Tasks and exercises

1. Answer the questions:

a) Did Albert Einstein have a busy personal life?

b) Where did Einstein work when he made his first groundbreaking discoveries?

c) What were the papers he submitted for publication in 1905 about?

d) In what way did Einstein’s special theory of relativity overturn Newtonian physics?

e) What are the premises from which special relativity can be derived?

f) What are the outcomes of the theory of special relativity?

g) What is meant by the curvature of space-time in general relativity?

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

a) “intended to last for a short time”;

b) “to combine two or more things so that they work together”;

c) “in a state of complete confusion”;

d) “to question if an idea is right”;

e) “a result of smth that happened”;

f) “complicated, difficult to understand, made of many different parts”;

g) “the ability to see the truth about things and people”;

h) “in agreement with smth”;

i) “to say that smth is true although it has not been proved”;

j) “the quality of being easy to understand”;

k) “deserving”.

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

a) support (n): to get/receive support, in support of smth, a lack of support, complete/full/total support;

b) to support: strongly/fully, be widely supported;

c) to claim: to rightly/wrongly claim that, try to claim;

d) to omit: completely/deliberately/accidentally;

e) to derive: smth from smth;

f) consequence: lead to, follow from, in consequence of, important/positive/possible consequence.

4. Fill in the gaps:

This substance is ____ from fish oil. The evidence strongly ____ his hypothesis. Some important details were deliberately ____ from the report. The scientists falsely ____ that they had made correct measurements. The plan received strong ____ from the research team members. This theory was widely _____ in the scientific community.

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

6. Translate into English:

a) В то время как фотоэлектрический эффект и броуновское движение свидетельствовали в пользу тех, кто утверждал, что атомы существовали, теория относительности была чем-то совершенно новым.

b) Эта теория объединяла время, расстояние, массу и энергию, а также не противоречила электромагнетизму, но в ней не учитывалась сила гравитации.

c) Одной из сильных сторон специальной теории относительности является то, что она выводима всего из двух основных предпосылок.

d) Согласно общей теории относительности, гравитация больше не сила, но следствие того, что Эйнштейн назвал искривлением пространства-времени.

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

a) Термин «кислотный дождь» был создан в 19 веке.

b) По мере старения организма скорость обмена веществ снижается.

c) Заселение этой территории людьми увеличивается обратно пропорционально росту количества животных.

d) Навыки невозможно передать напрямую от преподавателя к студентам.

e) Влияние наследственности лучше всего видно среди генетически идентичных близнецов.

f) Исследование сосредоточено на анализе сложного взаимодействия между живыми организмами и их средой.

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

Werner Heisenberg ['wɜːnə 'haɪz(ə)nbɜːg]

When Newton looked at forces and movement he saw predictability¹, and developed explanations for everyday events. When Einstein reinvestigated the same issues² he concluded that reality was more complex, but it could be predicted if you took enough measurements. When Werner Heisenberg helped found quantum theory, he took physics into a world that was much less certain³.

Born: 1901, Würzburg.

Education: University of Munich.

Major achievement: developed quantum theory.

Died: 1976, Munich, Germany.

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

In the 1920s Germany was an exciting place to work if you loved physics. While still in his early twenties Heisenberg met Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr (1885–1962), Linus Wolfgang Pauli ['laɪnəs 'wulfgæŋ pɔːlɪ, 'pau-] (1900–1958), and Max Born (1882–1970). Through their inspiration he looked again at the atom. Current theories speculated that electrons orbited a nucleus, much in the way that planets orbit the sun. As he collected data about the way atoms emit and absorb light he came up with a radically new idea. Called ‘quantum mechanics’, the new ideas were hotly disputed, but they drew together the mathematics of matrices with physics of wave mechanics. Attracted to the world centre of debate, Heisenberg moved to Copenhagen [ˌkəup(ə)n'heɪg(ə)n] to join Born’s group of pioneering physicists. Here he spent a lot of time with Erwin Schrödinger ['ɜːrwɪn 'ʃrəudɪŋgə] (1887-1961) who was also actively trying to make sense of this area of physics. The more Heisenberg studied mathematics, the more curious he became. He realised that if you knew the position of an electron, you couldn’t say anything about its momentum. Conversely, if you detect an electron’s momentum, you won’t be able to measure its position. In essence he was claiming that it was always impossible to predict what an electron would do next inside an atom, because of the uncertainty left when you try to measure it. There are two ways of looking at this. One is to say that the experiments were just not sophisticated enough to do this, but give it a few years and someone would solve the problem. The other was to claim that this was a true reflection of a fundamental property of matter (described by quantum mechanics). Heisenberg presented this to Wolfgang Pauli in a fourteen-page letter in 1927 and then subsequently presented to the world his uncertainty principle. Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought-experiment illustrates Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. A cat, a sealed vial of poison and a small lump of radioactive material are placed in a box. The vial will open if one atom in the radioactive material decays. Since no one can predict when this decay will occur, there is no way of knowing whether the cat is dead or alive. While the box remains closed, the cat is therefore in a ‘superposition state’, being both alive and dead.

In one’s early twenties – когда ему (ей) было чуть больше двадцати Inspiration [ˌɪnsp(ə)'reɪʃ(ə)n] вдохновение, воодушевление To be hotly disputed – активно обсуждаться To draw smth together – соединять что-либо Debate [dɪ'beɪt] дискуссия, дебат Area ['eərɪə] – область Momentum [mə'mentəm] Conversely ['kɔnvɜːslɪ] – наоборот To detect smth – обнаружить In essence ['es(ə)n(t)s] – по сути Sophisticated [sə'fɪstɪkeɪtɪd] – сложный, сложно устроенный To seal – запечатывать Vial ['vaɪəl] – пузырек Lump – кусок To decay – распадаться To occur [ə'kɜː] – происходить Superposition – совмещение, суперпозиция State – Состояние