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30.You are a scientist. Your lecture is devoted to the principal elements of the nature of science. Be ready to clarify information about:

importance of experiments in science;

existence of non-experimental techniques;

difference between science and technology;

science as a solitary pursuit.

Use information from the text "THE PRINCIPAL ELEMENTS OF THE

NATURE OF SCIENCE: DISPELLING THE MYTHS".

31.Explain the suggested scientific phenomena. What other phenomena do you know? Can you explain them?

For example, Lightning

Inside a thunderhead, electrical charges become separated. Warm updrafts sweep positive charges aloft, leaving the bottom of the cloud negatively charged. The attraction between the ground and

the negative charges in the bottom of the cloud creates the lightning stroke, a brief current of negative charge that travels from cloud to ground.

Water cycle, also known as the hydrologic cycle or the O cycle, ... .

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Rainbow is an optical and meteorological phenomenon that is caused .... .

Photosynthesis is the process of converting light energy .... .

32.You have read some interesting information about one of the scientists and you want to share this information with your friends.

33.You have received the task to make an open lecture entitled "Science in Society". Think of issues it can touch upon.

LISTENING

You are going to listen to some information about Nikola Tesla. Be ready to do the tasks below:

34. Before you listen, check if you know what the following words and phrases mean: elusive solution, rotating magnetic field, to harness, divergence,

to climax, fascinated, prototype, to improve, current, distribution, inspiration.

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35. Decide whether the following statements are true (T) or false (F).

1.N. Tesla studied at the Polytechnic Institute in Austria and Prague and, firstly, he wanted to specialize in electricity.

2.In Budapest in the park he explained his friend the principle of the induction motor.

3.Charles Batchelor wrote a recommendation letter in which he said about two great people. One of them was N. Tesla and the other one was T. Edison.

4.In New York N. Tesla began a war with Edison.

5.N. Tesla suggested using the alternating current instead of direct one offered Edison.

36.Complete the sentences with necessary information.

1.N. Tesla symbolizes a unifying force and inspiration for all nations ....... .

2.In Strassbourg in 1883, he privately built .......... .

3.His childhood dream was to come to America ....... .

4.Why not build generators that would send electrical energy along distribution lines first one way, than another, in multiple waves .....?

37.In pairs, role play the conversation between Thomas Edison and Nicola Tesla.

WRITING

38.You want to create an Internet page "Scientists − Wikiquote". Choose one of the scientists (in the field of mathematics or physics) and find quotations of this scientist about science. Write down these quotations (not less than 5).

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39.Work in pairs. Now you are taking part in the Project "Inventions of the 20th − 21st century". Choose the invention that you like and cover the following information:

What is invented?

Who invented?

When?

History of invention. or

Why such a name (if it is known)?

What is it made of?

Its advantages.

You may use the suggested pictures.

40.Write comments on one of the following quotations (60−70 words). Follow the instruction.

When you write comments, try to keep these things in mind:

Write only relevant information.

Express your ideas logically.

Use the correct spelling, punctuation, grammar.

Read over your comment to check if it makes sense.

Edit your comment if it is necessary.

1."It would be possible to describe everything scientifically, but it would make

symphony as a variation of wave pressure."

Albert Einstein

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2. "Science ... never solves a problem without creating ten more"

George Bernard Shaw

3. " Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know"

Bertrand Russell

4." Science cannot resolve moral conflicts, but it can help more accurately frame the debates about those conflicts."

Heinz R.

5."Science is built up of facts, as a house is built of stones; but an accumulation of facts is no more a science than a heap of stones is a house"

Henri Poincar

41.Work in small groups. You are asked to create a crossword devoted to science and scientists. Then exchange the crosswords and solve them.

PROBLEM-SOLVING

42.Try to understand a famous puzzler's logic (see the PROBLEMSOLVING section to Unit 5).

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temperature fluctuation

2.A group of children were asked to draw pictures of what scientists will be able to do in one hundred years. Work out what the child has tried to draw and what his / her reasoning might have been. Some of these are already a reality.

