particles. His theory shows that a light particle and a galaxy have similar behaviour. This means that the force of gravity that forms the galaxies and the electromagnetism that holds the atoms and molecules together is probably the same force.
What is a Black Hole? In a star there are two main forces: expansion and gravity. In a blue star, when the force of gravity is stronger than the force of expansion the star collapses at its centre. Then, the pull of gravity from the centre of the star is so strong that it even swallows the light! This makes the
Unit 10
star invisible: a black hole. Around each black hole there is an area called event horizon which emits radiation. There is a black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Before you start Key words: black hole collapse dual electromagnetic radiation energy level galaxy light orbit particle quantum/photon star string wave
– черная дыра – выгибать – двойной двойственный – электромагнетическая радиация – энергетический уровень – галактика – зажигать, быть освещенным, светлый, легкий – орбита – частица – количество, квант/фотон – звезда – снабжать веревками, веревка – волна
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
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Reading Before your read. Exercise 1 Guess if these statements are true or false. a. Light is radiation. b. A photon is a packet of energy. c. Light moves both in waves and in particles. d. There is a black hole at the centre of our galaxy.
Read the article and check your guesses. Exercise 2 Which paragraphs give you the information? Vocabulary Exercise 3 List the comparative form of these adjectives. Example: long – longer 1. fast _____ 2. small _____ 3. hot _____ 4. interesting _____ Grammar Exercise 4 Use the comparative form of the adjectives to complete these sentences. 1. A particle of light / small / an electron. A particle of light is smaller than an electron. 2. The waves in white light / long / the waves in red light. ___________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 3. Maldacena’s theory of light / interesting / Newton’s. ___________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________
Unit 10 4. Nothing travels / fast / than light. ___________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ 5. Blue light / hot / red light. ____________________________ _______________________________________________________ Exercise 5 Complete the paragraph with the comparative form of the adjectives below: easy, famous, complete Maldacena is an Argentine scientist. In the US, many scientists know him. He’s (1) _____ there than in Argentina. He used other theories to make a new theory that is (2) _____ than Newton’s and Einstein’s. Thanks to Maldacena, the structure of matter is (3) _____ to understand now than a few years ago. Extension Exercise 6 Find the difference between a hypothesis and a theory and discuss it with the class.
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Text: Genetics Genetics is the science of inheritance. It studies the cells and the anatomical and functional characteristics transmitted from parents to children. A cell is an intelligent organism made from atoms. We are made from more than sixty billion cells. There are cells to make bones, muscles, blood and so on. In the nucleus of every cell there are twentythree pairs of chromosomes, half of them are from the mother and the other half are from the father. Chromosomes are made of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and protein. Each chromosome contains many genes in its DNA. The DNA carries the instructions to construct a human being. Each species has its own set of genes. The different combinations of genes determine the characteristics of each individual. With the exception of identical twins, nobody in the world has the same combination of genes and this is what makes everyone a unique individual. What all humans do have in common is the genome, that is, we all have the same number of chromosomes and the same genetic material. There are no superior or inferior genes. Genetic manipulation refers to human intervention in the design or function of the cells. Many people oppose it. They argue that the main problem is that man can be both a master and a monster. At an institute of pharmaceutical engineering in Virginia, USA, scientists injected pigs with a human gene that produces a protein called Factor VIIL This protein makes the blood thicker and helps patients with 54
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hemophilia. The fourth generation of these pigs will possibly produce enough Factor VIII in their milk to supply the world’s demand. On the other hand, through genetic manipulation people could select spermatozoids and decide the sex of their future babies. This alters the course of nature and for many people it has ethical implications.
Cloning is another important topic. From a few cells scientists can produce cartilage. This will probably soon help people who don’t have a part of their face, like an ear, after an accident. But in the future we could clone and manipulate people. Our problem is always the same. People disagree about what is ethical and what is not. Before you start Key words: anatomic chromosomes DNA proteins
– анатомический – хромосомы – ДНК-протеины
– – –
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT ethical cloning function genome genes genetics inheritance relativity
– этическое клонирование – функция – – геном – – гены – – генетика – – наследство – – относительность –
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Reading Exercise 1 Read the article carefully. Then answer the multiple choice questions. 1. In the nucleus of every cell there are a. 46 chromosomes b. 50 chromosomes c. 54 chromosomes 2. The characteristics of each individual depend on a. the combination the genes b. the genome c. the chromosome 3. Which of the following best describes genetic manipulation? a. heart transplant b. cloning c. plastic surgery Vocabulary Exercise 2 Write down the superlative form of these adjectives. Which one doesn’t have a comparative or superlative form? a. Intelligent organism – the most intelligent organism b. unique Individual – _______________________ c. thicker blood – _______________________ d. Important topic – _______________________ e. clear definition – _______________________ Grammar Exercise 3 Fill in the blanks with the superlative form of the adjectives in brackets. 1. The _____ (dear) example of human intolerance is war.
Unit 11 2. Respect for life is the _____ (important) human value. 3. Ethics is the _____ (difficult) subject to apply. 4. Genetics is one of the _____ (interesting) divisions of Biology. 5. The _____ (great) contribution of genetics is the possibility to cure diseases. Exercise 4 Fill in the blanks with: there, it 1. _____ are millions of cells in a human body. 2. _____ is difficult to differentiate between twins. 3. _____ are no superior or inferior genes. 4. _____ is hope for patients with hemophilia. 5. _____ is no clear definition of what is good or bad. Extension Exercise 5 Debate on advantages and disadvantages of genetic manipulation. Use the following information as a guide. Advantages Disadvantages – Restore some parts of your body – Expensive – Can help to treat an illness – Can produce population imbalance – Choose future baby’s sex Example: Student A: Genetic manipulation can restore some parts of your body. Student B: Yes, but it’s very expensive. Only rich people can do that.
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Text: Health No one knows me better than I do». This is a popular phrase. However, not many people understand their body. And how many of us understand feelings and desires? The human body maintains a delicate balance to sustain our life. Our body is not only a group of physical elements. It is also a complex combination of units that construct an individual with a creative mind. We feel, think, accumulate experiences and evolve. We are the highest expression of life on Earth. The same vital force that obtains matter from the cosmos to construct our body constructs everything else around us. Life includes rhythm and order. Our body has many systems and mechanisms that work in modules. Small modules make up bigger modules and the sum of all the modules makes up a person. All modules interact and intercommunicate and that’s why the malfunction of any one module affects the rest. One of these mechanisms, the defence mechanism, protects us from disease. Part of it works in the blood. Blood is made from a liquid called plasma that contains blood cells with different roles. The red cells transport oxygen around the body, the platelets help the blood to coagulate, and the white cells guard against infection. When a germ enters our body, the white cells intercept it and devour it in seconds. There is a kind of intelligence in the cells – they reproduce, identify their role and do their function. Antibodies, for example, only attack unwanted cells. They don’t destroy their environment or their own life. 58
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Under ideal conditions, this defence mechanism works well. However, there are many factors that alter the ideal conditions and cause health problems – bad eating habits, alcohol and drug abuse, stress, pollution and others. When this happens, our body needs external help like medicine.
All the biological systems, including our planet, have a defence mechanism. The malfunction of any one system affects the rest. Health involves awareness, responsibility, intelligence, respect and love for life.
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Before you start Exercise 1 Read the key words. Which words are similar in your language? Key words: antibodies – антитела – blood – кровь – coagulate – сгущаться, свертываться – evolved – развивать, – эволюционировать germs – микробы – malfunction – неисправная работа – mechanism – механизм – module – модуль – order – заказ – platelet – расплющить – rhythm – ритм – systems – системы – vital force – жизненные силы –
Reading Exercise 2 Read the article and mark the statements Right or Wrong. Correct the wrong statements. a. Our body is made from small modules. □__________________________ b. The malfunction of one part affects the whole system. □__________________________ c. Hormones take oxygen to different parts of the body. □__________________________ d. Red cells attack germs. □__________________________ e. Antibodies can identify the bad germs. □__________________________
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Vocabulary Exercise 3 Read the following sentences and choose the closest meaning to the underlined words. 1. The human organism maintains a delicate equilibrium to sustain our life. a. improve b. support c. take care of 2. We feel, think, accumulate experiences and evolve. a. develop b. appear c. study 3. The slime vital force that obtains matter from the cosmos to construct our body is all around. a. everywhere b. above c. near 4. Life includes rhythm and order. a. tone b. tempo c. music Grammar Exercise 4 Fill in the blanks with the correct affirmative or negative form of be going to. 1. Drugs _____ help you have a better life. 2. Your generation _____ be more aware of health problems. 3. _____ AIDS ever _____be eradicated? 4. How _____ you _____ contribute to a healthier society? 5. Very soon we _____ have enough fresh water. Exercise 5 Complete the sentences with for where necessary. 1. Alcohol stays in your body _____ many hours. 2. To be a doctor you need to study _____ a long time. 3. There is going to be a big change _____ this century. 4. Drugs can give you «a good time» _____ a few hours and serious problems _____ many years. Extension Exercise 6 Organs and Transplants The donation of organs is an important issue in our society. Many people support this idea and many don’t Some say that the life that
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT begins with an Individual should end with it. Others see life as a whole and say that to donate an organ contributes to the continuation of life. What is your opinion? Exercise 7 Do a survey. Work in groups. Each group asks ten people outside the classroom this question: Are you for or against the donation of organs? Report: How many are for? How many are against? How many don’t know? Put all the information together and draw a pie-chart with the results.
Unit
13
Text: The Biosphere The biosphere is the region of the Earth’s crust and atmosphere where life exists. It includes our physical environment and a biological community of interacting organisms. We are among these organisms that cannot survive without the environment. The environment is an everyday topic in our schools and homes, but we aren’t doing much about it. There are many examples of our destruction of the planet. Thousands of lakes are already lifeless and we continue putting toxic substances into the atmosphere. These pollutants (acidic particles and solutes) end up on the land and in the water and become part of our daily diet. Every year we lose about 7 million hectares of fertile land. We are also destroying millions of hectares of forests that produce the oxygen we breathe. Our cities consume and contaminate the natural environment – they are like enormous parasites that need to eat everything around them to survive. We produce rubbish, consume rubbish and are surrounded by rubbish. We don’t know what to do with it: we bury it, throw it in the seas, and we even send it to outer space!
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We continue ignoring these facts, or blaming one another. And everyday we decide on the lives of millions of creatures that share the planet with us. According to the United Nations, by 2025 there will be around 8,300 million people on Earth (around 40% more than today). We have the means and the technology to restore the ecological balance. We also have the ability to research into ways of living without damaging our environment: energy sources, synthetic food, potable water and so on. To solve these problems we need to leave behind our superficial differences and lifestyles. The Earth is a unit of life. What we do to our planet and to others shows what we are doing to ourselves. Our collective future depends on how we assume our individual responsibilities. What do you think?
Before you start Key words: avoid biosphere breathe crust
– избегать – биосфера – дышать – кора (земная)
– – – –
Unit 13 damaging environment lifeless means pollutants restore self-destructing
– повреждение – окружение – неживой, мертвый – ресурсы, средства – загрязнитель – возвращать, восстанавливать – самоуничтожающий
– – – – – – –
Reading Exercise 1 Look at the title and the pictures and guess what the article is about. a. environmental problems b. life on Earth c. lifestyles in cities Exercise 2 Now read the text carefully and check your guess. Exercise 3 Choose the topic that best matches each paragraph. 1. Paragraph 1. a. Our environment. b. The biosphere. c. Our role in the environment. 2. Paragraph 2. a. Our cities are like artificial parasites. b. Land and water pollution. c. Existing environmental problems. 3. Paragraph 3. a. There will be many people in 2025. b. We share the planet with other organisms. c. The population continues growing. 4. Paragraph 4. a. We can solve environmental problems. b. We have good technology. c. Synthetic food is necessary.
