26. Discuss the following questions in small groups or pairs.

1. How important is science? What has science done for humankind?

2. Is science always good? Do you always trust science?

3. What will science uncover in the next few decades? What will the next big discovery in science be?

4. What questions will science never answer?

5. Do you like visiting science museums?

6. The Japanese anime character Ikari Gendo said: “Science is the power of Man.” What does this mean? Do you agree?

27. Do you agree with the following statements. Discuss them with your classmates.

1. Some hundred years from now, art and science may well share a common language. As technology advances, could a new visual language emerge to blur or even obliterate the distinction between art and science?

2. Perhaps in the future beauty will provide an important criterion for selecting one theory over another, now that theories are emerging which cannot be verified by experimentation as we know it today.

28. A lot of famous inventions and discoveries were made by chance, for example, corn flakes, microwave ovens, slinky and potato chips. Try to find information about any of such inventions or discoveries and prepare a short story for your group mates.

29. Work in pairs. You are going to read the descriptions of some important for the history of mankind experiments (Further reading, Unit 6). Student A reads about Darwin's flowers, Student B reads about the first vaccination. Ask each other questions to fill in the chart.

    Experiment	Aim	Results and Implications
    Darwin's flowers
    The first vaccination

30. Remember the story how d.I. Mendeleyev developed the periodic classification of the elements.

What inspired scientists to do their breakthrough in science?

Do you believe that important discoveries can be made by chance?

Give examples of discoveries/inventions that were made in unusual circumstances.

LISTENING

31. You are going to listen to the description of an experiment testing the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis. Before you listen, check if you know the meaning of the words: glycine, alanine, glutamic acid, ammonia, cellular enzymes.

32. Listen and decide whether the facts from the lecture are true or false.

1. In 1989, biochemists John Haldane and Aleksander Oparin hypothesized independently that Earth's early atmosphere lacked free oxygen. (false)

2. Basic organic compounds are proteins and nucleic acids. (true)

3. The ocean in the experiment was represented by a warmed plate with water. (false)

4. Organic compounds could form from simple molecules if stimulated by lightning. (true)

5. The Earth's early oxygen-free atmosphere was mostly composed of helium, methane and ammonia. (false)

6. Amino acids are the building blocks of proteins. (true)

33. In 1958, President Eisenhower signed the Space Act, officially creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. From the beginning, the purpose for the new branch extended beyond space ships and moon boots. The law stipulated that its research and advancements should benefit all people, and in its 50-year history, NASA has certainly fulfilled that role.

Listen to the description of two NASA by-products – smoke detector and cordless tools − and complete the sentences with information from the description.

1. NASA invented the first adjustable smoke detector with different sensitivity levels to prevent false alarms.

2. The ionization smoke detector uses a radioactive element to spot smoke or harmful gasses.

3. The americium-241 ionizes clean air particles, which creates an electrical current .

4. Black & Decker invented the first battery-powered tools in 1961. .

5. NASA needed a tool that astronauts could use to obtain samples of rock and soil.

6. Black & Decker’s computer program for the tool reduced the amount of power expended during use to maximize battery life .

34. Listen again and write down adjectives which describe the inventions.

Adjustable; leightweight; cordless; battery-powered; hand-held; compact; powerful; magnet-motor

WRITING

35. Choose any 4 expressions from exercise 13 and use them in your own sentences.

36. Scientists should be free to carry out any experiments they like regardless of utility, cost and ethics. Write a short opinion essay (120-180 words) expressing your point of view.

37. Choose two of the questions asked by children from the list below and write a response.

1. Do fish go to sleep?

2. Why do dark clouds absorb heat?

3. Why do flamingos stand on one leg?

4. Why do mermaids have tails?

5. Why does cheese have holes?

6. What is the difference between a fruit and a vegetable?

7. How does a compass know which way north is?

8. Why do fairies have wands?

Info for us. Answers to these question at whizzkidds.

2. Dark colors get hotter than light colors for one big reason: Dark colors absorb more light!

In fact, without light there wouldn’t be any color at all! When we see color, it’s because we see light that gets reflected off of something.

Do you have a blue shirt? The reason it looks blue is because when sunshine (or another type of light) hits the shirt, most of the light’s energy is absorbed by the shirt, but the blue energy of light bounces off the shirt. Our eyes can see the energy that bounces off, and to us, the shirt looks blue.

