Tasks and exercises

1. Answer the following questions:

a) What subject did Robert Boyle develop a passion for at the beginning of his scientific career?

b) What can you say about alchemy?

c) What idea did Boyle present in The Sceptical Chemist?

d) What kind of experiments did Boyle carry out with Hooke and what equipment did they use?

d) What did Boyle and Hooke observe during their experiments and what did they deduce from these observations?

2. Find words that have the following meanings in the text and read out the sentences with them:

a) “make longer, larger, wider”;

b) “the state in which one’s mind is completely filled with thoughts about one particular thing or person in a way that is not normal”;

c) “a substance formed by a chemical reaction of two or more elements in fixed amounts relative to each other”;

d) “qualities or characteristics that smth has”;

e) “clever or complicated in the way that smth is presented (of a machine, system, etc.)”;

f) “a single article or object”;

g) “obviously”;

h) “(of an object/plan/idea) very suitable for a particular purpose and resulting from clever new ideas”;

i) “understand and explain smth”;

j) “become aware of smth, to understand a particular fact or situation”;

k) “a situation, number or quantity that can vary or be varied”;

l) “the important facts, ideas or events that support smth and that it can develop from”.

3. Study the collocations¹ in which some of the general scientific words from the text are used:

a) subject (n): complex/simple/fascinating subject, to examine/in-vestigate/look into a subject, bring up/raise/stick to/drop/av-oid/change the subject, a range of subjects, fail in/pass a subject;

b) to generate: to generate smth from, to be used to generate smth;

c) condition (n): under strictly controlled conditions, experimental/laboratory conditions, favourable/ideal/optimum conditions, normal conditions;

d) to focus: largely/mainly/exclusively focus on smth, to be highly focused on, to be narrowly focused;

e) form (n): life form, in digital/electronic form, to take many forms, in some form or other;

f) device: clever/ingenious/complex/sophisticated device, to consist of smth, to be designed to do smth, a device for smth.

4. Fill in the gaps:

They discussed a wide range of ____ at the seminar. This is a tiny ____ designed to measure temperature. Air pollution can take many ____. The experiment was conducted ____ strictly controlled _____. Wind turbines are used to ____ electricity. The study _____ exclusively on binary codes. Don’t ____ the subject when you speak during your presentation, otherwise it will be difficult to follow. Living cells ____ energy from food. The samples are heated under experimental _____. He measured the parameter using an ingenious electronic ____. Further we would like to _____ the complex ____ of general relativity. That’s a clever ____ for checking electrical circuits. I wish the lecturer ____ to the subject instead of telling his boring jokes. The study was criticized for being too narrowly _____.

5. Translate the sentences:

a) Алхимия была предметом, изучавшимся людьми, которые верили, что можно найти способ получать золото из неблагородных металлов.

b) И в самом деле, если вам удавалось создать правильные условия, можно было разложить эти только что полученные химические соединения на первоначальные компоненты.

c) Эти эксперименты были сосредоточены на изучении физических свойств воздуха и стали возможными благодаря тому, что Гук разработал сложный поршневой насос.

d) Кусочек угля вновь загорался, если воздух возвращали перед тем, как уголь успевал остыть.

e) Благодаря набору изощренных устройств, они сумели поместить колокол под вакуумный колпак, откачать воздух и позвонить в этот колокол.

6. What synonyms of the following words do you know: to study, to discover, a goal, to create, to change, to carry out (an experiment)?

7. In the text you can find the expressions “at a time” and “make sense of it all”. What other fixed expressions with “time” and “sense” do you know? Study and translate the following examples: The world exists in time and space. This time tomorrow I’ll be in Switzerland. You’ll feel better about it when the time comes. People have studied nature from/since time immemorial. Is this an appropriate time to discuss my work? He is the greatest experimental physicist of all time. For the time being we’ll use this equipment. He seems to have lost his sense of reality. There’s a lot of sense in what he’s saying. It all makes perfect sense. There’s no sense in stopping the experiment. In every sense of the word, Rutherford is the father of nuclear physics. She wasn’t a theoretical physicist in the true sense of the word.

8. Make sentences of your own using the above expressions with “time” and “sense”.

9. In the text the set of devices Boyle and Hooke used in their experiments is called “ingenious”. Have you ever come across this word before? In the English language you may find pairs of words that sound almost the same, and therefore can be easily confused. For instance, “ingenious” and “ingenuous” [ɪn'ʤenjuəs] (искренний, бесхитростный, простодушный). What is the difference between “physicist” vs “physician”, “rise” vs “raise”? Can you think of similar examples?

10. How is “inversely proportional” translated into Russian? What is the opposite of “inversely proportional”?

11. The word “newly-created” is formed according to a specific pattern. What do the words “ready-made”, “freshly-painted”, “newly-wed” mean? Can you think of similar examples?