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Vocabulary Exercise 4 Read and choose the correct word. 1. There are many lakes that are (life / lifeless). 2. Our technology can help us restore (ecology / ecological) balance. 3. The air we ( breath / breathe) is polluted. 4. We throw (pollutants / pollution) into our rivers. Grammar Exercise 5 Fill in the blanks with: will, won’t, be (not) going to 1. Soon we _____ know what to do with the rubbish. 2. People _____ continue destroying the environment. 3. Scientists believe that there _____ be big natural disasters. 4. Other organisms _____ suffer more because of ecological imbalance. 5. Without a clean environment people _____ survive. Exercise 6 Complete these sentences with the right form of the verbs in the list. learn, be, do, need, react 1. If we study, we _____ . 2. If we produce rubbish, our planet _____ badly. 3. If people don’t understand environmental problems, they _____ anything to solve them. 4. If there are more people on Earth, we _____ to produce more food and potable water. 5. If we find other ways to feed ourselves, there _____ much to worry about. Extension Exercise 7 Work in groups to make a list of materials that are bad for our environment. Mark in your list the ones that are indespensable and think of ways to recycle them.
Unit 13 Are there alternative materials to produce them? Complete the chart below.
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Unit
14
The Quantum Concept and the Paradigm Shift Text: The Quantum Concept The Quantum Concept is a concept of accumulation. According to Quantum Physics, the physical world around us is composed individual «packets of energy», that is, packets that contain energy just as packets of sugar contain sugar. This individual packet of energy forms particles, and particles form atoms. When energy cools off, it accumulates and forms matter. Our planet, for example, is a living system that results from the accumulation of matter. We can also see this Quantum characteristic of nature in many other aspects of life: a society, for example, which is made up of a group of individuals, or knowledge, which is the result of the accumulation of experience. The Paradigm Shift Our history includes many great scientists. They increased our knowledge and changed our ideas about the world and our role in it. Some of these changes were fundamental and scientists call them paradigm shifts. Before Copernicus’ time, most people in the West believed that the Earth was the centre of the universe and that everything else revolved around it. His theory showed that the sun was the centre of a system. Isaac Newton made a mechanical description 68
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of the universe and wrote laws of motion and gravitation and this led to the industrial revolution. Max Planck gave us the Quantum Theory. Albert Einstein explained, among other things, that everything comes from the same energy, that we are all parts of the same whole. All of these theories expanded the limits of our mind and opened a new era of understanding. In some cases, however, the application of new knowledge has also caused destruction. History teaches us that opposites are inherent to nature – we construct and destroy, believe and doubt. At the moment we are going through rapid changes. Perhaps we are in the process of a new paradigm shift.
Before you start Before you start look at the drawings and check you understand the key words. Key words: accumulation сhanged expand experience inherent
– накопление – – менять – – расширение – – опыт – – присущий, свойственный, – врожденный, внутренний –
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Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT knowledge laws of motion packet paradigm revolved shift whole world
– знание – законы движения – укладывать, пакет – парадигма – вращаться, периодически возвращаться – сдвигать, переключать, способ, средство – в целом, целая, всё – мир
– – – – –
– – –
Reading Exercise 1 What do you know about the words and paradigm! 1. Quantum Concept a. chemical bonds b. accumulation of something c. a change 2. Paradigm Shift a. a change in the world view b. accumulation of ideas c. a series of events Exercise 2 Now read the text and check your answers. Decide whether the statements below are true or false. 1. Change is not constant. 2. We are all parts of a whole. 3. We are in the process of a new paradigm shift 4. Science can expand our minds 5. We don’t accept change. Exercise 3 Check your answers with your teacher.
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Vocabulary Exercise 4 Fill in the gaps with the words from the text. 1. Another word for quantum is _____ 2. _____ is an accumulation of experiences. 3. The sum of parts makes up a _____ 4. We have learnt through history that opposites are _____ to nature. Grammar Exercise 5 Complete the sentences with: have/has, haven’t/hasn’t 1. Scientists _____ explained many of the mysteries of nature. 2. The application of knowledge _____ always been constructive. 3. We _____ worried much about our problems yet. 4. Knowledge _____ expanded the limits of our minds. 5. Our hopes for a better world _____ vanished. Exercise 6 Fill in the blanks with present perfect form of the verbs in the list. offer, consider, develop, increase, change 1. Communication systems _____ greatly in the past thirty years. 2. The quantum theory _____ us many answers. 3. Science _____ our lives. 4. We _____ never _____ our planet as a unit of life. 5. We _____ our understanding of the world. Extension Exercise 7 Work in groups. Make a list of the things you consider people need to do to construct a better world.
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Text: Methods and Theories A bout 350 years ago, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) changed scientists’ attitudes towards Science. He developed the scientific method used to obtain theories that explain how nature works. This method, which is still in use today, includes the following steps: – Identification of the problem. – Formulation of a hypothesis based on collected and analysed data. – Testing of the hypothesis to check its validity. – Development of a theory Science is strict in its methodology but it welcomes change. In Science there has never been one absolute theory. We are constantly obtaining new information, making new observations and carrying out new experiments. As a result, new theories which replace or expand old ones are postulated and this is what leads to advances in Science.
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There are two main types of theories: the theories of principles and the constructive theories. The theories of principles use analysis: we observe an event and explain it through the use of mathematics and experiments. Constructive theories, on the other hand, use synthesis. In these theories we use the information from the theories of principles to construct more complex theories. For example, the theory of principles proved that matter vibrates. Later, constructive theory used this information to prove that, sound, heat and radiation derive from vibration. Especially in the last 200 years there has been great scientific progress. The application of scientific discoveries has helped develop technology and advance our knowledge of the world. Science has brought our countries together and we now have the possibility of sharing our knowledge and solving our problems. We are becoming a world community and this is science’s most valuable contribution. However, as the World Commission on Environment and Development has stated, current trends in global development are not sustainable. Development should take into account the needs of both present and future generations. Scientific knowledge is important, but only the reexamination of our moral values will place Science on the right path to contribute towards the well-being of humanity. Before you start Key words: heat hypothesis place (v) replace sound strict sustainable validity values well-being
– нагревать, теплота – – гипотеза, предположение – – выдвигать, ставить, – вкладывать, место – возвращать, ставить – на место – звук – – точный – – поддерживающий – – действительный, хорошо – обоснованный – ценности – – благополучие, благосостояние –
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Reading Exercise 1 Read the article and mark the following statements right or wrong. Correct the wrong statements. 1. Science has no limit. 2. The scientific method has helped us obtain theories. 3. Science has found an absolute theory. 4. The constructive theories use the analytic method. 5. Development should consider both present and future generations. Vocabulary Exercise 2 Match these verbs with their definition. 1. hypothesis a. a process that can continue for a long time 2. validity b. a way of doing something 3. theory с. an idea that tries to explain something about life or the world. 4. sustainable d. acceptability 5. method e. an idea which has not yet been shown to be true Exercise 3 Use the present perfect form of the verbs in brackets. 1. In the last loo years Science _____ (bring) changes in the way we live. 2. There _____ (be) many advances in communication technology. 3. We _____ (never lose) the hope for a better world. 4. The WCED _____ (state) that current development is not sustainable. 5. The scientific method _____ (help) us formulate theories for many years. 6. Science _____ (always welcome) new theories. 7. Maldacena _____ (just make) a new discovery. 8. _____ (ever make) you a big change in your life? Grammar Exercise 4 Read the following article about how plants communicate. Fill in the blanks with the correct form of the verb in the past simple or the present perfect.
Unit 15 Ilya Raskin and his colleagues, botanists from the University of Rutgers, 1 _____ (recently/demonstrate) how plants communicate with one another. This and other experiments, from the Laboratory of Artificial Climate at Timiryazev, 2 _____ (show) that plants, just like human beings and other animals, also react to aggression, experience fear and pain, and emit sounds to express feelings. The scientists from Rutgers 3 _____ (put) dozens of selected tobacco plants in two hermetic rooms, 4 _____ (connect) the rooms with tubes and 5 _____ (make) air circulate between them. They 6 _____ (inject) a virus in the plants in one of the rooms. After two days, the infected plants 7 _ ____ (emit) a chemical substance that 8 _____ (pass) to the other room. This substance 9 _____ (stimulate) the healthy plants to produce in their leaves chemicals to protect themselves against the virus. «We 10 _____ (learn) something», 11 _____ (say) one of the scientists, «plants have a considerable degree of consciousness. As the new scientific discoveries increase our knowledge about nature, we perceive a change in the way we look at things». As Lord Acton 12 _____ (say): «Nothing is permanent but change.» Exercise 5 Circle the correct form of the verbs in brackets. 1. I (haven’t seen / didn’t see) a cloned animal yet. 2. In the past five years people (have already reduced / already reduced) the use of CFC gas. 3. Most scientists (have known / knew) about the holes in the ozone layer many years ago. 4. Last year, we (have participated / participated) in the International Health Day Congress. 5. Since the early 7o’s our Science curriculum (has included / included) a section on endangered species. Extension Exercise 6 Work in groups Make a list of positive and negative things about technology. Use the following to express your opinion. Personally I think/ I believe / In my opinion / However / but,... Ex: Personally, I think technology has helped us communicate.
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Scientific Words The advance of science has for a hundred years or more been so rapid that neither English nor all the languages of Europe could supply sufficient words for its need. In this task of word creation the scientist has always turned to the languages of Greece, or Rome, and still does so. Almost all scientific words are of Latin and Greek origin. The word «physics» comes from a Greek word meaning «knowledge of nature». Physics studies and explains various non-living things, their behavior and phenomena of nature. It is well known that after M. Faraday had finished his basic researches on the phenomena of electrolysis, he asked a professor at Cambridge to look for suitable words with which to describe his results, and in 1833 the now familiar terms «anode» and «cathode» came into existence in this way. These terms come from the Greek words «anion» and «cation» meaning «up» and «down». The word «magnet» takes its name from the town of Magnesia in Asia Minor where the pieces of magnetic rock were first found. It will be good to know that the word ‘atom» is a wrong name for the smallest things of which everything is made in nature. The word «atom» is of Greek origin and it means «indivisible» as the Greeks thought that the atom couldn’t be split (divided). Only in the present century was it discovered that the atom is built up of still tinier particles called electrons, protons and neutrons. Have you heard of cryogenics? It is the studying of the behavior of substances at low temperatures. It was discovered that at very low 76
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temperatures the properties of materials change in surprising and sometimes unusual ways. The word «cryos» is also of Greek origin. It means «icy cold» The Effects of Gravity The forces of gravity plays an important part in many common phenomena of mechanics. The rate at which a body falls depends on the value of g. The weight of a body is nothing but the pull of gravity toward the earth. We say that a body weighs one kilogram if the mass of the earth exerts upon it a pull equal to one kilogram. According to the Universal Law of Gravitation any two objects in the universe are attracted to each other with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. This means that the greater the mass of an object, the greater is the force with which it attracts another body. Also, the greater the distance between their centres gravity, the less the force of attraction. The Law of Gravitation is universal, of course, but we do not notice the force between two ordinary objects because the attraction is very small. But with a body as large as the earth or the moon it becomes a different thing. It is the attraction toward the earth that is the reason of such phenomena as weight and the motion of falling bodies. With such a great force of attraction, the moon would fall on to the earth. What keeps it from falling? We can answer this question due to our knowledge of mechanics. If there were no force of gravitation, the moon and the earth would fly off into space along a straight line. But gravitation supplies the centripetal force necessary to hold the planets in their circular (or elliptical) orbits. The Subject of Mechanics The progress of technology confronts the engineer with various problems connected with structural design, manufacture and ope-
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ration of various machines, motors and means of motion, such as automobiles, steam engines, planes, ships and rockets. The solution of such problems is based on certain general physical principles – the laws that govern the motion and equilibrium of material bodies. The branch of physics that deals with the behavior of physical bodies subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effect of the bodies on their environment is called mechanics. Mechanics has its roots in several ancient civilizations. During the early modern period, scientists such as Galileo, Kepler and especially Newton, laid the foundation for what is now known as classical mechanics. Much of the content of this subject was created in the 18th and 19-th centuries. Classical mechanics is often viewed as a model for other so-called exact sciences. Mechanics constitutes a central part of technology, the application of physical knowledge of the world for defined purposes. In this connection, the discipline is often known as engineering or applied mechanics. In this sense mechanics is used to design and analyze the behavior of structures, mechanisms and machines. Finally, as it is known, the study of mechanics gave birth to important fields of mechanical engineering, aerospace engineering, civil engineering, structural engineering, biomedical engineering and biomechanics and other branches of technology. Mechanics, as it is stated above, is the science that deals with the solution of all problems connected with the motion or equilibrium of material bodies and the resulting interactions between them. By motion in mechanics we mean any change in relative positions of material bodies in space that takes place in the course of time. The General Theory of Relativity Isaak Newton’s discovery of the Law of Universal Gravitation would seem to have definitively answered the question of planetary movement. And yet, it became apparent to scientists that a number of phenomena which they observed did not agree with those they expected to see based on Newton’s predictions.