Lighter colors reflect the most light. Darker colors absorb more, but all of that absorbed energy doesn’t just disappear! Energy never just disappears, but it can change. Light that gets absorbed by clothing becomes heat!

4. Mermaids are legendary beings with the upper half of a person and the lower half of a fish! They spend their lives underwater, so they need someway to easily swim around.  That's why they use tails instead of legs like we do.  A fish tail is designed to push water out of the way, like a big oar or paddle, and push an animal forward. Some people think that the original stories of mermaids were based on certain swimming mammals, like manatees, that look and act more like land animals than fish. Of course, since mermaids aren't real, they only really have tails because people imagined that they do!

5. Swiss cheese has holes in it because of bacteria passing gas. Contemplating a typical piece of Swiss cheese, the majority of whose holes, by USDA regulation, must measure between 11/16 and 13/16 of an inch in diameter, you may think: Here was a little microbe with a serious case of indigestion. But actually it's the work of armies of microbes, specifically Propionibacteria shermanii. The P. shermanii consume the lactic acid excreted by other bacteria (the ones that cause the milk to turn into cheese in the first place) and belch, toot, and otherwise exude copious amounts of carbon dioxide gas. This produces what the Swiss-cheese industry, hoping to distract from the reality of the matter, calls "eyes." It's a beautiful, natural process, with the advantage that it enables cheese makers to charge good money for a product that by law is partly air. But the air/cheese ratio will be changing soon. It seems Swiss cheese with big holes fouls up modern slicing machinery. So the industry is now asking that the regulations for Grade A Swiss be revised to make the average hole only three-eighths of an inch in diameter--one-quarter the area it is today. (Small-hole Swiss is now classified as Grade B, which commands a lesser price).

6. The way that we tell fruits and vegetables apart in our day-to-day lives (and in the kitchen!) is mostly based on how they taste and how they’re eaten or cooked. In general, we think of fruits as foods that grow on trees, taste sweet, and can almost always be eaten without cooking. We tend to think of vegetables, on the other hand, as foods that grow in or near the ground, taste savory, and are sometimes eaten raw but sometimes need to be cooked, too.

However, a botanist (plant scientist) would use an entirely different system! According to science, a vegetable is any part of a plant that can be eaten, like leaves, stems, or roots. (Think lettuce, asparagus, and beets.) A fruit is also the edible part of a plant, but refers specifically to the edible part of a plant that has come from its ripe flower! For that reason, many foods that we call vegetables are actually considered fruits by scientists!

7. Today a lot of people have GPS (Global Positioning System) devices that receive signals from satellites that orbit the earth and tell people where they are. Compasses are nowhere near that complicated. They have actually been around for thousands of years, and the technology behind them has not changed very much at all in that time. 

No matter which way you spin, a compass needle will always point north. It knows where to point because the needle is a magnet. Magnets are pulled toward other magnets, and there is a huge magnet that is pulling the compass needle. The huge magnet is the Earth!

Earth has a North and South Pole that are magnetic. We don’t really feel their pull because we’re pretty big, compared to a compass needle. Also, we’re not magnets. Each of Earth’s poles pulls on one end of the compass needle, causing it to point in a direction that shows us where north is.

8. Fairies are magical, legendary creatures.  A lot of times, when we see them in pictures or in movies, they are holding long, thin sticks, or magic wands! A lot of magical beings besides fairies have wands too.  Think about the wizards in stories and movies.  

Wands are used to focus magical energy.  That means that energy in and around a persons body gathers in the wand. Then the wand acts like a pointing stick.  It can send that magical energy in whatever direction the wand is pointed.  Wands help fairies cast magical spells!

Some non-magical people use wands too! Think about musical conductors.  They use wands or batons to tell members of an orchestra where the musical beats should happen and how fast they should play.

38. Translate the following sentences into Ukrainian. Student A – sentences 1-5, Student B – sentences 6-10, then check each other and translate them back into English. Student A –sentences 6-10, Student B – sentences 1-5.

1. The past is peppered with true artist-scientists such as Albrecht Dürer and Leonardo da Vinci, whose studies of projective geometry and perspective led to the concept of infinity in western science.

2. The interstellar gas cloud Sagittarius B contains billion liters of alcohol.

3. Caves breathe. They inhale and exhale great quantities of air when the barometric pressure on the surface changes, and air rushes in and out seeking equilibrium.

