新标准大学英语(第二版)综合教程2 Unit 6 B篇练习答案及课文翻译

Warming Up
2. Where did you learn most about science? 3. How much do you remember about your science
lessons at school? 4. Who was your best science teacher? Why do you
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5 Sothefilmisfictionwithoutthescience.Thesamecouldbesaidofthe1986film Aliens. In this film the crew saunter around the spaceship as if they were at home on earth – whereas they should be floating, in a gravity-free environment. The producers of Aliens would fail a first year physics exam, but St百度文库nley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke, the brains behind 2001: A Space Odyssey, would pass the same exam with flying colours. On board the spaceship a giant wheel rotates, generating centripetal force and giving the astronauts on board a sense of “up” and “down”.
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Science: fact or fiction?
1 Studentsaren’twhattheyusedtobe.Thesedays,itseems,someofthemnever even open a book. Such is the depressing picture painted by popular science writer Steve Jones in his book The Single Helix, laying the finger of blame on modern communication systems. The message is the medium; once upon a time there were books, but now, Jones says, “the medium is, or so it seems, anything but lines of print on a page.” Many students are just not used to reading books anymore – they’re such an outdated form of communication.
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2 So how do you get them to learn about science? Well, if you go into a campus bookstore youcan findout.Therearesongbooksfor biochemists,with chemical formulae set to music to make them easier to remember. Relativity is explained in a video game which is a simulation of a rocket journey through space: You can play tennis on board as the rocket speeds up or slows down. And there are cartoons to make even the most obscure scientific subjects accessible, and fun as well.
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科学：事实还是虚构?
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学生已今非昔比。如今，似乎有些学生从来就没有翻开
过书本。这是科普作家斯蒂夫·琼斯在其《单螺旋线》一书
中描绘的令人沮丧的情景，他把批评的矛头指向现代通信系
统。信息即媒介；从前有书本，可是现在，琼斯说：“媒介
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6 The treatment of relativity in science fiction films is even more confusing. Take Star Trek: The Voyage Home (1987). As the spaceship revolves round the sun, it gathers so much speed that it moves backwards into history. But this is nonsense, not relativity. As Jones puts it, “Einstein said that nothing travels at more than the speed of light, not that the clocks will run the other way if you go fast enough.” Even Superman (1978) is baffled by the concept. It takes him a split second to fly round the earth anticlockwise to save Lois Lane, who has fallen victim to an earthquake. Jones: “Time is not like a car. It has no reverse gear.”
remember him / her? 5. Can you remember any lesson in particular? 6. What would you do to improve science teaching at
school?
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Science: fact or fiction?
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4 A few examples will show what the professor has in mind. In The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), the earth is pushed towards the sun as a result of two simultaneous atomic explosions. But this contravenes Newton’s Third Law of Motion – namely, that action and reaction are equal and opposite. Since the Earth weighs six thousand billion billion tons, a huge blast would be needed to push it into the right direction. Supposing it hurled a hundred million tons of rock and debris into space. This explosion would require a bomb far greater than any that has ever exploded. But a few basic sums would show that such a blast, as well as killing every single inhabitant of the earth, would only shift the Earth about a quarter of an inch out of its orbit.
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Active Reading 2
Warming Up
Work in groups and discuss the questions:
1. How many branches of science can you think of? anatomy: studying the body astronomy: studying space biochemistry: studying chemical processes botany: studying plants chemical engineering: studying chemical substances cosmology: studying the universe
Warming Up
ecology: studying organisms and their environment genetics: studying genes and variation meteorology: studying weather microbiology: studying viruses etc nutrition: studying food oceanography: studying the seas pharmacology: studying medical drugs radiology: studying radiant energy such as X-rays
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3 Buteventhesemethodsofgeneratinginteresthavebecomeconventional.Rather more radical is the proposal which a physics professor has come up with – to learnscience from themistakesinsciencefictionfilms.Someofthefilms may be dreadful, but they hide a lot of helpful messages. Students just have to sit back, relax, enjoy the film, and soak up a bit of science at the same time.
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7 Finally, what about those giant insects like the ones in Empire of the Ants, the 1977 film based on a story by H. G. Wells? The problem is their lungs, or rather, the lack of them. Ants don’t have lungs, so they get oxygen by absorbing it through the tissues of their bodies. The bigger the ant, the longer it would take to absorb the oxygen – and their body parts would not be able to function well. So an ant the size of a human would be more likely to be gasping for breath than biting off the head of a reckless teenager. ■