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One of the differences was the orbit predicted by Newton’s theory. Another problem resulted from James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of electromagnetism (about 1870), which indicated that space was filed with matter that moved and was not empty and motionless, as Newton had believed. Finally, there was problem with Newton’s claim that light travelled at a constant speed, whether the observer was moving toward or away from it or not. These questions captured the interest of a brilliant young physics student, Albert Einstein. Einstein’s first attempt to solve the problem was his 1905 paper on The Special Theory of Relativity, a concept which had been noted by Galileo in 1632. In this work, Einstein found that time and space are relative, not constant. This means that time and space are different depending on where the observer is. This was proved by an experiment involving two clocks one was put on an aeroplane which travelled around the world and the other remained at the starting point on the ground. When the first one returned, it was running slower than the one which had been left behind, exactly as Einstein had predicted. Einstein continued to expand on this theory, and in 1916 presented a paper on a new theory, The General Theory of Relativity, which took into account the effect of gravitation on space and time. It involved the notion of space time, a multi-dimensional phenomenon which is constantly moving and bending as it meets obstacles in its path. Everything in the universe is part of this space time and is carried along with it. Furthermore, gravity is not a force which moves things, but illustrates curved space and time. Einstein’s theory was based on geometrical calculations and principles and had to be proved by scientific testing in the natural world, which many scientists were eager to do. In 1919, during a solar eclipse, a British team working in two different locations measured the light of several stars. They found that the light form these stars was actually bent, just as Einstein’s theory had predicted. Needless to say, Einstein immediately became internationally famous. Scientists continued to apply Einstein’s equations to other natural phenomena, all with positive results.
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Faraday Puts Electricity to Work Michael Faraday, who was born in 1791 and died in 1867, gathered together and set in order all the work of the scientists who had worked on electrical problems before him. In 1823, he discovered how to make an electrical motor. In 1831, he built the first generator, then called it dynamo. The modern car has both a starting motor and a generator. The starting motor draws electric current from the car battery to start the powerful gasoline engine. The generator is driven by the gasoline engine to recharge the battery and to furnish electric power for all the electrical conveniences in the car. In 1833, Faraday discovered the effect of passing an electric current through certain solutions. He called these effects the laws of electrolysis. This has made possible the refinement of metals, silver and gold plating, and the manufacture of many chemical products. As a result of Faraday’s work, Morse was able to invent the electromagnetic telegraph, Bell, the telephone, and Edison, the electric light. Answer these questions. Quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is the branch of physics that explains the behaviour of the tiniest matter such as atoms, molecules and nuclei. Thanks to the ideas it put forward, scientists managed to explain all the new experimental evidence of the time that could not be explained by classical physics (also known as Newtonian physics, after Isaac Newton ). A few years later, Isaac Newton suggested that light was made up of tiny particles. Both of these theories were backed up by experiments. But neither theory could adequately explain on its own all of the phenomena associated with light. Nearly two hundred years later, in 1900, Max Planck assumed that hot things send out energy in packets, and he named these packets quanta (singular: quantum ). In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper based on Planck’s work to explain the photoelectric effect, and
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called the energy packets of light photons. According to this theory, when light shines on a metal surface, the photons in the light can carry enough energy to hit an electron in an atom in the metal and knock the electron out of the atom. In 1920, while working on the idea that a moving particle had the property of a wave and thus could have a wavelength (that is, that there was a specific length to the waves of light), Niels Bohr decided to find the wavelength of an electron moving around the nucleus of an atom. He found that an electron could have a stable orbit, which means that the electron in orbit is not radiating energy. He also found that an electron absorbed or radiated a certain distinct amount of energy only when moved to another stable orbit. It appears that quanta were being used by scientists to explain all sorts of phenomena that they could not explain before. However, the scientific community was divided on whether light was a wave or a particle because it behaved as both in different experiments. So they began to think of light as both a participle and a wave. This concept is true for both matter (such as electrons) and energy (such as light). We can only conclude that light is somehow both a wave and a particle, or it is something else that we cannot quite understand and which physicist of the future will be able to explain. In the final analysis, quantum mechanics explained two very important things why atoms were stable and why atoms absorbed or released energy in certain ways. The General Theory of Relativity Isaak Newton’s discovery of the Law of Universal Gravitation would seem to have definitively answered the question of planetary movement. And yet, it became apparent to scientists that a number of phenomena which they observed did not agree with those they expected to see based on Newton’s predictions. One of the differences was the orbit predicted by Newton’s theory. Another problem resulted from James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of
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electromagnetism (about 1870), which indicated that space was filed with matter that moved and was not empty and motionless, as Newton had believed. Finally, there was problem with Newton’s claim that light travelled at a constant speed, whether the observer was moving toward or away from it or not. These questions captured the interest of a brilliant young physics student, Albert Einstein. Einstein’s first attempt to solve the problem was his 1905 paper on The Special Theory of Relativity, a concept which had been noted by Galileo in 1632. In this work, Einstein found that time and space are relative, not constant. This means that time and space are different depending on where the observer is. This was proved by an experiment involving two clocks one was put on an aeroplane which travelled around the world and the other remained at the starting point on the ground. When the first one returned, it was running slower than the one which had been left behind, exactly as Einstein had predicted. Einstein continued to expand on this theory, and in 1916 presented a paper on a new theory, The General Theory of Relativity, which took into account the effect of gravitation on space and time. It involved the notion of space time, a multi-dimensional phenomenon which is constantly moving and bending as it meets obstacles in its path. Everything in the universe is part of this space time and is carried along with it. Furthermore, gravity is not a force which moves things, but illustrates curved space and time. Einstein’s theory was based on geometrical calculations and principles and had to be proved by scientific testing in the natural world, which many scientists were eager to do. In 1919, during a solar eclipse, a British team working in two different locations measured the light of several stars. They found that the light form these stars was actually bent, just as Einstein’s theory had predicted. Needless to say, Einstein immediately became internationally famous. Scientists continued to apply Einstein’s equations to other natural phenomena, all with positive results.
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The Law of Universal Gravitation In ancient times, people believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system and explain the movement of the Sun, the Moon, the stars and the planets around the Earth. As scientific knowledge and technology improved over time, this idea (called the geocentric theory, from the ancient Greek words meaning Earth – centre ) lost favour and new theories about the solar system were put forward. Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) and Galileo (1564 – 1642) made accurate measurement of the heavens, which were the basis for later theories. Nicolas Copernicus (1473 – 1543) believed that the Earth was not the center of the solar system but just another planet revolving around the Sun, which itself never moved. This type of theory was called heliocentric. Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630), an assistant to Brahe, used Brahe’s measurements to support Copernicus’ heliocentric theory. This led to his discovery of three laws relating to planetary movement, including the fact that the planets move in elliptical orbits around the Sun. It was left to Isaac Newton to expend on this theories by testing and proving Kepler’s laws. By observing things around him, Newton realised several things. One was that objects can be in one place, without moving. This is called inertia. Then, if the object moved, it moved toward another object. The phenomenon causing this pull of one object towards another was the force of gravity (or little g). Newton found that the mass of the two objects and the distance between them determined the strength of the force of gravity and developed an equation which expressed this relationship. Continuing to test and expend his findings, Newton hypothesized that this relationship existed not only between objects on the Earth but also objects in space. This led in 1687 to Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, usually called Principia) in which he wrote about his historic discovery of the Law of Universal Gravitation (or big G). By calling his discovery a law, it meant that the relationships he had discovered were true everywhere and all cases.
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Newton’s discovery had a huge impact on scientific thinking for centuries afterwards. In fact, his finding were not improved upon until 1905, when Albert Einstein introduced his Special Theory of Relativity. Electricity and magnetism Electromagnetism is everywhere. It is a field that exists throughout space. When particles are electrically charged, the electromagnetic field exerts a force on them. These particles then move and exert a force on the electromagnetic field. By generating these fields when and where we want them and by controlling these forces we have electricity. This gives us the power we use in the modern world. All our TVs, phones, street lights and cars depend on electromagnetism. So what is electromagnetism? Actually, it is two things, but they are so closely connected that it is convenient for us to think of them as one, as two sides of the same coin. There are two types of field: electric and magnetic. Electrically-charged particles result in an electric field, static electricity. When there is conductor, a material which will allow electric field to pass through it, then we can create an electric current. In our homes, the conductors are the wires that run through our house to the light bulbs or the TV. A magnetic field results from the motion og an electric current and is used to generate the electricity we use. In the 19th century, James Clerk Maxwell, the Scottish physicist, produced the equations that proved the two forces acted as one. One effect of this was for physicists all over the world to hurry back to their libraries and laboratories to rewrite the theories on the motion of objects. Maxwell’s equations showed that what physicists had believed for centuries was in fact not correct. It was not until Einstein, in the 20th century, that the theory of motion was put right-at least for now. How do we know the two things are one? Well, sailors had known for centuries that lightning affected the magnetic compasses on their ships. No one, however, made the connection between lightning and electricity until Benjamin Franklin, the American politician and scientist, flew a kite in a thunderstorm to attract the lightning. In
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other parts of the world, physicists were experimenting with magnets and electricity. Most passed a current across a magnetic needle and watched it move. The Frenchman, Andre Marie Ampere eventually applied mathematics to electromagnetism. It is from his work that we have our modern understanding of electromagnetism. One piece of the jigsaw remained. No one had discovered a way of generating electricity. True, there were batteries, Alessandro Volta invented the Voltaic pile in 1800, but it was of limited use. Certainly no battery could provide enough electrical power to operate a machine. For that the world would have to wait for Michael Faraday to find a way of creating an electrical current, when and where it was needed. Atomic Power for Space Travel Many scientists of today believe that nuclear engines are the best as propulsion for the spaceships that make extremely long voyages through the interplanetary space. Atomic engines are relatively light in weight and can deliver power for years without running out of fuel. Up to now thermical power has been used to drive rocket engines. This power is obtained by burning oxygen and hydrogen. In both, the chemical and the nuclear rocket engines it is the heat energy that expands the hydrogen gas and causes it to escape through the nozzle at high speed. In the first case it is the heat of the chemical burning of the hydrogen and oxygen; in the second – the heat from the fissioning or splitting of atoms inside the reactor. In the atomic engine designed for providing a large thrust, heat is generated by carefully controlled atomic fission in a reactor. This heat is used to heat hydrogen, which then thrusts out of the exhaust nozzle at a great speed to push the rocket. Tremendous power is needed to drive a rocket or spaceship beyond the forces of the Earth’s gravity. But when the ship is already deep in space, much smaller power supplies are necessary to propel the ship. Atomic power can provide both these propulsion requirements. It makes great contribution to space research.
