Tasks and exercises

1. Answer the questions:

a) What was Marie Curie’s original surname?

b) How did she get acquainted with Pierre Curie?

c) What did she investigate at the beginning of her career? What made Curie change the focus of her attention?

d) What experiments with uranium did she carry out and what conclusions did she arrive at?

e) When did Pierre Curie join his wife in her research of radioactivity?

f) What elements did they discover?

g) What potential did Marie Curie see in the research of radioactive elements?

2. In the text find words that have the following meanings:

a) “to be very good at doing smth”;

b) “not changed or influenced by smth”;

c) “quality, feature of an object”;

d) “to harm or spoil smth”;

e) “done at the same time”;

f) “to give all your attention to smth”;

g) “to put smth in a place or situation where they are not protected or covered from smth”;

h) “able to measure very small changes”;

i) “causing a lot of discussion and disagreement”.

3. Study the collocations in which some of the general scientific words from the text are used:

a) laboratory: up-to-date, well-equipped, to set up/establish a laboratory;

b) to consist of: entirely/only/mainly;

c) to consist in: to consist in smth – to have smth as the main or only part (feature);

d) to depend: greatly/entirely/to some extent, seem to depend on smth;

e) conclusion: to reach/draw a conclusion, to come to/arrive at a conclusions, lead to/point to, correct/logical conclusion, false/wrong conclusion, to jump to a conclusion;

f) potential (n): to have/show enormous potential, to develop/realise (fulfill) potential;

g) instrument: devise/develop/invent, a set of, delicate/appropriate/ reliable/sophisticated instrument.

4. Fill in the gaps:

True education does not consist __ simply being told facts. You aren’t using your computer to its full ____. We don’t want to jump to the wrong ____. She donated money to ____ a physics laboratory. I can’t draw any _____ from these observations. The results of the experiment seem to ____ on the type of soil used. Joining this research group will help you to realise your true ____. It all points to the _____ that this kind of particles doesn’t exist. I run my own research _____. A molecule of water consists __ two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. This phenomenon can be simulated under ____ conditions.

5. Make up 10 sentences with the collocations from ex.3.

6. Translate into English:

a) Превратив одну из комнат Парижской муниципальной школы, где Пьер уже был профессором, в лабораторию, Мари Кюри ставила эксперименты, используя высокочувствительный прибор для измерения электрического тока, проходившего через воздух, облученный ураном.

b) Она обнаружила, что сила лучей, испускаемых тем или иным материалом, зависела только от количества урана, который в нем содержался.

c) Кроме того, электрические свойства урановых лучей оставались неизменными, если ураносодержащий материал измельчали, оставляли его в несмешанной форме или использовали для получения химических соединений, представляли его в сухом или жидком виде, или подвергали воздействию света и тепла.

d) Она сделала вывод о том, что способность производить излучение данного вида была фундаментальным свойством атомной решетки урана.

e) Эти открытия вызывали сомнения, но промышленные компании сразу увидели в них огромный потенциал.

7. Revise the collocations with formal and general scientific lexis from the previous texts, and translate the sentences into English:

a) Образцы нагреваются в лабораторных условиях.

b) Он измерил этот параметр при помощи хитроумного электронного устройства.

c) Далее мне хотелось бы обсудить непростую тему общей теории относительности.

d) Не могли бы Вы разъяснить эту мысль?

e) Оба эксперимента имеют схожие результаты.

f Медикамент производит сильное воздействие на мозг.

g) Студентам понадобится время, чтобы собрать данные.

8. Make a written resume of the text (10-15 sentences) and retell the text orally relying on what you have written.

Albert Einstein ['ælbət 'ainstain]

Few people have left such a large mark in the public mindset¹ as Albert Einstein. Born in Germany into a Jewish family, Einstein had little success at school and showed no signs of becoming an international superstar, when, in 1901, he took a temporary job in the patent ['pæt(ə)nt, 'peɪ-] office² in Bern [bɜːn], Switzerland.

Born: 1879, Ulm, Württemberg (now Germany).

Education: University of Zurich ['z(j)uərɪk].

Major achievement: introduced the theories of special and general relativity.

Died: 1955, Princeton, USA.

Before reading the text, study the words in the right column (practise pronouncing those which are transcribed):

His private life at the time was complex. In the same year that he started work in the patent office, his Hungarian girlfriend Mileva became pregnant. Being born outside marriage was taboo, so they gave their child up for adoption, before marrying a couple of years later and then divorcing in 1914. In 1919 he married again, this time to Eva ['iːvə], his cousin, but it appears he was not an easy person to live with. In addition his cultural roots were frequently disturbed. Having started off with German citizenship, Einstein renounced it and became stateless before taking Swiss citizenship. He later reclaimed German citizenship, but the Nazis revoked this because he was a Jew. Finally he moved to America and became a citizen of that nation. Out of this chaotic life came some stunning scientific insights. In 1905, while working at the patent office, Einstein submitted four papers for publication. His papers on Brownian ['braunɪən] motion (movement), the photoelectric effect and special relativity are all probably worthy of winning Nobel prizes, and indeed the Nobel committee did award him the 1921 Prize in Physics for his work on the photoelectric effect. But while the photoelectric effect and brownian motion had given massive support to those claiming that atoms existed, relativity was something entirely new. At first he introduced the idea of special relativity, in his 1905 paper “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”. This theory integrated time, distance, mass and energy and was consistent with electromagnetism, but omitted the force of gravity. It challenged and overturned Newtonian physics by showing how the speed of light was fixed, and was not relative to the movement of the observer. One of the strengths of special relativity is that it can be derived from only two premises: 1. The speed of light in vacuum is a constant (specifically, 299,792,458 metres per second). 2. The laws of physics are the same for all observers in inertial frames. Despite its simplicity, it had startling outcomes. Special relativity claimed that there is no such thing as absolute concepts of time and size; observers’ appreciation of these features was relative, said Einstein, to their own speed. In 1915 he took the idea further and developed a theory of general relativity. According to this theory, gravity is no longer a force, but a consequence of what he called the curvature of space-time. Unlike special relativity, where reality is different for each observer, general relativity enables all observers to be equal even if they are moving at different speeds. The ideas are mind-breaking, but even though parts of them have been challenged, they formed the grounding for physics throughout the 20th century.

Complex ['kɔmpleks] – сложный, запутанный Taboo [tə'buː] – запрещенный Give a child up for adoption – отдать ребенка на усыновление (удочерение) To divorce – развестись Frequently – часто To disturb – беспокоить Citizenship – гражданство To renounce – отказаться Stateless – не имеющий гражданства Reclaim – требовать обратно, возвращать себе Nazi ['nɑːtsɪ] To revoke – аннулировать, объявлять недействительным, отзывать Jew [ʤuː] – еврей Chaotic [keɪ'ɔtɪk] – хаотичный Stunning – потрясающий Insight ['ɪnˌsaɪt] – по-нимание, озарение, проникновение в суть Submit a paper for publication – опубликовать статью To give support to поддерживать To claim – заявлять, утверждать Entirely – полностью Consistent with – последова-тельный, совместимый с To omit [ə'mɪt] – опускать To challenge – оспаривать, противоречить, бросать вызов To overturn – ниспровергать, опровергать To be derived from – быть выводимым из Premise – предпосылка Startling – удивительный Outcome – результат, итог Consequence ['kɔn(t)sɪkwən(t)s] следствие Curvature ['kɜːvəʧə] – искривление To enable smb to do smth – позволить кому-либо сделать что-либо