12. The text about Robert Boyle contains a number of words describing the processes of growth and reduction (to halve, to double, to decrease, to increase). What other words from this group can you think of? Look at the verbs in the box. In what contexts do you use them?

grow rise expand extend reduce decline fall shrink diminish go up/down move upwards/downwards escalate climb jump drop double triple ['trɪpl]

Fill in the gaps in the sentences using words from the box (in most sentences more than one option is possible) and translate them into Russian:

a) The world’s resources are rapidly _____.

b) Prices on platinum have _____ this year.

c) The market for their products is _____.

d) The _____ cost of higher education in England is a crucial problem.

e) The number of students at the faculty ____ by 10% last year.

f) The temperature has ____ by 10 degrees.

g) The number of labs at the university ____ from 210 to 160 this year.

13. In the text you can find sentences containing if-clauses (“A burning coal in the airless bell-jar stopped glowing, but re-ignited if the air was returned before the coal cooled down”). What types of if-clauses do you know? Consider the following examples:

“If you heat ice it melts”;

“if you roll a ball on the table it will travel in a straight line”;

“if I were English I would study in Oxford”;

“if I had known that you were coming back yesterday I would have picked you up at the airport”;

“if I had slept well yesterday I wouldn’t have a headache ['hedeɪk] now”;

“if I were you I wouldn’t have danced with that girl at the party yesterday”.

Types of sentences containing if-clauses	Verb forms
The supposition is probable; the actions in the conditional and main clauses refer to the present or future	If we get all the necessary equipment we will carry out this experiment (we will probably get the equipment).
The supposition is contrary to known facts, we don’t expect the action in the if-clause to happen; the actions in the conditional and main clauses refer to the present or future	If I were you I wouldn’t read this science magazine (but I’m not you). If I lived near the university I would always come in time for my classes (but I live far from the university).
The actions in the conditional and main clauses refer to the past	If I had been at the lecture last Monday I would have recorded it for you (but I wasn’t at the lecture, so I didn’t record it).
Mixed combinations: the action in the conditional clause refers to the present or future, but the action in the main clause refers to the past; the action in the conditional clause refers to the past, but the action in the main clause refers to the present or future	If I had a billion dollars I would have launched a new project long ago. If I had received a grant last year I would be famous now.

Translate the sentences:

a) Если бы Мари Кюри не добилась таких выдающихся результатов в своих исследованиях, она бы не считалась одной из величайших женщин-ученых.

b) Если бы Гук не создал свой хитроумный поршневой насос, они бы с Бойлем не смогли бы проводить эксперименты по физическим свойствам воздуха.

c) Кто знает, как повернулась бы карьера Бойля, если бы ему удалось стать врачом.

d) На твоем месте, я бы не стал поступать на этот факультет в прошлом году.

e) Если бы я знал, что тебе сегодня понадобится эта книга, я бы вчера захватил ее с собой.

f) Если бы я был шотландцем, я бы закончил университет Святого Эндрю.

14 Such sentences in the text as “He argued that the atoms making up the clusters hadn’t changed” or “While Boyle was writing this book he had also been carrying out experiments with Robert Hooke”, display the sequence of tenses (if the predicate in the main clause is in the past then the predicate in the subordinate clause should have the adequate tense form):

Tense of verb in main clause		Tense of verb in subordinate clause
Present	He thinks that he will succeed	Fut. Simple
Past	He thought that he would succeed	Conditional
Present	He sees that he has made a mistake	Pres. Perf.
Past	He saw that he had made a mistake	Past Perf.
Present	I work so hard that I am always tired	Present
Past	I worked so hard that I was always tired	Past
Pres.Perf.	He has done all that is necessary	Present
Past Perf.	He had done all that was necessary	Past
Present	He says that he is going to read the book	Pres. Cont.
Past	He said that he was going to read the book	Past Cont.

Pay attention to such cases while retelling the text. Write a resume of the text (10-15 sentences), then retell it relying on what you have written.

15. Can you reproduce Boyle’s Law in English? Below you can see a number of physics laws; match the laws with their names:

Small forces can lift large weights because the lever ['liːvə] amplifies a force according to the ratio ['reɪʃɪəu] of the distances from the lever’s fulcrum ['fulkrəmˌ 'fʌlkrəm]. The acceleration a of a body is parallel and directly proportional to the net force F acting on the body, is in the direction of the net force, and is inversely proportional to the mass m of the body, i.e., F = ma. The angle between a beam of light and a mirror is equal to the angle between the mirror and the reflected beam. Q = I² × R × t (where Q is the heat generated by a constant current I flowing through a conductor of electrical resistance R for a time t). When two bodies interact by exerting force on each other, these forces (termed the action and the reaction) are equal in magnitude, but opposite in direction. Any object immersed in a fluid will experience an upward force equal to the weight of the displaced fluid. The magnitude of the electrostatics force of interaction between two point charges is directly proportional to the scalar ['skeɪlə] multiplication of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distances between them. If an object experiences no net force, then its velocity is constant; the object is either at rest (if its velocity is zero), or it moves in a straight line with constant speed (if its velocity is nonzero).