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Is Nuclear Power a Good Choice? Nuclear power provides us with electricity. It uses the energy stored in the nucleus can be split into two smaller parts. This process of nuclear fission releases an enormous amount of heat, which is used in a nuclear power engineering. The process of nuclear fission is very dangerous. So much energy is produced that there can be an explosion, and this is what happens in an atom bomb. In a nuclear power station, fission is controlled so that energy is produced without explosions. The uranium fuel forms the core of nuclear reactor. Special control rods can be raised or lowered into the uranium. These rods, made of cadmium or boron, absorb neutrons. This slows the reaction. The fuel in a nuclear reactor is very radioactive. It produces a lot of dangerous radiation which is extremely harmful to all living things. Some of the radioactive substances produced by the reactor remain dangerous for thousands of years. Getting rid of this dangerous nuclear waste safely is a serious problem. A nuclear reactor cannot explode like an atom bomb but an accident at a nuclear power station in major accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station can have disastrous effects over a large area. In 1986 a major accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the USSR released radioactive substances into the atmosphere. Winds carried them across Europe, and rains washed them down to earth. There was an increase in the amount of radiation, grass and crops became radioactive. People living near Chernobyl have suffered very much, and some have died. Nuclear power could provide electricity for hundreds of thousands of years, but is safe? Should we build more nuclear power stations and increase the chance of terrible accidents? The Nuclear Reactor The main components of the nuclear reactor are uranium fuel assemblies, control rods and a coolant moderator, which make up the
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reactor core, and this reactor core is contained in the reactor vessel. It is known that uranium is one of the main fuel of the nuclear power plant. But uranium must be processed and formed into fuel pellets, which are about the size of a pencil eraser. The fuel pellets are then stacked inside hollow metal tubes to form fuel rods (11 to 25 feet in length). The fuel rods are carefully bound together in fuel assemblies, each of which can contain over 200 fuel rods. The assemblies hold the fuel rods apart so that when they are submerged in the reactor core, water can flow between them. The control rods regulate or control the speed of the nuclear chain reaction, by sliding up and down between the fuel rods or fuel assemblies in the reactor core. The temperature in the reactor core is carefully monitored and controlled. To maintain a controlled nuclear chain reaction, the control rods are manipulated in such a way that each fission will result in just one neutron, since the other neutrons are absorbed by the control rods. The third essential part of the reactor is the coolant moderator. It is the material that slows down («moderates») neutron. The fourth part of the reactor is the pressure vessel. The pressure vessel is enormous. Its walls are 9 inches thick, and it often weighs more than 300 tons. The pressure vessel surrounds and protects the reactor core. It is made of extremely strong carbon steel; it provides a safety barrier and holds the fuel assemblies, the control rods and the coolant moderator. There are two main types of nuclear reactors: the boiling water reactor (BWR) and the pressurized water reactor (PWR). The Nuclear Power The role electricity plays in our lives by increasing productivity, comfort, safety, health and economy is obvious. We live with the benefits of electricity every day. Energy is generated from primary natural resources such as coal, gas, oil, water, wind, solar and last, but not least, nuclear. Nuclear power plants are one of the cleanest and most economical forms of energy production. The average electricity
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production cost for nuclear energy is recognized as the cheapest source of electricity. The nuclear power plant accidents at Three Mile Island in the U.S.A. and Chernobyl in the Ukraine are well known, however, despite these incidents, nuclear power has a remarkable record. About 16 % of electricity generated around the world comes from nuclear power, and in the last forty years of this production, not a single fatality has occurred as a result of the operation of a nuclear power plant. Most power plants produce electricity by first boiling water to produce steam. The steam is used to spin a turbine. The shaft of the turbine spins the generator (a large coil of wire) between two magnets. The spinning coil of wire generates electricity. The main difference between a nuclear power plant and other kinds of power plants lies in the way the water is heated to steam. In a nuclear power plant heat is produced by splitting atoms, rather than, for example, the combustion of oil, gas or coal. Is Nuclear Power a Good Choice? Nuclear power provides us with electricity. It uses the energy stored in the nucleus can be split into two smaller parts. This process of nuclear fission releases an enormous amount of heat, which is used in a nuclear power engineering. The process of nuclear fission is very dangerous. So much energy is produced that there can be an explosion, and this is what happens in an atom bomb. In a nuclear power station, fission is controlled so that energy is produced without explosions. The uranium fuel forms the core of nuclear reactor. Special control rods can be raised or lowered into the uranium. These rods, made of cadmium or boron, absorb neutrons. This slows the reaction. The fuel in a nuclear reactor is very radioactive. It produces a lot of dangerous radiation which is extremely harmful to all living things. Some of the radioactive substances produced by the reactor remain dangerous for thousands of years. Getting rid of this dangerous nuclear waste safely is a serious problem.
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A nuclear reactor cannot explode like an atom bomb but an accident at a nuclear power station in major accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station can have disastrous effects over a large area. In 1986 a major accident at Chernobyl nuclear power station in the USSR released radioactive substances into the atmosphere. Winds carried them across Europe, and rains washed them down to earth. There was an increase in the amount of radiation, grass and crops became radioactive. People living near Chernobyl have suffered very much, and some have died. Nuclear power could provide electricity for hundreds of thousands of years, but is safe? Should we build more nuclear power stations and increase the chance of terrible accidents? Finding the Nucleus Everything contains electrons; they can be transferred from one object to another; and they flow freely through metals. Electron charge has been measured, as well as electron mass. Since electrons are negative, and ordinary objects have no electric charge, everything must also contain positive charges equal in magnitude to the charge on all their electrons. How is that positive charge distributed within a material? Just where is it located? The discovery of the atomic nucleus provided an answer to these questions. The crucial experiments were done by Ernest Rutherford. In 1911, he advanced a theory of the atom that was considerably better than any other up to that time. Like many good theories, however, it eventually gave way to a better one. Rutherford worked out a method of studying the structure of matter by bombarding it with alpha particles. No one was really sure what these bits of matter ejected by radioactive materials are. However, their mass, charge, and energy were measurable, and this was enough to go on with. In the original experiment, a stream of alpha particles was obtained by enclosing radioactive polonium inside a small lead box with a hole in it (Figure 16.2). Alpha particles streamed out of the hole and struck
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an extremely thin sheet of gold foil. On the other side of the foil was a screen coated with a chemical salt that produced a flash of light every time it was struck by an alpha particle. The whole apparatus was enclosed in high vacuum. Radioactive Elements A piece of uranium or polonium emits three kinds of radiation. In a cloud chamber in a magnetic field, alpha rays curve gently in one direction; beta rays curve sharply in the other; gamma rays leave no track but can be detected by various kinds of devices; they pass straight through without deflection. Alpha rays consist of massive particles, each composed of two protons and two neutrons. With atomic number 2, they are considered to be nuclei of helium, 2He. Beta rays are electrons emitted with much higher energy than can be produced in any sort of chemical reaction. Gamma rays are X-ray photons of extremely high frequency and energy. They give us an inkling of the difference between the energy of chemical reactions and of nuclear reactions. Electron transitions in the outer atom, as in ordinary chemical processes, produce visible photons with energies of a few electron volts; gamma photon energies are measured in hundreds of thousands of electron volts. Nuclear energies are related to the strong nuclear force. Electron transitions obey the rules of the much weaker electromagnetic force. The strong nuclear force is what holds nuclei together. A group of protons, all with positive electric charge, would surely be expected to blow up unless some force stronger than the electric repulsion holds them together. The strong nuclear force is a strong force of attraction by which all protons and neutrons attract each other, regardless of electric charge. This force is effective only at extremely short ranges, such as the distance inside a nucleus. It is not strong enough to bind two protons to each other. The smallest atomic nucleus is helium-3, 32He. It takes the additional strong force provided by the neutron to hold the two
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protons together. From 42He to 3216S (sulfur), the numbers of protons and neutrons are equal. When the number of protons is more than 16, it takes more than 16 neutrons to make the nucleus stable. The largest stable nucleus is 2°7 82Pb (lead). More than 82 protons cannot be held together permanently by any number of neutrons. Every nucleus larger than this is radioactive. Sooner or later, it must emit bursts of energy and particles that reduce its size to a stable level. The Energy of the Rays What is the source of the energy of these emissions? The answer turns out to be intimately associated with a question we asked earlier: Why are all nuclear masses not equal to some integral multiple of the mass of a proton? The answer lies in the famous Einstein mass-energy relationship: E = mc2 which tells us that mass and energy are simply two different ways of measuring the same thing. This leads to a contradiction with the most basic rule of chemistry. Chemists tell us that 16 grams of oxygen and 2 grams of hydrogen form an explosive mixture. A spark ignites it, and the oxygen and hydrogen combine to form exactly 18 grams of water. Mass is conserved. But if mass is energy, we ought to expect that the mass of the water produced in the explosion will be less than 18 grams, since a lot of energy is given off in the explosion. In general, every molecule ought to have less mass than the separate atoms that make it up, since it always takes energy to separate the atoms from each other. The reason that chemists have never noticed this missing mass is that it is far too small to measure. But with nuclei, the situation is different. The nuclear force is far stronger than the electromagnetic force that holds molecules together. Thus, the energy given up when protons and neutrons combine to form nuclei produces a measurable difference in mass. Every nucleus has a mass deficit, which is the
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difference between the mass of the nucleus and the masses of the separate particles of which it is composed. Consider, for example, iron-56, the most common isotope of iron. Heat and temperature Heat plays an important role in our lives. Our body uses food to produce heat. We listen to weather reports on TV because we want to keep our body temperature constant. We wear either thin or thick clothes depending on the temperature outside. We use heat to cook, to warm up our homes, to shape plastic or metal materials and so on. The kinetic theory tries to explain the behavior of molecules in gases; it states that matter is made up of tiny particles that have kinetic energy and are in a constant state of motion. Particles have kinetic energy because they are in motion, and they have potential energy because there are attraction force between them. When a gas inside a closed container is heated, its particles gain kinetic energy and move faster. Thus, the temperature and the internal energy of the gas increase. The thermal energy (internal energy) of the sum of the kinetic and potential energies of all particles in that substance. When a hot piece of iron is placed in cold water, the iron becomes cooler and the water becomes warmer. This process continues until both substances reach the same temperature. While the piece of iron loses thermal energy the water gains thermal energy. We can define heat as a form of energy flowing between two bodies in contact when they are at different temperatures. Heat is the energy transferred to a substance, while temperature is the degree of hotness of a substance. A cup of boiling water and a kettle of boiling water have the same average kinetic energies, that is, the temperature of water in the containers is the same. However, there are more water molecules in the kettle than in the cup, so the water in the kettle contains more thermal energy than the water in the cup.
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Atoms – Building Bricks Atoms are the building bricks of all things – living and nonliving that exist in the world. Atoms are made up of three particles: the electron, the proton and the neutron. Let us start with the electron. We all use electrons. When we switch on the electric light we make the electrons flow along the wires. The stream of electrons is electric current. Each electron is, in fact, a very small negative electrical charge. The electron is almost weightless. The next particle to talk about is proton. This, again, is a very small particle. The proton carries a single positive electrical charge, and the charge on a proton exactly balances the negative electrical charge of an electron. The last particle to mention is the neutron. This has the same size and weight as the proton, but does not carry any electrical charge either positive or negative. Now let us have a look at the individual types of atoms. The simplest atom has just one proton in its nucleus. In motion around the nucleus there is one electron. All such atoms are called hydrogen atoms. The next simplest atom is known as a helium atom, which has two protons in its nucleus and two electrons in motion around it. And the next – lithium- has three electrons and three protons. Each type has a name. Oxygen has 6 protons, iron has 26 protons, mercury- 80 protons. An atom consists of two zones – a center, known as nucleus, containing both protons and neutrons, and the outer layer, containing the electrons. The nucleus of an atom may be compared to a magnet. Two magnets attract one another if we bring them close together, a north pole and the south pole. Here in the atom the attraction of the opposite charges is similar to that between a south and a north pole of a magnet. The electrons are trapped inside the zone around the nucleus, and a strong attractive force holds them together in the zone. But electrons unlike iron objects do not attach themselves to the nucleus. The nucleus of an atom can also attract electrons from other atoms. That is one of the ways in which atoms are joined together.
