Аврамова NUCLEAR ENGLISH 2013

Exercise 1. The following five sentences (A-F) summarize the five paragraphs of Reading 2-A. Read the sentences and then match them to the paragraphs of Reading 2-A, 1-5.

A.Subatomic particles can be classified into hadrons and leptons.

B.Hadrons are made up of quarks which come in six flavors and three colors.

C.Quarks are truly elementary.

D.The atomic nucleus consists of particles which are complex rather than elementary.

E.The quark hypothesis was proposed to explain the hundreds of particles known at the time as different combinations of quarks.

Exercise 2. Use Reading 2-A to find the English equivalents for the following Russian phrases.

Конечные составляющие; рассматривать; впоследствии было обнаружено; определять (распознавать) частицы; сложные, а не элементарные; есть основания полагать; выделить кварки; реакция на силу; обнаружить внутреннее строение; вводить гипотезу; предлагать; предполагать; «аромат» и «цвет»; произвольные названия (ярлыки); не иметь отношения к; обычное значение слова; за исключением фотона; несмотря на попытки; тем не менее; более того; то есть; согласно.

Exercise 3. Below you will see a list of words related to Reading 2-A. Translate the words and write ten sentences using the words below.

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Exercise 4. Complete the following sentences using the words and phrases from Reading 2-A.

1.One of the principal achievements of the 20th century was…

2.In 1911 Ernest Rutherford showed that…

3.During the past few decades it has become apparent…

4.Those particles are now thought to be made up of…

5.Quarks seem to be…

6.Subatomic particles can be classified according to…

7.Those that feel the strong force are referred to as…

8.Those that respond to the weak force are referred to as…

9.Leptons give every indication of…

10.There are just six of them: …

11.Hadrons, on the other hand, seem complex, and there are…

12.It was in an effort to explain this great variety of particles…

13.The quark hypothesis was introduced …

14.The quark model states that…

15.The revised version requires…

16.“Flavor” and “color” have no relation to….

Exercise 5. Read the text again and answer the questions below.

1.Who was the first to show that the atom consists of a small dense nucleus surrounded by electrons?

2.What other particles have been identified since Rutherford’s discovery in 1911?

3.Are these particles really elementary? What are they made up of?

4.Into what two families can subatomic particles be divided?

5.According to what principle can they be classified?

6.In general, how many forces are there?

7.What force do hadrons feel?

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8.What force do leptons respond to?

9.How many leptons are there?

10.Why are leptons regarded as truly elementary particles?

11.Why did the quark hypothesis appear?

12.Who was it introduced by and when?

13.What does the quark hypothesis state?

14.How many kinds of quarks does the revised version of the hypothesis require?

Do you know how the quark got its name?

In 1963, Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig suggested that hundreds of the particles known at the time could be explained as combinations of just three fundamental particles. Gell-Mann chose the name "quarks," pronounced "kworks," for these three particles, a nonsense word used by James Joyce in the novel Finnegan's Wake (Джеймс Джойс «Поминки по Финнегану»): "Three quarks for Muster Mark!"

Reading 2-B

Classification of Quarks

Read the passage below and write it down in your own words.

There are six different types of quarks known as flavors with three "color charges" each. There are the up, the down, the charm, the strange, the top, and the bottom quarks, each with a "red" charge, a "blue" charge, or a "green" charge. For every quark flavor there is a corresponding type of antiparticle, known as anti-quark that differs from the

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quark only in sign. There are six anti-quarks, each with "anti-color charges." The anti-colors are anti-green, anti-red, and anti-blue. So, there are in all 36 quarks.

Quarks have various properties, including electric charge, color charge, spin, and mass. Quarks are the only elementary particles which feel all four fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces (electromagnetism, gravitation, strong interaction, and weak interaction).

Reading 2-C

You are going to read a passage about neutrinos. Five sentences have been removed from the text. Choose from the sentences A-F the one which fits each gap (1-5). There is one extra sentence which you will not need to use.

A.But for a long time it was not known whether the neutrino had mass.

B.This discovery was of tremendous scientific importance because it radically changed our concept of the Universe.

C.Nobody doubted it any longer.

D.A solitary quark has never been observed.

E.One of them is the neutrino's fantastic penetrating capacity.

F.This makes the neutrino extremely difficult to detect.

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The Mysterious Neutrino

The elementary particle called the neutrino from the Italian "little neutral one" was predicted in 1931 by the Swiss scientist Wolfgang Pauli. For а long time it remained just a hypothesis, and it was not before 1956 that American physicists С. Cowan and F.Reines made the first experiment in which а neutrino beam produced an observable effect. 1).____________.

Further studies revealed some very important properties of this particle. 2).____________. Neutrino beams fly through planets and stars without interacting with their matter. The reason is that the neutrino is electrically neutral. In fact, the neutrino is a lepton which has no electrical charge. It travels close to the speed of light, and is able to pass through ordinary matter almost unaffected. 3).____________.

