Tasks and exercises

1. Answer the following questions:

a) How did Michael Faraday get an education? Describe the beginning of his scientific career.

b) How did Faraday become Humphrey Davy’s assistant?

c) What did Volta inspire Faraday to do?

d) What is Hans Christian Oersted’s contribution to the study of electricity?

e) How did Faraday discover electromagnetic rotation?

f) What is electromagnetic induction and how did Faraday discover it?

g) Why did Faraday introduce the Royal Institution Christmas lectures?

h) How can you characterise Michael Faraday’s contribution to modern physics?

2. Find words in the text that have the following meanings:

a) “to send a signal, to transfer”;

b) “to use as little of smth as possible so that it lasts a long time”;

c) “for this reason”;

d) “detailed information on how to do or use smth”;

e) “the opposite of what has just been mentioned”;

f) “to be present at an event”;

g) “an idea or principle that is connected with smth abstract”;

h) “to change or make smth change from one thing to another”;

i “to use smth in a particular situation”;

j) “to change direction”.

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

a) topic: a range/variety of topics, on the topic of, to consider/cover/discuss/deal with/focus on a topic, broad/general/narrow/key topic, controversial topic;

b) to show: to show smth clearly, a chance to show smth, to appear/seem to show;

c) to conserve: to conserve energy, to conserve wildlife;

d) principle: basic/fundamental principle, universal/theoretical principle, to establish/formulate a principle, the principle behind smth, to apply;

e) technology: current/present-day/advanced/efficient technology, to use/introduce/apply/develop a technology, to allow smth, to enable smth.

4. Fill in the gaps:

This ____ applies to all kinds of particle interaction. The technology helps to ____ wildlife in the area. The car engine is based on ____ developed for aeroplanes. Heisenberg formulated the famous uncertainty ____. This technology ____ computers to read handwriting. Whether the physicists at CERN succeeded in finding the Higgs boson last summer is a ____ topic. The research ____ to show that my original hypotheses were correct.

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

6. In the text about Faraday you can find the word “hence” meaning “this way, thus”. It can also mean “for this reason” connecting ideas in a sentence or between sentences. Among other linking words denoting reason and result are “as a consequence”, “consequently”, “as a result”, “so”, “therefore”, “thus”. Complete the sentences using one of these linkers:

a) We assume that the project is impossible to finish in such conditions, ___ the need for extra finance and more specialists.

b) There is still much to discuss. We will, ____, return to this issue at our next seminar.

c) The spread of the virus is dangerous for animals and the environment, and _____ to human health.

d) Edward Teller accused Robert Oppenheimer of having left political views, ____ Oppenheimer was removed from running the Manhattan Project. 

e) Michael Faraday could not get any formal education, __ as a young man he read the books on science at the bookbinder’s shop where he worked.

f) We know that the origin of the universe was a quantum event. ___, if we want to go back even further and understand the origin of the universe, we must combine what we know about general relativity with quantum theory.

7. Translate into English:

a) Фарадей сумел присоединиться к Лондонскому философскому обществу, члены которого собирались каждую неделю, чтобы обсуждать различные научные темы.

b) Гансу Христиану Эрстеду удалось показать, что электричество, проходящее через провод, рождает электрическое поле.

c) Убежденный, что энергия всегда сохраняется внутри системы, Фарадей решил, что, если электричество могло рождать электрическое поле, обратное тоже должно быть возможно.

d) Ему удалось открыть электромагнитную индукцию – принцип, лежащий в основе электрического трансформатора и электрогенератора.

e) Это изобретение, в большей степени, чем какое-либо другое, позволило ученым 19-го века превратить электричество из любопытного научного явления в мощную технологию.

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

James Joule [ʤeɪmz ʤuːl]

As the son of a brewer in Northern England, Joule had little formal education and never held an academic post. Like so many pioneers of science, Joule set to work with a theological belief that God had built a uniform system – and that it was our duty to work it out and make sense of it.

Born: 1818, England.

Education: taught by John Dalton.

Major achievement: revealed the relationship between work, heat and energy.

Died: 1889, England.

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

In 1840 he produced his first major results. By altering the electrical current passing through a wire and the resistance of that wire, he discovered that the amount the wire heated up was proportional to the square of the current; that is to say, doubling the current led to a fourfold increase in heat, while trebling it led to a ninefold increase. He set it out in an equation that is now referred to as Joule’s Law: energy transferred = the current² × the resistance of the wire × the amount of time you ran the current for The heating is a result of collisions between the moving free electrons and the relatively stationary atoms of the conductor material. Heating increases rapidly as the current increases because the greater rate of flow results in many more collisions. His expectation of uniform forces in nature led Joule to his next discovery. He was aware that Julius Mayer ['ʤuːlɪəs 'meɪə] (1814–1878) had showed that beating paddles in water could cause the water to heat up. Joule set up a paddle that was driven by a falling weight attached to a string. He correctly realised that lifting the weight up stored energy in it, and as the weight fell this energy was transformed by the friction of the beating paddles to the water in the form of heat. In 1849 he read his paper On the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat to the Royal Society in London, and was instantly recognised as a name to be reckoned with. This work contradicted the previously popular caloric theory of heat. This had suggested that heat consisted of caloric, a fluid that could be transferred from one body to another, but could not be created or destroyed. For 7 years Joule worked with William Thomson ['tɔms(ə)n] (1st Baron Kelvin, 1824-1907) and between them they came to realise that if you allow a gas to expand, it cools. The discovery is known as the Joule-Thompson (or Joule-Kelvin) effect, and it lies at the heart of the mechanism that drives refrigeration systems around the world. The pair also produced a paper that included the first estimation of the speed of gas molecules, a value they set at about 1,500 feet a second for oxygen at average temperatures. Joule is now immortalised in our use of the term ‘joule’ as a unit of energy, with one joule (1J) being the energy expended when a force of one Newton accelerates an object through one metre; ie 1J+1Nm. In the world of physics, heat and work are now measured in the same units.

To alter ['ɔːltə] – менять Fourfold ['fɔːfəuld] – четырехкратный Equation [ɪ'kweɪʒ(ə)n] Paddle – Весло To attach – прикрепить To store – вмещать, сохранять Friction –трение To reckon with – считаться с, уважать To contradict противоречить Caloric [kə'lɔrɪk] – теплота Average ['æv(ə)rɪʤ] – средний To immortalise [i'mɔ:təlaız] увековечить To expend – расходовать