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Three States of Matter All material is made from tiny particles. These particles are constantly moving. The kinetic theory uses this idea of tiny moving particles to explain the different forms that material can take. «Kinetic» means «to do with movement». The three states of matter are solid, liquid and gas. Solid. In this state matter tends to keep its shape. If it is squashed or stretched enough, it will change shape slightly. Usually, any change in volume is too small to be noticed. The particles are not moving around, although they are vibrating very slightly. Normally they vibrate about fixed positions. If a solid is heated the particles start to vibrate more. The particles in a solid are fixed in position. The forces between particles are strong.» Liquid. In this state matter will flow. It will take up the shape of any container it is put in. The liquid normally fills a container from the bottom up. It has a fixed volume. If the liquid is squeezed it will change shape, but the volume hardly changes at all. The particles, like those in a solid, are vibrating. However, in a liquid the particles are free to move around each other. If a liquid is heated, the particles move faster. In liquids particles can move past each other. They are joined together in small groups. They are not as close as in solids. Gas. In this state matter will take up the shape of a container and fill it. The volume of the gas depends on the size of its container. If the gas is squashed it will change both volume and shape. The particles are free to move around, and do not often meet each other. The particles whiz (z) around very quickly. If heated they move even faster. In gases there are hardly any forces between particles. They are a long way apart. The Fourth State of Matter «Matter» is made of small particles called molecules. Depending upon the distance and forces between molecules, a substance may be solid, liquid, or gaseous. This was the definition of matter not long
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ago. But this statement is no longer true nowadays. Scientists have discovered that there is matter that is neither solid, liquid, nor gas. It is plasma. Around it has developed a new exciting field of study known as plasma physics. The plasma state of matter is really not new. Plasma itself has been around since the dawn of time. It is primarily cosmic- the stuff of which most stars, including our Sun, are made. Plasma is said to comprise more than 95 per cent of all matter in the Universe. What is plasma? It is a form of matter created at very high temperature-hence its existence in stars. At extreme temperatures atoms are stripped of their electrons. The atoms, when they lose one or more electrons, become electrically charged particles, called ions. A collection of ions, freely moving electrons, and any «stripped» atoms or molecules make up plasma. Plasma is clearly derived from gases, for any solid or liquid will be transformed into a gas if enough heat is applied. But plasma does not behave like an ordinary gas. At ordinary temperatures the atoms of a gas are electrically neutral because positive charges in the nucleus are cancelled by negative charges in the electrons. When an atom is «ionized», however, runaway electrons have their negative charges with them and leave the remainder of the atom with a net positive charge. The significant thing about all this is that an electric current always creates and interacts with a magnetic field. This means that plasma will respond to electrical and magnetic forces, thus giving scientists a measure of control over these hot gases. This characteristic, in fact, helps make possible the extreme temperatures necessary to the very existence of plasma.
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10 GREATEST SCIENTISTS OF ALL TIME
Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1726) Newton was a polymath who made investigations into a whole range of subjects including mathematics, optics, physics, and astronomy. In his Principia Mathematica, published in 1687,he laid the foundations for classical mechanics, explaining law of gravity and the Laws of Motion.
Louis Pasteur (1822 – 1895) Contributed greatly towards the advancement of medical sciences developing cures for rabies, anthrax and other infectious diseases. 96
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Also enabled process of pasteurisation to make milk safer to drink. Probably saved more lives than any other person.
Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) Creating one of the first modern telescope, Galileo revolutionised our understanding of the world successfully proving the earth revolved around the sun and not the other way around. His work Two New Sciences laid ground work for science of Kinetics and strength of materials.
Marie Curie (1867 – 1934) Polish physicist and chemist. Discovered radiation and helped to apply it in the field of X ray. She won Nobel Prize in both Chemistry and Physics.
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Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) Revolutionised modern physics with his general theory of rela-tivity. Won Nobel Prize in Physics (1921) for his discovery of the Photoelectric effect,which formed basis of Quantum Theory.
Charles Darwin (1809 – 1882) Developed theory of evolution against a backdrop of disbelief and scepticism. Collected evidence over 20 years, and published conclusions in On the Origin of Species (1859).
10 Greatest Scientists of all time
Otto Hahn (1879-1968) German Chemist who discovered nuclear fission (1939). Pioneering scientist in the field of radio-chemistry. Discovered radio-active elements and nuclear isomerism (1921). Awarded Nobel Prize for Chemistry (1944)
Nikola Tesla (1856 –1943) Work on electro-magnetism and AC current. Credited with many patents from electricity to radio transmission.
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James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) Made great strides in understanding electro-magnetism. His research in electricity and kinetics, laid foundation for quantum physics. Einstein said of Maxwell, «The work of James Clerk Maxwell changed the world forever.»
Aristotle (384BC – 322BC) Great early Greek scientist who made many researches in the natural sciences including botany, zoology, physics, astronomy, chemistry, and meteorology, geometry.
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Isaac Newton
Isaac Newton Biography Philosopher, Mathematician, Astronomer, Physicist, Scientist (1643–1727) English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, most famous for his law of gravitation, was instrumental in the scientific revolution of the 17th century. Synopsis Born on January 4, 1643, in Woolsthorpe, England, Isaac Newton was an established physicist and mathematician, and is credited as one of the great minds of the 17th century Scientific Revolution. With discoveries in optics, motion and mathematics, Newton developed the principles of modern physics. In 1687, he published his most acclaimed work, 101
102 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), which has been called the single most influential book on physics. Newton died in London on March 31, 1727. Early Life On January 4, 1643, Isaac Newton was born in the hamlet of Woolsthorpe, Lincolnshire, England. He was the only son of a prosperous local farmer, also named Isaac Newton, who died three months before he was born. A premature baby born tiny and weak, Newton was not expected to survive. When he was 3 years old, his mother, Hannah Ayscough Newton, remarried a well-to-do minister, Barnabas Smith, and went to live with him, leaving young Newton with his maternal grandmother. The experience left an indelible imprint on Newton, later manifesting itself as an acute sense of insecurity. He anxiously obsessed over his published work, defending its merits with irrational behavior. At age 12, Newton was reunited with his mother after her second husband died. She brought along her three small children from her second marriage. Newton had been enrolled at the King’s School in Grantham, a town in Lincolnshire, where he lodged with a local apothecary and was introduced to the fascinating world of chemistry. His mother pulled him out of school, for her plan was to make him a farmer and have him tend the farm. Newton failed miserably, as he found farming monotonous. He soon was sent back to King’s School to finish his basic education. Perhaps sensing the young man’s innate intellectual abilities, his uncle, a graduate of the University of Cambridge’s Trinity College, persuaded Newton’s mother to have him enter the university. Newton enrolled in a program similar to a work-study in 1661, and subsequently waited on tables and took care of wealthier students’ rooms. When Newton arrived at Cambridge, the Scientific Revolution of the 17th century was already in full force. The heliocentric view of the universe—theorized by astronomers Nicolaus Copernicus and Johannes Kepler, and later refined by Galileo—was well known in most European academic circles. Philosopher René Descartes had begun to formulate a new concept of nature as an intricate, impersonal
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and inert machine. Yet, like most universities in Europe, Cambridge was steeped in Aristotelian philosophy and a view of nature resting on a geocentric view of the universe, dealing with nature in qualitative rather than quantitative terms. During his first three years at Cambridge, Newton was taught the standard curriculum but was fascinated with the more advanced science. All his spare time was spent reading from the modern philosophers. The result was a less-than-stellar performance, but one that is understandable, given his dual course of study. It was during this time that Newton kept a second set of notes, entitled «Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae» («Certain Philosophical Questions»). The «Quaestiones» reveal that Newton had discovered the new concept of nature that provided the framework for the Scientific Revolution. Though Newton graduated with no honors or distinctions, his efforts won him the title of scholar and four years of financial support for future education. Unfortunately, in 1665, the Great Plague that was ravaging Europe had come to Cambridge, forcing the university to close. Newton returned home to pursue his private study. It was during this 18-month hiatus that he conceived the method of infinitesimal calculus, set foundations for his theory of light and color, and gained significant insight into the laws of planetary motion—insights that eventually led to the publication of his Principia in 1687. Legend has it that, at this time, Newton experienced his famous inspiration of gravity with the falling apple. When the threat of plague subsided in 1667, Newton returned to Cambridge and was elected a minor fellow at Trinity College, as he was still not considered a standout scholar. However, in the ensuing years, his fortune improved. Newton received his Master of Arts degree in 1669, before he was 27. During this time, he came across Nicholas Mercator’s published book on methods for dealing with infinite series. Newton quickly wrote a treatise, De Analysi, expounding his own wider-ranging results. He shared this with friend and mentor Isaac Barrow, but didn’t include his name as author. In June 1669, Barrow shared the unaccredited manuscript with British mathematician John Collins. In August 1669, Barrow identified
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its author to Collins as «Mr. Newton ... very young ... but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency in these things.» Newton’s work was brought to the attention of the mathematics community for the first time. Shortly afterward, Barrow resigned his Lucasian professorship at Cambridge, and Newton assumed the chair. Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein Biography. Physicist, Scientist (1879–1955) Albert Einstein was a German-born physicist who developed the theory of relativity. He is considered the most influential physicist of the 20th century. Albert Einstein is one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. But he couldn’t find his way home when he went for a walk. He dressed in wrinkled clothes and an old coat. He often forgot things. Once he used a $1,500 check to mark a page in a book. Then he lost the book! Einstein had other things to think about. Science was more important to him than the ordinary things in life. Albert Einstein was born in 1879 in Ulm, Germany. When he was a child, he learned things very slowly. Albert didn‘t speak until he was three years old. His parents worried about him. The principal of his school told his father, „Your son will never make a success of
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anything.« His grades in school were bad. The only thing he liked to do was play the violin. When he was 12 Albert began reading math and science books. He was excited about the things he learned. At age 17, he started college in Switzerland. Einstein wanted to be a teacher. He graduated in 1900, but he could not find a job. A friend helped him get a job in a government office. While he was in school, Einstein became more and more interested in math and physics. He wanted to find the answers to questions about the universe. In 1905, Einstein published his ideas. At first, other scientists laughed at them. But Einstein’s theory of relativity changed the world. Scientists looked at the universe in a new way. Because of Einstein, we have such things as computers, television, and space travel today. Einstein quickly became famous. He traveled around the world and talked about his ideas. In 1922, he received the Nobel Prize for physics. Einstein moved to America. He lived and taught in Princeton, New Jersey, for 22 years until he died in 1955. He once said, «The important thing is not to stop questioning.» Albert Einstein never did. Marie Curie
Marie Curie Biography Physicist (1867–1934) Marie Curie was a Polish-born French physicist famous for her work on radioactivity and twice a winner of the Nobel Prize.