It was established that neutrinos are created as a result of certain types of radioactive decay or nuclear reactions such as those that take place in the Sun, in nuclear reactors, or when cosmic rays hit atoms. 4).__________. In 1980 scientists at the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics in Moscow managed to calculate the rest mass оf the electron neutrino - one of the three types of neutrino. The neutrino rest mass, which is approximately 35 electron volts (10,000 times less than the mass of the electron), was determined on the basis of analyzing the energy spectrum of electrons resulting from the radioactive decay of tritium. 5).____________.

Reading 2-D

Nanotechnology

You are going to read five paragraphs about nanotechnology. Choose the most suitable heading from the list A-F for each part (1-5). There is one extra heading which you do not need to use.

A.Graphite Versus Diamonds

B.Apocalyptic Scenarios

C.It’s a Small World

D.Products with Nanotechnology

E.Nanowires and Nanotubes

F.How New is Nanotechnology?

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1.In 1959, the famous physicist and future Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman gave a lecture to the American Physical Society called "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" («Там внизу много места»). His speech was about the field of miniaturization and how he believed man would create increasingly smaller, powerful devices. In 1986, Eric Drexler wrote "Engines of Creation" («Машины созидания») and introduced the term nanotechnology.

2.At the nanoscale, objects are so small that we cannot see them -- even with a light microscope. Nanoscientists have to use tools like scanning tunneling microscopes or atomic force microscopes to observe anything at the nanoscale. Scanning tunneling microscopes use a weak electric current to study the scanned material. Atomic force microscopes scan surfaces with an incredibly fine tip. Both microscopes send data to a computer, which can collect the information and display it graphically on a monitor.

3.What is the difference between graphite and diamonds? Both materials are made of carbon, but both have very different properties. Graphite is soft; diamonds are hard. Graphite conducts electricity, but diamonds are insulators and cannot conduct electricity. Graphite absorbs light; diamonds are usually transparent. Graphite and diamonds have

these properties because of their differences at the nanoscale. They have different crystal structures: the way the carbon atoms are arranged in space is different for carbon and diamonds.

4.Eric Drexler, the man who introduced the word nanotechnology, presented a frightening end-of-the-world picture -- self-replicating (самовоспроизводящиеся) nanorobots getting out of control and rapidly consuming all matter on Earth as they use carbon from the environment to build more of themselves. It is called the "grey goo" («серая слизь») scenario, in which synthetic nano-size devices replace all organic material. According to another scenario, nanodevices made of organic material wipe out the Earth -- the "green goo" scenario.

5.You may be surprised to find out how many products on the market are already based on nanotechnology: sunscreens, self-cleaning glass, clothing, scratch-resistant coatings, antimicrobial bandages,

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swimming-pool cleaners and disinfectants. New products incorporating nanotechnology are coming out every day. Wrinkle-resistant fabrics, deep-penetrating cosmetics, liquid crystal displays (LCD) and other goods using nanotechnology are on the market. Very soon, we'll see dozens of other nanotechnology products ranging from Intel microprocessors to bio-nanobatteries only a few nanometers thick.

UNIT 3

Reading 3-А

Radiation and Radioactivity

"Life on earth has developed with an ever present background of radiation. It is not something new, invented by the wit of man: radiation has always been there."

Eric J. Hall

1.As is the case with so many discoveries, the discovery of the phenomenon of radioactivity was purely accidental. It was discovered in 1896 by the French physicist Henri Becquerel (1852-1908), who was interested at that time in the phenomenon of fluorescence. Не found that compounds of uranium emitted rays that gave an impression on а photographic plate covered with black paper. These rays were able to pass through thin sheets of metal and other substances that are opaque to light. Becquerel called these rays 'radiation'.

2.It is now known that radiation is emitted by the atoms themselves. The radiation may be in the form of particles, such as neutrons, alpha particles, and beta particles, or waves of energy, such as gamma and X- rays. The property of certain atoms to emit radiation is called radioactivity. Such atoms are called radioactive, and the process in which they spontaneously disintegrate or decay emitting both particles and energy is known as radioactive decay. This process occurs because unstable isotopes tend to transform into different, more stable atoms.

3.As unstable isotopes decay and stabilize themselves in this way, a radioactive material becomes less radioactive. Atoms in a radioactive substance decay at a characteristic rate. Each radioactive substance has its own 'half-life'. The half-life is the time taken for half of the atoms of a radioactive substance to decay. Half-lives can range from a millionth of a second to millions of years depending on the element concerned. After one half-life

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the level of radioactivity of a substance is halved, after two half-lives it is reduced to one quarter, after three half-lives to one-eighth, and so on. Take iodine-131, which has a half-life of eight days. If we start off with a billion atoms of I-131, it will be practically all gone within three months. On the other hand, uranium-238 has a half-life of about 4.6 billion years, which is about the lifetime of the earth. Starting with a billion atoms of uranium, it takes 4. 6 billion years for half of them to become stable.