From "Discussions A-Z" Advanced

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3.Discuss the following quotations. Which quotation is closer to your own ideas?

1."Though science can cause problems, it is not by ignorance that we will solve them."

Isaac Asimov

2. "Art is meant to disturb. Science reassures."

Georges Braque

3."The most remarkable discovery ever made by scientists was science itself."

Jacob Bronowski

READING

4.Underline the stressed syllable in each word as in the example. Practise reading.

evidence, elementary, coordinates, to exhibit, electromagnetic, to quantify, primordial, relative, compatible, to contradict, perspective

5.Mark the following statements true (T) or false (F). Compare your answers with a partner, then read the text "A THING OF BEAUTY" and check your answers.

1.Beauty in a mathematical theory often reveals features of nature.

2.Both, art and science, view the notion of beauty as entirely subjective.

3.If an equation or a theory is not supported by experiment, it is usually wrong.

4.A theory’s mathematical structure should show a symmetry between left and right.

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5.Four fundamental forces of our world appeared as a result of a broken primary symmetry.

6.In the text below, find three adjectives, three adverbs, an adjective in the superlative degree, three irregular verbs and three prepositions.

7.Answer the following questions.

1.Does science rely on beauty? Give your reasons.

2.What is beauty in science? Is it important for a theory or equation to be beautiful? Explain.

3.Can "aesthetics" of a scientific theory be measured quantitively? Give your reasons.

4.What are the four fundamental forces of the physical world?

5.What theories are considered beautiful?

8.Think of the other heading(s) to the text.

Picasso, Mandolin and Guitar, 1924

A THING OF BEAUTY

A thing of beauty: even when the evidence was going against them, Nobel prize-winners Murray Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman clung on to cherished theories just because they thought they were "beautiful".

Are beauty and science compatible? Do scientists have the right to use the word beauty? For physicists and mathematicians, at least, the answer is an emphatic "yes". Back in the 1960s, Paul Dirac famously asserted: "It is more important to have beauty in one's equations than to have them fit experiment". Richard Feynman, too, insisted on believing in one of his theories even when it seemed to contradict experimental data.

So what makes an equation or a theory beautiful? For most art theorists and artists, beauty is subjective, but not for scientists. To scientists symmetry is beauty

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and therefore objective: scientists seek out mathematical equations that retain their form no matter how they are transformed. The mathematical equation for a sphere, for example, does not change when its coordinates are inverted. A sphere is still a sphere when viewed from any perspective, even in a mirror.

And if experiments on the decay process of elementary particles produce the same results when viewed in a mirror, they exhibit "mirror symmetry" associated with the law of the conservation of parity. Call it what you will, there is a basic element in most scientific theories that scientists believe they can quantify objectively as "aesthetics" or "beauty".

Why is symmetry so important? Why is it the term that scientists use synonymously with beauty? For many, it goes back to that fraction of a second after the big bang, some 13,7 billion years ago, when there was only one force − an instant of purest symmetry. When this symmetry was broken, the four forces of the physical world emerged: the gravitational, electromagnetic, nuclear and weak forces. The universe is now seen as being made up of broken symmetries. What scientists are trying to do is to find this primordial symmetry by hypothesising other symmetries that unify these four forces. When scientists look for explanations for what "breaks" these symmetries, they discover particles. Theories which exhibit the maximum symmetry − such as those unifying fundamental forces, like the electroweak theory − are considered "beautiful theories", and they usually turn out to be correct, which seems to justify the hunt for symmetry.

Symmetry need not be tied to visual imagery − the need could reflect an intuition about how nature ought to be. This was Einstein's starting point in 1905 when he introduced aesthetics into 20th-century physics. His discovery that light could also be a particle emerged from his minimalist aesthetic. Einstein's formulation of the theory of relativity also sprang from this aesthetic. The electromagnetic theory of the day offered two radically different explanations of how a current is generated in a wire moving relative to a magnet, depending on whether the current was observed by someone riding on the wire or on the magnet.

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