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106 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT Synopsis Born Maria Sklodowska on November 7, 1867, in Warsaw, Poland, Marie Curie became the first woman to win a Nobel Prize and the only woman to win the award in two different fields (physics and chemistry). Curie’s efforts, with her husband Pierre Curie, led to the discovery of polonium and radium and, after Pierre’s death, the development of X-rays. She died on July 4, 1934. Early Life Maria Sklodowska, better known as Marie Curie, was born in Warsaw in modern-day Poland on November 7, 1867. Her parents were both teachers, and she was the youngest of five children. As a child Curie took after her father, Ladislas, a math and physics instructor. She had a bright and curious mind and excelled at school. But tragedy struck early, and when she was only 11, Curie lost her mother, Bronsitwa, to tuberculosis. A top student in her secondary school, Curie could not attend the men-only University of Warsaw. She instead continued her education in Warsaw’s «floating university,» a set of underground, informal classes held in secret. Both Curie and her sister Bronya dreamed of going abroad to earn an official degree, but they lacked the financial resources to pay for more schooling. Undeterred, Curie worked out a deal with her sister. She would work to support Bronya while she was in school and Bronya would return the favor after she completed her studies. For roughly five years, Curie worked as a tutor and a governess. She used her spare time to study, reading about physics, chemistry and math. In 1891, Curie finally made her way to Paris where she enrolled at the Sorbonne in Paris. She threw herself into her studies, but this dedication had a personal cost. With little money, Curie survived on buttered bread and tea, and her health sometimes suffered because of her poor diet. Curie completed her master’s degree in physics in 1893 and earned another degree in mathematics the following year. Around this time, she received a commission to do a study on different types of steel and their magnetic properties. Curie needed a lab to work in, and a
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colleague introduced her to French physicist Pierre Curie. A romance developed between the brilliant pair, and they became a scientific dynamic duo. Discoveries Marie and Pierre Curie were dedicated scientists and completely devoted to another. At first, they worked on separate projects. She was fascinated with the work of Henri Becquerel, a French physicist who discovered that uranium casts off rays, weaker rays than the X-rays found by Wilhelm Roentgen. Curie took Becquerel’s work a few steps further, conducting her own experiments on uranium rays. She discovered that the rays remained constant, no matter the condition or form of the uranium. The rays, she theorized, came from the element’s atomic structure. This revolutionary idea created the field of atomic physics and Curie herself coined the word radioactivity to describe the phenomena. Marie and Pierre had a daughter, Irene, in 1897, but their work didn’t slow down. Pierre put aside his own work to help Marie with her exploration of radioactivity. Working with the mineral pitchblende, the pair discovered a new radioactive element in 1898. They named the element polonium, after Marie’s native country of Poland. They also detected the presence of another radioactive material in the pitchblende, and called that radium. In 1902, the Curies announced that they had produced a decigram of pure radium, demonstrating its existence as a unique chemical element. Science Celebrity Marie Curie made history in 1903 when she became the first woman to receive the Nobel Prize in physics. She won the prestigious honor along with her husband and Henri Becquerel, for their work on radioactivity. With their Nobel Prize win, the Curies developed an international reputation for their scientific efforts, and they used their prize money to continue their research. They welcomed a second child, daughter Eve, the following year.
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108 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT In 1906, Marie suffered a tremendous loss. Her husband Pierre was killed in Paris after he accidentally stepped in front of a horse-drawn wagon. Despite her tremendous grief, she took over his teaching post at the Sorbonne, becoming the institution’s first female professor. Curie received another great honor in 1911, winning her second Nobel Prize, this time in chemistry. She was selected for her discovery of radium and polonium, and became the first scientist to win two Nobel Prizes. While she received the prize alone, she shared the honor jointly with her late husband in her acceptance lecture. Around this time, Curie joined with other famous scientists, including Albert Einstein and Max Planck, to attend the first Solvay Congress in Physics. They gathered to discuss the many groundbreaking discoveries in their field. Curie experienced the downside of fame in 1911, when her relationship with her husband’s former student, Paul Langevin, became public. Curie was derided in the press for breaking up Langevin’s marriage. The press’ negativity towards Curie stemmed at least in part from rising xenophobia in France. When World War I broke out in 1914, Curie devoted her time and resources to helping the cause. She championed the use of portable X-ray machines in the field, and these medical vehicles earned the nickname «Little Curies.» After the war, Curie used her celebrity to advance her research. She traveled to the United States twice— in 1921 and in 1929— to raise funds to buy radium and to establish a radium research institute in Warsaw. Final Days and Legacy All of her years of working with radioactive materials took a toll on Curie’s health. She was known to carry test tubes of radium around in the pocket of her lab coat. In 1934, Curie went to the Sancellemoz Sanatorium in Passy, France, to try to rest and regain her strength. She died there on July 4, 1934, of aplastic anemia, which can be caused by prolonged exposure to radiation. Marie Curie made many breakthroughs in her lifetime. She is the most famous female scientist of all time, and has received numerous posthumous honors. In 1995, her and her husband’s remains were
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interred in the Panthéon in Paris, the final resting place of France’s greatest minds. Curie became the first and only woman to be laid to rest there. Curie also passed down her love of science to the next generation. Her daughter Irène Joliot-Curie followed in her mother’s footsteps, winning the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. Joliot-Curie shared the honor with her husband Frédéric Joliot for their work on their synthesis of new radioactive elements. Today several educational and research institutions and medical centers bear the Curie name, including the Institute Curie and the Pierre and Marie Curie University, both in Paris. Ernest Rutherford
Ernest Rutherford biography (1871 – 1937) He was born on August 30, 1871, in Nelson, New Zealand, the fourth child and second son in a family of seven sons and five daughters. His father James Rutherford, a Scottish wheelwright, immigrated to New Zealand with Ernest’s grandfather and the whole family in 1842. His mother, née Martha Thompson, was an English schoolteacher, who, with her widowed mother, also went to live there in 1855.
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110 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT Ernest received his early education in Government schools and at the age of 16 entered Nelson Collegiate School. In 1889 he was awarded a University scholarship and he proceeded to the University of New Zealand, Wellington, where he entered Canterbury College*. He graduated M.A. in 1893 with a double first in Mathematics and Physical Science and he continued with research work at the College for a short time, receiving the B.Sc. degree the following year. That same year, 1894, he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Science Scholarship, enabling him to go to Trinity College, Cambridge, as a research student at the Cavendish Laboratory under J.J. Thomson. In 1897 he was awarded the B.A. Research Degree and the CouttsTrotter Studentship of Trinity College. An opportunity came when the Macdonald Chair of Physics at McGill University, Montreal, became vacant, and in 1898 he left for Canada to take up the post. Rutherford returned to England in 1907 to become Langworthy Professor of Physics in the University of Manchester, succeeding Sir Arthur Schuster, and in 1919 he accepted an invitation to succeed Sir Joseph Thomson as Cavendish Professor of Physics at Cambridge. He also became Chairman of the Advisory Council, H.M. Government, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; Professor of Natural Philosophy, Royal Institution, London; and Director of the Royal Society Mond Laboratory, Cambridge. Rutherford’s first researches, in New Zealand, were concerned with the magnetic properties of iron exposed to high-frequency oscillations, and his thesis was entitled Magnetization of Iron by High-Frequency Discharges. He was one of the first to design highly original experiments with high-frequency, alternating currents. His second paper, Magnetic Viscosity, was published in the Transactions of the New Zealand Institute (1896) and contains a description of a time-apparatus capable of measuring time intervals of a hundred-thousandth of a second. On his arrival at Cambridge his talents were quickly recognized by Professor Thomson. During his first spell at the Cavendish Laboratory, he invented a detector for electromagnetic waves, an essential feature being an ingenious magnetizing coil containing tiny bundles of magnetized iron wire. He worked jointly with Thomson on
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the behaviour of the ions observed in gases which had been treated with X-rays, and also, in 1897, on the mobility of ions in relation to the strength of the electric field, and on related topics such as the photoelectric effect. In 1898 he reported the existence of alpha and beta rays in uranium radiation and indicated some of their properties. In Montreal, there were ample opportunities for research at McGill, and his work on radioactive bodies, particularly on the emission of alpha rays, was continued in the Macdonald Laboratory. With R.B. Owens he studied the «emanation» of thorium and discovered a new noble gas, an isotope of radon, which was later to be known as thoron. Frederick Soddy arrived at McGill in 1900 from Oxford, and he collaborated with Rutherford in creating the «disintegration theory» of radioactivity which regards radioactive phenomena as atomic – not molecular – processes. The theory was supported by a large amount of experimental evidence, a number of new radioactive substances were discovered and their position in the series of transformations was fixed. Otto Hahn, who later discovered atomic fission, worked under Rutherford at the Montreal Laboratory in 1905-06. At Manchester, Rutherford continued his research on the properties of the radium emanation and of the alpha rays and, in conjunction with H. Geiger, a method of detecting a single alpha particle and counting the number emitted from radium was devised. In 1910, his investigations into the scattering of alpha rays and the nature of the inner structure of the atom which caused such scattering led to the postulation of his concept of the «nucleus», his greatest contribution to physics. According to him practically the whole mass of the atom and at the same time all positive charge of the atom is concentrated in a minute space at the centre. In 1912 Niels Bohr joined him at Manchester and he adapted Rutherford’s nuclear structure to Max Planck’s quantum theory and so obtained a theory of atomic structure which, with later improvements, mainly as a result of Heisenberg’s concepts, remains valid to this day. In 1913, together with H. G. Moseley, he used cathode rays to bombard atoms of various elements and showed that the inner structures correspond with a group of lines which characterize the elements. Each element could then be assigned
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112 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT an atomic number and, more important, the properties of each element could be defined by this number. In 1919, during his last year at Manchester, he discovered that the nuclei of certain light elements, such as nitrogen, could be «disintegrated» by the impact of energetic alpha particles coming from some radioactive source, and that during this process fast protons were emitted. Blackett later proved, with the cloud chamber, that the nitrogen in this process was actually transformed into an oxygen isotope, so that Rutherford was the first to deliberately transmute one element into another. G. de Hevesy was also one of Rutherford’s collaborators at Manchester. An inspiring leader of the Cavendish Laboratory, he steered numerous future Nobel Prize winners towards their great achievements: Chadwick, Blackett, Cockcroft and Walton; while other laureates worked with him at the Cavendish for shorter or longer periods: G.P. Thomson, Appleton, Powell, and Aston. C.D. Ellis, his co-author in 1919 and 1930, pointed out «that the majority of the experiments at the Cavendish were really started by Rutherford’s direct or indirect suggestion». He remained active and working to the very end of his life. Rutherford published several books: Radioactivity (1904); Radioactive Transformations (1906), being his Silliman Lectures at Yale University; Radiation from Radioactive Substances, with James Chadwick and C.D. Ellis (1919, 1930) – a thoroughly documented book which serves as a chronological list of his many papers to learned societies, etc.; The Electrical Structure of Matter (1926); The Artificial Transmutation of the Elements (1933); The Newer Alchemy (1937). Rutherford was knighted in 1914; he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 1925, and in 1931 he was created First Baron Rutherford of Nelson, New Zealand, and Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1903 and was its President from 1925 to 1930. Amongst his many honours, he was awarded the Rumford Medal (1905) and the Copley Medal (1922) of the Royal Society, the Bressa Prize (1910) of the Turin Academy of Science, the Albert Medal (1928) of the Royal Society of Arts, the Faraday Medal (1930) of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, the D.Sc. degree of the University
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of New Zealand, and honorary doctorates from the Universities of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, McGill, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Melbourne, Yale, Glasgow, Giessen, Copenhagen, Cambridge, Dublin, Durham, Oxford, Liverpool, Toronto, Bristol, Cape Town, London and Leeds. Rutherford married Mary Newton, only daughter of Arthur and Mary de Renzy Newton, in 1900. Their only child, Eileen, married the physicist R.H. Fowler. Rutherford’s chief recreations were golf and motoring. He died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937. His ashes were buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, just west of Sir Isaac Newton’s tomb and by that of Lord Kelvin. James Clerk Maxwell
Biography of James Clerk Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell was a Scottish theoretical physicist and mathematician. His most important achievement was classical electromagnetic theory, synthesizing all previously unrelated observations, experiments and equations of electricity, magnetism and even optics into a consistent theory. His set of equations – Maxwell’s equations – demonstrated that electricity, magnetism and even light
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are all manifestations of the same phenomenon: the electromagnetic field. From that moment on, all other classic laws or equations of these disciplines became simplified cases of Maxwell’s equations. Maxwell’s work in electromagnetism has been called the «second great unification in physics», after the first one carried out by Isaac Newton. Maxwell demonstrated that electric and magnetic fields travel through space in the form of waves, and at the constant speed of light. Finally, in 1864 Maxwell wrote «A dynamical theory of the electromagnetic field», where he first proposed that light was in fact undulations in the same medium that is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena. His work in producing a unified model of electromagnetism is considered to be one of the greatest advances in physics. Maxwell also developed the Maxwell distribution, a statistical means of describing aspects of the kinetic theory of gases. These two discoveries helped usher in the era of modern physics, laying the foundation for future work in such fields as special relativity and quantum mechanics. Maxwell is also known for creating the first true colour photograph in 1861 and for his foundational work on the rigidity of rod-and-joint frameworks like those in many bridges. Maxwell is considered by many physicists to be the 19thcentury scientist with the greatest influence on 20th-century physics. His contributions to the science are considered by many to be of the same magnitude as those of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. In the end of millennium poll, a survey of the 100 most prominent physicists saw Maxwell voted the third greatest physicist of all time, behind only Newton and Einstein. On the centennial of Maxwell’s birthday, Einstein himself described Maxwell’s work as the «most profound and the most fruitful that physics has experienced since the time of Newton.» Einstein kept a photograph of Maxwell on his study wall, alongside pictures of Michael Faraday and Newton.
