Tasks and exercises

1. Answer the questions:

a) What scientists did Heisenberg communicate with in his early twenties?

b) Why did Heisenberg move to Denmark?

c) What did he realise about the position and momentum of an electron?

d) Describe Erwin Schrödinger’s thought-experiment with the cat.

e) How did Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle influence modern science?

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

a) “to take in liquid, gas or some other substance from the surface or space around”;

b) “to discover or notice smth”;

c) “the quality of showing what will happen in advance”;

d) “a particular subject or activity, or its aspect”;

e) “happening now, in the present time”;

f) “an arrangement of numbers, symbols in rows and columns treated as a single quantity”;

g) “to move in a curved path around a much larger object”;

h) “to be destroyed gradually by natural processes”;

i) “in a way that is the opposite or reverse of smth”;

j) “in a way that concerns the most basic parts of smth”;

k) “(of a machine, system) clever and complicated in the way it works or is presented”.

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

a) issue (n): consider/deal with, number/range/series of issues, to focus on an issue;

b) to speculate: about/as to/on;

c) to dispute: to dispute a fact;

d) debate (n): encourage, promote, provoke intensive/lively debate about/on smth, subject of debate;

e) area: an area of research/study, to cover an area, an important/key area;

f) to predict: be widely predicted, be difficult/hard/impossible to predict, to predict accurately/correctly;

g) explanation: to offer an explanation, to provide smb with an explanation, accepted/traditional/comprehensive explanation, to lie in.

4. Fill in the gaps:

The possibility of carrying out such an experiment has been the subject of much ___. No one can ____ the fact that this is a very dense substance. The course covers two main subject ____. We really need to focus on this ____ and not get sidetracked. It is impossible to ____ with any certainty what effect this will have. The simplest _____ of Heisenberg’s achievements lies in his talent and knowledge. There was no point _____ about the possibility of the research group getting back together.

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

6. Translate into English:

a) Рассматривая физические силы и движение, Исаак Ньютон увидел в них предсказуемость и разработал научные объяснения для каждодневных событий.

b) Когда Эйнштейн вновь изучал эти проблемы, он пришел к выводу, что реальность была более сложной, но при этом предсказуемой при условии, что производится достаточно измерений.

c) В теориях того времени рассматривалась возможность, что электроны вращались вокруг ядра так же, как планеты вокруг солнца.

d) Называемые «квантовой механикой», эти идеи вызывали горячие споры, но они объединяли теорию матриц с волновой механикой.

e) В Копенгагене Гейзенберг провел много времени с Эрвином Шредингером, тоже пытавшимся разобраться в этой области физики.

f) По сути, он утверждал, что ни в коем случае не было возможным предсказать, каково будет поведение электрона в следующий момент из-за неопределенности, возникающей при измерении его параметров.

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

a) На семинаре обсуждался широкий круг вопросов.

b) Это крошечное устройство было разработано для измерения температуры.

c) В докладе намеренно были опущены некоторые важные детали.

d) Ученые ошибочно утверждали, что сделали верные измерения.

e) Если Вы присоединитесь к этой исследовательской группе, у Вас появится возможность полностью реализовать Ваш потенциал.

f) Всё это указывает на тот факт, что такого рода частиц не существует.

g) Я управляю собственной лабораторией.

8. Make a written resume of the text about Werner Heisenberg (10-15 sentences) and retell it orally on the basis of what you have written.

Arthur C. Clarke ['ɑːθə siː klɑːk]

The idea that an object could be fired into space and then constantly fall towards Earth without ever hitting the ground seems a strange one, more fitted¹ to Arthur Charles Clarke’s famous science fiction, but this concept is the basis behind the geostationary [ˌʤɪɔu 'steɪʃ(ə)n(ə)rɪ] satellites that he brilliantly dreamed into existence.

Born: 1917, England.

Education: King’s College, London.

Major achievement: conceived² the idea for satellite communication.

Died: 2008, Sri Lanka [ˌsrɪ'læŋkə].

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

There are times when science fiction and science fact merge. Often Arthur C. Clarke was in the middle of the event, either as an instigator or commentator. While he is best known as an author of science-fiction novels, his innovative thinking in the early 1940 s led to the prediction that electronic communication would one day use satellites that stood still over the Earth. He wrote about his ideas in an article published in Wireless World magazine in 1945. Although radio and television had been shown to work, Clarke realised that to provide reception across an entire country you would need to have repeater masts positioned every 50 miles, and link these with a massive network of co-axial cables. While that might be financially possible in areas of high population density, there was no way it could be cost effective over whole countries. Supplying a service involving sending programmes or messages across oceans was basically impossible. Television was a particular problem – the complex nature of the signal meant that it was more difficult to transmit than radio. During the Second World War, Clarke saw the Germans develop rockets, and these fired his imagination. As he said in his article, if one of these rockets could travel at 5 miles per second it could “escape the Earth’s atmosphere and become an artificial satellite, circling the world forever with no expenditure of power – a second moon, in fact”. If you sent up a rocket containing a communication satellite, and steered it so that it was over the equator, then it could fall in space, and constantly orbit the Earth. Clarke realised that if you positioned it approximately 42,164 km (26,200 miles) from the centre of the Earth, in other words approximately 35,787 km (22,237 miles) above mean sea level, then the speed with which it fell would be the same as the speed of the Earth’s rotation. Effectively it would hang still above a single point over the equator. By sending enough of these satellites into space, you could generate a network of transmitters that could relay messages to each other and beam them back to Earth with each one serving huge areas. What started as a suggestion in a small magazine led to the 1965 launch of Early Bird, the first commercial geostationary communication satellite, and by 2000 there were over 300 satellites in the so-called ‘Clarke orbit’. Electronic communication now spans the globe.

To merge [mɜːʤ] – (зд.) совпадать Instigator ['ɪn(t)stɪgeɪtə]- подстрекатель, зачинщик Science fiction – научно- популярная фантастика Innovative ['ɪnəuveɪtɪv] Wireless – радио Magazine [ˌmægə'ziːn] – журнал Although [ɔːl'ðəu] – хотя Reception – прием (видимость, слышимость) Repeater mast мачта ретранслятора Co-axial [ˌkəu'æksɪəl] – коаксиальный Population density – плотность населения Cost effective – экономически эффективный To involve – включать Expenditure [ɪk'spendɪʧə] –расход To steer – управлять Approximately [ə'prɔksɪmətlɪ] – приблизительно Mean sea level средний уровень моря Effectively – фактически, в сущности To relay – передавать, транслировать To span the globe – охватывать весь мир