4. This leads to a very important fact about radioactivity. If a substance has a long half-life, it will not give off much radiation in a second - it will have 'low activity’. In general, substances with very long half-lives are not very radioactive. On the other hand, substances with very short half-lives are very radioactive but are soon gone. The most dangerous ones are those in between, such as caesium (half-life 28 years), which are radioactive enough to cause a problem, but have a long enough half-life to remain radioactive for a considerable period of time.

Exercise 1. The following sentences (A-F) summarize the four paragraphs of Reading 3-A. Read the sentences and then match them to the paragraphs of Reading 3-A, 1-4.

A.The radioactivity of a substance depends on its half-life.

B.Radiation and radioactivity are not the same thing.

C.The discovery of radioactivity was purely accidental.

D.Each radioactive isotope has its own characteristic half-life which can range from a millionth of a second to millions of years.

Exercise 2. Match the two parts of the sentences. Look at Reading 3-A to help you.

1.The property of certain atoms to emit radiation...

2.The radiation may be in the form of particles,...

3.The process in which radioactive atoms spontaneously disintegrate or decay...

4.This process occurs because unstable isotopes...

5.The half-life is the time...

6.Substances with very long half-lives are not very radioactive, … A. .... emitting both particles and energy is known as radioactive decay. B. .... tend to transform into different, more stable atoms.

C. .... taken for half of the atoms of a radioactive substance to decay.

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D. .... while substances with very short half-lives are very radioactive but are soon gone.

E. .... such as neutrons, alpha particles, and beta particles, or waves of energy, such as gamma and X-rays.

F. ….is called radioactivity.

Exercise 3. Classify the nouns below according to their suffixes. Copy them out.

Radiation, measurement, fluorescence, emission, impression, ability, passage, property, disintegration, stability, equipment, difference, excitation, tendency, dependence, density, voltage, requirement, existence, brevity, absorption, achievement, deflection, invention, isolation, substance, radioactivity, storage, development, accuracy.

Exercise 4. Use Reading 3-A to find the English equivalents for the following Russian phrases.

Как часто бывает с открытиями; интересоваться явлением; элементы и соединения; соединения урана; оставлять отпечаток на; проходить сквозь тонкие листы; непроницаемый для света; энергия в виде волн; радиоактивный распад; распадаться с характерной скоростью; находиться в диапазоне от… до…; данный элемент; вызывать проблему; оставаться радиоактивным; значительный период времени.

Exercise 5. Read the text again and answer the questions below.

1.When was the phenomenon of radioactivity discovered? Who made this discovery?

2.How was the discovery made?

3.Where does radiation come from?

4.In what form can radiation be emitted?

5.What is radioactivity? What is the difference between radiation and radioactivity?

6.What is meant by radioactive decay?

7.Why does the process of radioactive decay occur?

8.What happens when unstable isotopes decay?

9.What is meant by the half-life of a radioactive substance?

10.What does the half-life of a radioactive substance depend on?

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11.Which is more radioactive: substances with very long half-lives or those with very short half-lives?

12.What radioactive substances are the most dangerous ones?

Reading 3-B

Alpha, Beta and Gamma Rays

Three different types оf radiation are emitted by radioactive substances. These radiations for brevity are called alpha rays, beta rays, and gamma rays.

The alpha rays consist of positively charged particles projected from the parent atom with а velocity about one-tenth the velocity оf light. They are very easily absorbed by thin foil or by a few centimeters of air. They affect а photographic plate, cause many bodies to fluoresce brilliantly, and ionize the air through which they pass. They are deflected by an electric or a magnetic field.

The beta rays consist of negatively charged particles which are projected from the atom of the radioactive substance with a velocity which is nearly, but not quite, as great as the velocity of light. Because of their larger velocities and smaller mass, they are much more penetrating than the alpha particles. They produce much less ionization in the gas through which they pass than do the alpha particles and are less active photographically than alpha particles. In an electric and magnetic field they are deflected just as cathode rays are deflected.

The gamma rays are extremely penetrating, and are not deflected by either а magnetic or an electric field. Their nature is entirely different from that of the alpha or beta rays. They are electromagnetic pulses like very penetrating Х-rays.

Exercise 1. Use Reading 3-B to find the English equivalents for the following Russian phrases.

Поглощать излучение; воздействовать на фотопластинку; исходный атом; вызывать свечение; отклоняться в магнитном поле; из-за высокой скорости; проникающее излучение; ионизировать газ; вызывать ионизацию; электромагнитные импульсы; для краткости.

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