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Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday Biography Faraday was born on 22 September 1791 in south London to relatively poor parents. At the age of 14, he left school and started an apprenticeship at a local book binder. In his spare time he was an avid reader, teaching himself many scientific concepts. Faraday was thus mostly self-taught and became one of the greatest scientists despite his rudimentary maths. In 1812, at the age of 20 he receive some tickets for a series of lectures by the eminent scientist Humphrey Davy. After the lecture Michael sent Davy a 300 page document offering notes on the lectures. Davy was impressed and he employed Faraday as an assistant. This later led to a Fullerian Professor of Chemistry at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, a position to which he was appointed for life. His early work centred on chemistry. He made a special study of Chlorine and new chlorides of carbon. Faraday was a great practical inventor and one of the most useful pieces of chemistry equipment he developed was an early form of the Bunsen burner. By mixing air with gas before lighting, Faraday found an easily accessible form of higher temperature. His model of the Bunsen burner was developed, but is still used in laboratories around the world. Faraday’s greatest achievement was in the development of electromagnetism and electricity. Though people already knew of electricity,
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116 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT it was Faraday who played a pivotal role in providing a continuous source of electricity, through his electro-magnetic rotation model of 1821. Later he was able to develop the first electric dynamo and his theories of electromagnetism proved influential in the new electricity industry of the nineteenth century. As well as being a prominent scientist, Faraday also undertook other projects related to science. For example, after a large explosion in a coal mine in County Durham 1865, he along with Charles Lyell, produced a report on the dangers of coal dust. A recommendation which unfortunately was not acted upon until after another coal tragedy in 1913. Faraday had strong religious convictions, belonging to a strict Christian sect called the Sandemanian Church – founded in the eighteenth century – an offshoot of the Church of Scotland. His religious beliefs influenced his work and he was keen to show the unity of God and nature through his scientific discoveries. Galileo Galilei
Galileo Galilei Biography Galileo Galilei of Italy, was the first scientist to use the telescope and was also the first to discover four of Jupiter’s moons. He strongly opposed Aristotle’s theory of celestial objects revolving around the
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earth, instead he believed that the Sun was the center of the Universe. His discovery put him into a major conflict with the early Church, and was also under house arrest for the rest of his life... Galileo Galilei, the Italian scientist, also called ‘father of science’, ‘father of modern physics’, ‘father of modern science’ and the ‘father of modern observational astronomy’ was the one who had various discoveries to his credit. He was the first to discover Jupiter’s four moons, sunspots on the surface of the Sun, valleys and craters on the moon’s surface, etc. He also researched on the period of the pendulum and stated that the period of a pendulum is constant, despite the length of the arc. Birth and Family Galileo Galilei was born on February 15th, 1564, at Pisa, Italy. He was the first of the six children born to his father,Vincenzo Galilei (musician) and his mother, Giulia degli Ammannati. At the age of six, Galileo’s family moved to Florence, thus, he was educated at a monastery near Florence. As a teenager, he was inclined towards the Catholic faith and even intended to enter priesthood. However, his father wanted him to study medicine and as a result, Galileo (at the age of 17) enrolled for medicine, at the University of Pisa. Galileo never completed his medicine degree, instead he went ahead to study mathematics. Pendulum Experiment In 1581, as Galileo (a student) was researching on pendulums and inclined planes at the University of Pisa, he happened to notice the swinging motion of a lamp, in the cathedral of Pisa. He used his pulse to serve as a timer and timed the large and small swings. What he noticed was that irrespective of the angle of motion, the period of the pendulum remained constant. This discovery later lead to the invention of pendulum clocks. In 1589, he was commissioned as the chair of mathematics, in the University of Pisa. He held this post for three years and during this time wrote several essays about the theory of motion (which were not published). Further, in 1592, he took up a job at the University of Padua, where his job was to teach medical students Euclid’s geometry and geocentric
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118 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT astronomy and thus began an 18 year term at the University. While at Padua, Galileo got into a relationship with Maria Gamba, from Venice and even had three children out-of-wedlock. Some say that they didn’t get married, because he was not financially stable. In 1602, Galileo confirmed that the period of the pendulum is constant, after obtaining results from experiments conducted by him and his students. He confirmed that the period of any pendulum is independent of the size of the arc, through which it passes (isochronism of a pendulum). Opposition of Aristotle’s Theory During that time, Aristotle’s theory reigned, according to which celestial objects in the heavens revolved around the Earth, and that the Earth was the center of the Universe. However, in 1604, Galileo opposed Aristotle’s theory and openly confessed that he believed in Nicolaus Copernicus’ theory, which stated that Earth along with the other planets revolved around the Sun. Until 1604, Galileo had only shown a passing interest in astronomy and his research was centered around motion theory, pendulum, free-falling bodies and inclined planes. However, gradually his interest in astronomy began to grow. The Telescope In 1609, he heard about some Dutch glass makers, who had come up with a lens which could be used to view distant objects. He used it to build a telescope and on August 25, 1609, presented his invention to the Venetian Senate. It was one evening in 1609, when he turned the telescope to the sky, and found astonishing facts such as craters and mountains on the moon. According to Aristotle, the heavenly bodies were blemish-free; however, he discovered that Aristotle was incorrect. He also studied the Milky Way and observed that it was full of countless stars. As he continued his study of the universe, he kept working on his telescope and built more powerful ones. Opposition by the Early Church Galileo published all these sensational findings in a booklet called ‘The Starry Messenger’, which was published in Venice, Italy. This publication
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shook Aristotle’s theory off it’s feet. The discoveries and the publications made Galileo very famous; however, he also bore severe abuse. The early Church and Aristotle’s followers opposed Galileo’s findings. However, Cosmos II, a member of the Medici family and Grand Duke of Tuscany invited Galileo to Florida, to become his personal mathematician in Florence and the University of Pisa. While at Florence, Galileo made some more discoveries: peculiar lumps on Saturn (which were later found to be Saturn’s rings by Christiaan Huygens), phases of Venus and Mars and sunspots (dark spots on the surface of the sun). Galileo’s discoveries were bitterly opposed by the Church and they ordered Galileo not to «hold, teach, and defend in any manner whatsoever, in words or in print», the beliefs of the Copernican theory. Since Galileo was a Christian by birth, he followed the orders of the Church for sometime. However, once he realized that the anger towards his discoveries had subsided, he began researching once again. Thomas Edison
Thomas Edison Biography Inventor (1847–1931) Inventor Thomas Edison created such great innovations as the electric light bulb and the phonograph. A savvy businessman, he held more than a 1,000 patents for his inventions.
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120 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT Synopsis Born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio, Thomas Edison rose from humble beginnings to work as an inventor of major technology. Setting up a lab in Menlo Park, some of the products he developed included the telegraph, phonograph, electric light bulb, alkaline storage batteries and Kinetograph (a camera for motion pictures). He died on October 18, 1931, in West Orange, New Jersey. Younger Years Inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born on February 11, 1847, in Milan, Ohio. He was the last of the seven children of Samuel and Nancy Edison. Thomas’s father was an exiled political activist from Canada. His mother, an accomplished school teacher, was a major influence in Thomas’ early life. An early bout with scarlet fever as well as ear infections left him with hearing difficulties in both ears, a malady that would eventually leave him nearly deaf as an adult. Edison would later recount as an adult, with variations on the story, that he lost his hearing due to a train incident where his ears were injured. But others have tended to discount this as the sole cause of his hearing loss. In 1854, the family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, where Edison attended public school for a total of 12 weeks. A hyperactive child, prone to distraction, he was deemed «difficult» by his teacher. His mother quickly pulled him from school and taught him at home. At age 11, he showed a voracious appetite for knowledge, reading books on a wide range of subjects. In this wide-open curriculum Edison developed a process for self-education and learning independently that would serve him throughout his life. Early Career At age 12, Edison set out to put much of that education to work. He convinced his parents to let him sell newspapers to passengers along the Grand Trunk Railroad line. Exploiting his access to the news bulletins teletyped to the station office each day, Thomas began publishing his own small newspaper, called the Grand Trunk Herald.
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The up-to-date articles were a hit with passengers. This was the first of what would become a long string of entrepreneurial ventures where he saw a need and capitalized on opportunity. Edison also used his access to the railroad to conduct chemical experiments in a small laboratory he set up in a train baggage car. During one of his experiments, a chemical fire started and the car caught fire. The conductor rushed in and struck Thomas on the side of the head, probably furthering some of his hearing loss. He was kicked off the train and forced to sell his newspapers at various stations along the route. While he worked for the railroad, a near-tragic event turned fortuitous for the young man. After Edison saved a 3-year-old from being run over by an errant train, the child’s grateful father rewarded him by teaching him to operate a telegraph. By age 15, he had learned enough to be employed as a telegraph operator. For the next five years, Edison traveled throughout the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher, subbing for those who had gone to the Civil War. In his spare time, he read widely, studied and experimented with telegraph technology, and became familiar with electrical science. In 1866, at age 19, Edison moved to Louisville, Kentucky, working for The Associated Press. The night shift allowed him to spend most of his time reading and experimenting. He developed an unrestrictive style of thinking and inquiry, proving things to himself through objective examination and experimentation. Initially, Edison excelled at his telegraph job because early Morse code was inscribed on a piece of paper, so Edison’s partial deafness was no handicap. However, as the technology advanced, receivers were increasingly equipped with a sounding key, enabling telegraphers to «read» message by the sound of the clicks. This left Edison disadvantaged, with fewer and fewer opportunities for employment. In 1868, Edison returned home to find his beloved mother was falling into mental illness and his father was out of work. The family was almost destitute. Edison realized he needed to take control of his future. Upon the suggestion of a friend, he ventured to Boston, landing a job for the Western Union Company. At the time, Boston was
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122 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT America’s center for science and culture, and Edison reveled in it. In his spare time, he designed and patented an electronic voting recorder for quickly tallying votes in the legislature. However, Massachusetts lawmakers were not interested. As they explained, most legislators didn’t want votes tallied quickly. They wanted time to change the minds of fellow legislators. Becoming an Inventor In 1869, Edison moved to New York City and developed his first invention, an improved stock ticker, the Universal Stock Printer, which synchronized several stock tickers’ transactions. The Gold and Stock Telegraph Company was so impressed, they paid him $40,000 for the rights. Edison was only 22 years old. With this success, he quit his work as a telegrapher to devote himself full-time to inventing. In 1870, Thomas Edison set up his first small laboratory and manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey, and employed several machinists. As an independent entrepreneur, Edison formed numerous partnerships and developed his products for the highest bidder. Often that was Western Union Telegraph Company, the industry leader, but just as often, it was one of Western Union’s rivals. In one such instance, Edison devised for Western Union the quadruplex telegraph, capable of transmitting two signals in two different directions on the same wire, but railroad tycoon Jay Gould snatched the invention from Western Union, paying Edison more than $100,000 in cash, bonds and stock, and generating years of litigation. With his ever-increasing financial success, in 1871 Edison married 16-year-old Mary Stilwell, who was an employee at one of his businesses. During their 13-year marriage, they had three children, Marion, Thomas and William, who became an inventor. Mary died of a suspected brain tumor at the age of 29 in 1884. By the early 1870s, Thomas Edison had acquired a reputation as a first-rate inventor. In 1876, he moved his expanding operations to Menlo Park, New Jersey, and built an independent industrial research facility incorporating machine shops and laboratories. That same year, Western Union encouraged him to develop a communication device
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to compete with Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. He never did. However, in December of 1877, Edison developed a method for recording sound: the phonograph. Though not commercially viable for another decade, the invention brought him worldwide fame. Alfred Nobel
Alfred Nobel Biography Business Leader, Inventor, Engineer, Chemist, Scientist (1833 – 1896) Synopsis Born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, Alfred Nobel worked at his father’s arms factory as a young man. Intellectually curious, he went on to experiment with chemistry and explosives. In 1864, a deadly explosion killed his younger brother. Deeply affected, Nobel developed a safer explosive: dynamite. Nobel used his vast fortune to establish the Nobel Prizes, which has come to be known for awarding the greatest achievements throughout the world. He died of a stroke in 1896. Early Years Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden, the fourth of Immanuel and Caroline Nobel’s
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eight children. Alfred was often sickly as a child, but he was always lively and curious about the world around him. Although he was a skilled engineer and ready inventor, Alfred’s father struggled to set up a profitable business in Sweden. When Alfred was 4, his father moved St. Petersburg, Russia, to take a job manufacturing explosives. The family followed him in 1842. Alfred’s newly affluent parents sent him to private tutors in Russia, and he quickly mastered chemistry and became fluent in English, French, German and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish. An Invention and a Legacy Alfred left Russia at the age of 18. After spending a year in Paris studying chemistry, he moved to the United States. After five years, he returned to Russia and began working in his father’s factory making military equipment for the Crimean War. In 1859, at the war’s end, the company went bankrupt. The family moved back to Sweden, and Alfred soon began experimenting with explosives. In 1864, when Alfred was 29, a huge explosion in the family’s Swedish factory killed five people, including Alfred’s younger brother Emil. Dramatically affected by the event, Nobel set out to develop a safer explosive. In 1867, he patented a mixture of nitroglycerin and an absorbent substance, producing what he named «Dynamite.» In 1888, Alfred’s brother Ludvig died while in France. A French newspaper erroneously published Alfred’s obituary instead of Ludvig’s, and condemned Alfred for his invention of dynamite. Provoked by the event and disappointed with how he felt he might be remembered, Nobel set aside a bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes to honor men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, and for working toward peace. Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1968 in honor of Alfred Nobel. He died of a stroke on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel left 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to 250 million U.S. dollars in 2008) to fund the Nobel Prizes.