Joule-Lenz Law Newton’s First Law of Motion Coulomb’s Law ['kuːlɔmz] Law of the lever (Archimedes) [ˌɑːkɪ'miːd'iːz] Newton’s Second Law of Motion Law of buoyancy ['bɔɪən(t)sɪ] (Archimedes) Law of reflection (Archimedes) Newton’s Third Law of Motion

What other laws of physics can you formulate in English?

J oseph Priestley ['ʤəuzɪf 'priːstlɪ]

The oldest of six children, Joseph Priestley caught tuberculosis [t(j)uːˌbɜːkjə'ləusɪs] as a teenager and had to leave school. He had, however, already learnt the basics of Greek, Latin and Hebrew ['hiːbruː]¹, and at home taught himself French, Italian and German as well as Chaldean [kæl'diːən]², Syrian ['sɪrɪən]³ and Arabic ['ærəbɪk]. To this he added basic skills in geometry, algebra ['ælʤɪbrə] and mathematics.

Born: 1733, Birstall, England.

Education: little formal education.

Major achievement: discovered oxygen.

Died: 1804, Northumberland, US.

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

In 1756 he started studying to become a church minister4 in a liberal section of the Calvinistic [ˌkælvɪ'nɪstɪk]5 branch of Christianity [ˌkrɪstɪ'ænətɪ]. As an active networker, Priestley thrived on interaction with the great thinkers of the day, and his passion for political thought brought him in contact with Benjamin Franklin ['benʤəmɪn 'fræŋklɪn] in 1766. Franklin had recently flown a kite in a thunderstorm and deduced that lightning was a form of electricity. Franklin’s enthusiasm for this research awakened Priestley’s interest in science, and in 1767 he discovered that electricity could pass through graphite. The discovery that increased lengths of graphite gave markedly increased resistance to electrical currents led to the creation of millions of resistors that were at the heart of electronics before the invention of the silicon chip. A few years later, the Priestley family moved into a house next to a brewery. The brewing process generates a layer of gas that forms a blanket over the fermenting brew, a gas that was found to extinguish any lighted wood chips that were held in it. Priestley was intrigued and set up a laboratory where he could experiment with the gas. His discovery that it would dissolve in water to produce a pleasant drink got him noticed in French and English academies of science, and led to the creation of the fizzy drinks industry. The gas was carbon dioxide. But it was Priestley’s work with oxygen that had the most significance. In one experiment, he filled an inverted glass dome with mercury, and then introduced pieces of different materials (from organic matter such as wood to an array of chemicals). Because mercury is so dense, the other materials rose to the top. Priestley then heated the materials by focusing sunlight on them with a magnifying glass. Many materials released a gas that collected above the mercury, and Priestley studied these gases. In 1744, Priestley collected the gas released from mercuric oxide. All other gases he had collected so far extinguished a burning flame, but this one enabled candles to burn more brightly. He called the gas ‘deflogisticated air’, because at that point people thought that things burnt when they lost a hypothetical material called phlogiston. He soon found that plants left in the mercury chamber also produced this gas. On a tour of Europe he bumped into a fellow examiner of gases, Antoine Lavoisier [ˌæntwɑː'n ˌlævua:zɪ'ei] (1743–1794) and mentioned his work. Lavoisier instantly realised the significance of this gas and named it oxygen. Between them, these two scientists changed the whole course of what we now call chemistry.

To network – активно общаться с людьми, имеющими отношение к чьей-либо работе (Conferences are a good place to network) To thrive on – (зд. переносно) расцветать Enthusiasm [ɪn'θjuːzɪæz(ə)m] To awaken – пробудить Graphite ['græfaɪt] Markedly ['mɑːkɪdlɪ] – заметно, явно Electronics [ˌelek'trɔnɪks] Silicon ['sɪlɪkən] chip – кремниевая микросхема Brewery ['bruːərɪ] –пивоварня Blanket –покрывало To ferment [fə'ment] – вызывать брожение Brew [bruː] – варить пиво Fizzy – газированный Carbon dioxide ['kɑːb(ə)n daɪ'ɔksaɪd] Inverted – перевернутый Dome – купол, колпак Mercury ['mɜːkjərɪˌ 'mɜːkjurɪ] Array [ə'reɪ] – совокупность, набор, ряд Dense – плотный Mercuric oxide –[mɜː'kjuərɪk 'ɔksaɪd] Deflogisticated [dɪflɔ'ʤɪstɪkeɪtɪd] Phlogiston [flɔ'ʤɪstən] – флогистон Chamber – камера To bump into – натолкнуться на Instantly – мгновенно