4. Artists use scientific equipment and concepts, scientists employ aesthetics. Both deal with visual imagery and metaphor.

5. The average person accidentally eats 430 bugs each year of their life.

6. Polar bears are nearly undetectable by infrared cameras due to their transparent fur.

7. Einstein’s aesthetic sense failed him: he dismissed black holes as an ugly solution to a beautiful theory.

8. A dying star might begin an eternal collapse and fall into a well in space from which nothing could escape, not even light − what we now know as a black hole.

9. The beauty of the mathematics of quantum theory turns out to be fine-tuned, linking each symmetry in nature to a law of conservation, such as the conservation of energy and of momentum.

10. As the ancient Greeks knew, beauty can be enhanced by a small degree of asymmetry. Nature agrees.

39. Look through the Encyclopedia Britannica explanations of some common concepts. Try to guess what concept is being described in each definition. Rewrite any 3 definitions as if answering the question of a child.

1. The biologically active porous medium that has developed in the uppermost layer of the Earth’s crust. (soil)

2. In botany, dry, hard fruit that does not split open at maturity to release its single seed. (nut)

3. Cloud of small water droplets near ground level that is dense enough to reduce horizontal visibility to less than about 1.000m. (fog)

4. Reproductive portion of any flowering plant. (flower)

5. Large mass of ice that forms on land through the recrystallization of snow and that moves forward under its own weight. (glacier)

6. Rapid burning of combustible material with the evolution of heat and usually accompanied by flame. (fire)

7. Food product made from cocoa beans, consumed as candy and used to make beverages and as a flavouring ingredient or coating for various confections and bakery products. (chocolate)

8. In geometry, a two-dimensional collection of points, a three-dimensional collection of points whose cross section is a curve, or the boundary of any three-dimensional solid. In chemistry, outermost layer of a material or substance. (surface)

9. An animal fibre produced by certain insects as building material for cocoons and webs. (silk)

10. A ridge or swell on the surface of a body of water, normally having a forward motion distinct from the oscillatory motion of the particles that successively compose it. (wave)

40. Find information about any interesting, strange or important scientific experiments and present the results of your research to the class in the form of a poster or short presentation.

PROBLEM-SOLVING

41. Try to understand pure logic (see Problem-Solving, UNIT 6).

PURE LOGIC

By now you should be able to answer this quiz easily! Work with a partner. Do you know any similar problems of logic? If so, write them down and try them out on a partner.

1. In a certain African village there live 800 women. Three per cent of them are wearing one earring. Of the other 97 per cent, half are wearing two earrings, half are wearing none. How many earrings altogether are being worn by the women?

Among the 97 per cent of the women, if half wear two earrings and half none, this is the same as if each wore one. Assuming that each of the 800 women is wearing one earring, there are 800 earrings.

2. A logician with some time to kill in a small town decided to have his hair cut. The town only had two barbers, each with his own shop. The logician glanced into one shop and saw that it was extremely untidy. The barber needed a shave, his clothes were unkempt, his hair was badly cut. The other shop was extremely neat. The barber was freshly shaved and spotlessly dressed, his hair neatly trimmed. The logician returned to the first shop for his haircut. Why?

Each barber must have cut the other's hair. The logician picked the barber who had given his rival the better haircut.

3. A secretary types four letters to four people and addresses the four envelopes. If she inserts the letters at random, each in a different envelope, what is the probability that exactly three letters will go into the right envelopes?

Nil. If three letters match the envelopes, so will the fourth.

4. If you took three apples from a basket that held 13 apples, how many apples would you have?

Three apples.

5. If nine thousand, nine hundred and nine pounds is written as £9,909, how should twelve thousand, twelve hundred and twelve pounds be written?

£13,212.

6. A chemist discovered that a certain chemical reaction took 80 minutes when he wore a tweed jacket. When he was not wearing the jacket, the same reaction always took an hour and 20 minutes. Explain.

Eighty minutes is the same as one hour and 20 minutes.

7. A customer in a restaurant found a dead fly in his coffee. He sent the waiter back for a fresh cup. After a sip he shouted, "This is the same cup of coffee I had before!" How did he know?

The customer had sugared his coffee before he found the fly.

8. "I guarantee," said the pet-shop salesman, "that this parrot will repeat every word it hears." A customer bought the parrot but found it would not speak a single word. Nevertheless, the salesman told the truth. Can you explain?

The parrot was deaf.

Further Reading

Student A.