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Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin Biography Writer, Inventor, Scientist (1706–1790) Benjamin Franklin is best known as one of the Founding Fathers who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. Synopsis Born in Boston in 1706, Benjamin Franklin organized the United States’ first lending library and volunteer fire department. His scientific pursuits included investigations into electricity, mathematics and mapmaking. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and the U.S Constitution, and negotiated the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which marked the end of the Revolutionary War. Early Life Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston in what was then known as the Massachusetts Bay Colony. His father, Josiah Franklin, a soap and candle maker, had 17 children, seven with first wife, Anne Child, and 10 with second wife Abiah Folger. Benjamin was his 15th child and the last son.
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126 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT Despite his success at the Boston Latin School, Ben was removed at 10 to work with his father at candle making, but dipping wax and cutting wicks didn’t fire his imagination. Perhaps to dissuade him from going to sea as one of his brothers had done, Josiah apprenticed Ben at 12 to his brother James at his print shop. Ben took to this like a duck to water, despite his brother’s hard treatment. When James refused to publish any of his brother’s writing, Ben adopted the pseudonym Mrs. Silence Dogood, and «her» 14 imaginative and witty letters were published in his brother’s newspaper, The New England Courant, to the delight of the readership. But James was angry when it was discovered the letters were his brother’s, and Ben abandoned his apprenticeship shortly afterward, escaping to New York, but settling in Philadelphia, which was his home base for the rest of his life. Franklin furthered his education in the printing trade in Philadelphia, lodging at the home of John Read in 1723, where he met and courted Read’s daughter Deborah. Nevertheless, the following year, Franklin left for London under the auspices of Pennsylvania Governor William Keith, but felt duped when letters of introduction never arrived and he was forced to find work at print shops there. Once employed, though, he was able to take full advantage of the city’s pleasures, attending theater, mingling with the populace in coffee houses and continuing his lifelong passion for reading. He also managed to publish his first pamphlet, «A Dissertation upon Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain». Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726 to find that Deborah Read had married. In the next few years he held varied jobs such as bookkeeper, shopkeeper and currency cutter. He also fathered a son, William, out of wedlock during this time. In late 1727, Franklin formed the «Junto,» a social and self-improvement study group for young men, and early the next year was able to establish his own print shop with a partner.
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Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla Biography Nikola Tesla (1856 –1943) was one of the greatest and most enigmatic scientists who played a key role in the development of electro magnetism and other scientific discoveries of his time. Despite his breathtaking number of patents and discoveries, his achievements were often underplayed during his lifetime. Short Biography Nikola Tesla Tesla was a bright student and in 1875 went to the Austrian polytechnic in Graz. However, he left to gain employment in Marburg in Slovenia. Evidence of his difficult temperament sometimes manifested and after an estrangement from his family, he suffered a nervous breakdown. He later enrolled in the Charles Ferdinand University in Prague, but again he left before completing his degree. During his early life, he experienced many periods of illness and periods of startling inspiration. Accompanied by blinding flashes of light, he would often visualise mechanical and theoretical inventions spontaneously. He had a unique capacity to visualise images in his head. When working on projects, he would rarely write down plans or scale drawings, but rely on the images in his mind.
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128 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT In 1880 he moved to Budapest where he worked for a telegraph company. During this time, he became acquainted with twin turbines and helped develop a device that provided amplification for when using the telephone. In 1882 he moved to Paris, where he worked for the Continental Edison Company. Here he improved various devices used by the Edison company. He also conceived the induction motor and devices that used a rotating magnetic fields. With a strong letter of recommendation, Tesla went to the United States in 1884 to work for the Edison Machine Works company. Here he became one of the chief engineers and designers. Tesla was given a task to improve the electrical system of direct current generators. Tesla claimed he was offered $50,000 if he could significantly improve the motor generators. However, after completing his task, Tesla received no reward. This was one of several factors that led to a deep rivalry and bitterness between Tesla and Thomas Edison. It was to become a defining feature of Tesla’s life and impacted on his financial reward and prestige. This deep rivalry was also seen a reason why neither Tesla or Edison were awarded a Nobel prize for their electrical discoveries. Disgusted without even receiving a pay rise, Tesla resigned, and for a short while, found himself having to gain employment digging ditches for the Edison telephone company. In 1886, Tesla formed his own company, but it wasn’t a success as his backers didn’t support his faith in AC current. In 1887, Tesla worked on a form of X-Rays. He was able to photograph the bones in his hand; he also became aware of the sideeffects from using radiation. However, his work in this area gained little coverage, and much of his research was later lost in a firm at a New York warehouse.
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Stephen Hawking
Stephen Hawking Biography Physicist, Scientist (1942–) Stephen Hawking is known for his work regarding black holes and for authoring several popular science books. He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Synopsis Stephen Hawking was born on January 8, 1942, in Oxford, England. At an early age, Hawking showed a passion for science and the sky. At age 21, while studying cosmology at the University of Cambridge, he was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Despite his debilitating illness, he has done groundbreaking work in physics and cosmology, and his several books have helped to make science accessible to everyone. Part of his life story was depicted in the 2014 film The Theory of Everything. Early Life and Background The eldest of Frank and Isobel Hawking’s four children, Stephen William Hawking was born on the 300th anniversary of the death of Galileo – long a source of pride for the noted physicist – on January 8, 1942. He was born in Oxford, England, into a family of thinkers.
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130 Practical tasks for SIW, SIWT His Scottish mother had earned her way into Oxford University in the 1930s – a time when few women were able to go to college. His father, another Oxford graduate, was a respected medical researcher with a specialty in tropical diseases. Stephen Hawking’s birth came at an inopportune time for his parents, who didn’t have much money. The political climate was also tense, as England was dealing with World War II and the onslaught of German bombs. In an effort to seek a safer place, Isobel returned to Oxford to have the couple’s first child. The Hawkings would go on to have two other children, Mary (1943) and Philippa (1947). And their second son, Edward, was adopted in 1956. The Hawkings, as one close family friend described them, were an «eccentric» bunch. Dinner was often eaten in silence, each of the Hawkings intently reading a book. The family car was an old London taxi, and their home in St. Albans was a three-story fixer-upper that never quite got fixed. The Hawkings also housed bees in the basement and produced fireworks in the greenhouse. In 1950, Hawking’s father took work to manage the Division of Parasitology at the National Institute of Medical Research, and spent the winter months in Africa doing research. He wanted his eldest child to go into medicine, but at an early age, Hawking showed a passion for science and the sky. That was evident to his mother, who, along with her children, often stretched out in the backyard on summer evenings to stare up at the stars. «Stephen always had a strong sense of wonder,» she remembered. «And I could see that the stars would draw him.» Early in his academic life, Hawking, while recognized as bright, was not an exceptional student. During his first year at St. Albans School, he was third from the bottom of his class. But Hawking focused on pursuits outside of school; he loved board games, and he and a few close friends created new games of their own. During his teens, Hawking, along with several friends, constructed a computer out of recycled parts for solving rudimentary mathematical equations. Hawking was also frequently on the go. With his sister Mary, Hawking, who loved to climb, devised different entry routes into the family home. He remained active even after he entered University
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College at Oxford University at the age of 17. He loved to dance and also took an interest in rowing, becoming a team coxswain. Hawking expressed a desire to study mathematics, but since Oxford didn’t offer a degree in that specialty, Hawking gravitated toward physics and, more specifically, cosmology. By his own account, Hawking didn’t put much time into his studies. He would later calculate that he averaged about an hour a day focusing on school. And yet he didn’t really have to do much more than that. In 1962, he graduated with honors in natural science and went on to attend Trinity Hall at Cambridge University for a PhD in cosmology.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
1. Diagram Group: The Brain: A User’s Manual. – New York: Berkley Books, 1983. 2. Davies P. Superforce. – London: Unwin Paperbacks, 1986. 3. Nebel, Bernard, Richard T. Environmental Science. – New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996. 4. Powell, Terry L. Interaction: Language and Science. – New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1996.
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CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION............................................................................... 3 Unit 1......................................................................................... 5 Unit 2....................................................................................... 10 Unit 3....................................................................................... 15 Unit 4....................................................................................... 20 Unit 5....................................................................................... 25 Unit 6....................................................................................... 31 Unit 7....................................................................................... 35 Unit 8....................................................................................... 40 Unit 9....................................................................................... 45 Unit 10..................................................................................... 49 Unit 11...................................................................................... 54 Unit 12..................................................................................... 58 Unit 13..................................................................................... 63 Unit 14..................................................................................... 68 Unit 15..................................................................................... 72 SUPPLEMENTARY READING...................................................... 76 10 GREATEST SCIENTISTS OF ALL TIME............................... 96 THE LIFE OF AMAZING PEOPLE............................................ 101 BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................... 132
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Еducational issue
PRACTICAL TASKS FOR SIW, SIWT Teaching Manual Stereotypical publication
Compilers: Zhautykbaeva Alia Alimbetovna Bekmasheva Botakoz Nadirbaevna Maharova Gauhar Sabirzhanovna Managing Editors: G. Rustembekova, E. Suleimenova Typesetting and cover design G. Kaliyeva IB №8489
Signed for publishing 11.05.2020. Format 60x84 1/16. Offset paper. Digital printing. Volume 8,37 printer’s sheet. 130 copies. Order №2468. Publishing house «Qazaq university» Al-Farabi Kazakh National University KazNU, 71 Al-Farabi, 050040, Almaty Printed in the printing office of the «Qazaq university» publishing house