Рг. S.: Oh, your work is so important nowadays. Mankind needs en­ergy for producing light, heat and transportation. This is the basis of our civilization.

Рг. В.: Sure, that's so. And as the population grows, so does the de­mand for better quality of life. Energy consumption increases daily.

Pr. S.: But with it the threat to clean air, pure water and soil in­creases too. These natural resources are not inexhaustible.

Pr. В.: Of course. We are developing new industrial systems to im­prove productivity, reducing the amount of raw materials and energy required. Our new advanced systems help to conserve energy too.

Pr. S.: In Geneva one of the problems I studied was the problem to generate, transmit and distribute energy with great efficiency. I think Doctor Carter's work in this field is the most promis­ing. From the Agenda (повестка дня) we have all just re­ceived you can see that Dr.Carter will speak on his work tomorrow.

Pr.B.: I have already seen this paper on the program. I won't miss (пропустить) it. Have you attended the morning session?

Pr. S.: The most interesting was the discussion on the problems of the balance between the needs of mankind and the conserva­tion of the natural resources.

Pr. В.: Have you taken part in it?

Pr. S.: Certainly. I've spoken about clean and efficient technology in the field of electrical engineering.

Exercise 4. Comment on the following statement.

The teaching routine procedures (заведенный порядок, об­щеизвестная и установившаяся практика) ought to be the main aim of education.

One point of view : Routine makes life and experiments easier, it saves energy; ex­perience of past generations takes on the form of routine; routine helps us to avoid risks; thanks to routine we don't have to rediscover things; routine ensures efficiency while experimenting, it enables us to achieve a high level of predictability.

A contrary point of view : Routine kills invention and discovery, it is opposite to creativity; it is necessary to avoid routine so that the world can be changed for the better; young people ought to develop their imagination, but not learn routine; routine is the exact opposite of youthfulness; routine is boring; the best idea would be to com­bine routine with improvisation.

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Exercise 5. Conduct a round-table discussion on «Superconductivity Re­search».

Use texts 11 А, В, С as a basis for the preparation of oral talks and discussion. Useful words and phrases of scientific communication are given in exercise 5 (see Les­son 10 «Conversation»).

Exercise 6. Read and smile.

For a long time Edison's visitors wondered (удивлялись) why the gate (калитка) to his garden was so difficult to open.

Once his friend said: «The gate to your garden is so heavy. I have to use all my strength to open it. I cannot understand this. You are such a brilliant man. You can invent something better». «The gate seems to be all right», Edison answered with a smile. «The fact is that it is a brilliant invention.» «You are laughing at me, sir!» «No, I am not. The gate is connected to a pump. Every­body who comes in pumps twenty litres of water out of the well (колодец).»

An absent-minded (рассеянный) professor was once travelling by electric train, and when the conductor came the professor couldn't find his ticket.

«It's all right, sir», said the conductor who knew the professor very well, «I'll come at the next station».

But at the next station there was the same difficulty, the profes­sor couldn't find his ticket anywhere.

«It's all right, sir, it doesn't matter (не имеет значения)», said the conductor. «No, no I must find the ticket, I must know where I'm going to!»

Text 11B Прочитайте текст и озаглавьте его.

Superconductivity is a state of matter that chemical elements, compounds and alloys assume on being cooled to temperatures near to absolute zero. Hence, a superconductor is a solid material that abruptly loses all resistance to the flow of electric current when cooled below a characteristic temperature. This temperature differs for different materials but generally is within the absolute zero (-273 °C). Superconductors have thermal, electric and magnetic properties that differ from their properties at higher temperatures and from properties of nonsuperconductive materials.

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Now hundreds of materials are known to become superconduc­tors at low temperature. Approximately 26 of the chemical ele­ments are superconductors. Among these are commonly known metals such as aluminium, tin, lead and mercury and several less common ones.

Most of the known superconductors are alloys or compounds. It is possible for a compound to be superconducting even if the chemical elements constituting it are not.

Text 11c

Прочитайте текст и найдите информацию о применении сверхпроводни­ков в будущем. Изложите кратко содержание текста по-английски.

New Hope for Energy

Recently some ceramic materials have been found to be super­conductors. Superconducting ceramics are substances which can transmit electric currents with no loss of energy at temperatures much higher than conventional superconductors (that is, at the temperature of liquid nitrogen).

One use for the new superconductors would be to replace those that need the extreme cold of liquid helium — huge superconduct­ing electromagnets used in nuclear magnetic resonance research, atomic particle acceleration and research reactors.

Other types of electromagnets made with superconductors could be used to lower the cost of electric generation and storage. Such uses may take 10 years of research, a quicker use will probably be in electronics.

Researchers now estimate that tiny but immensely powerful highspeed computers using superconductors may be three to five years away. Further off are 300 m.p.h. trains that float on magnetic cushions which now exist as prototypes but may take at least a de­cade to perfect. Power lines that can meet a city's electric needs with superconductor cables may be even further in the future.

Meanwhile, scientists around the world are trying to turn the new materials into useful products. Among the most notable is a micron-thin film to transmit useful amounts of electric current without losing superconductivity. The film could be used in the mi­croscopic circuitry of advanced computers as high-speed pathway (маршрут, соединение) between computer chips.

Several nations are known to be very active in superconductor research. For example, the United States is spending millions of

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dollars on such research, much of it for military uses: projectile ac­celerators, lasers, ship and submarine propulsion.

Text 11d

Прочитайте текст и расскажите по-английски о Массачусетском Техно­логическом Институте.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

MIT is an independent university located in Boston area. It was founded in 1861 by William Barton Rogers, a distinguished natural scientist, who believed professional competence to be best fostered (воспитывать) by the combining of teaching, research, and the ap­plication of knowledge to real-world problems. MIT held its first classes in 1865 after having delayed opening because of the Civil War. There were approximately 15 students enroled at that time.

Today MIT has about 9,700 students, a faculty (профессор­ско-преподавательский состав) of approximately 1,000 and sev­eral thousand research staff. The total teaching staff numbers more that 1,800. The institute is broadly organized into five academic Schools — Architecture and Planning, Engineering, Humanities and Social Science, Management and Science — and a large num­ber of interdisciplinary programs, laboratories, and centers, includ­ing the Whitaker College of Health Science, Technology and Management. A unique feature of MIT is that undergraduates join with graduate students, faculty, and staff to work on research pro­jects throughout the institute.

Most academic activities take place in a group of intercon­nected buildings designed to permit easy communication among the Schools and their 22 departments. Across the street from this set of buildings there are athletic fields, the student center, and many of the dormitories.

The main purpose of the academic program at MIT is to give students a sound command (прочное усвоение) of basic principles, the habit of continued learning and the confidence that comes from a thorough and systematic approach to learning. This results in continued professional and personal growth, especially in today's rapidly changing world.

The two essential parts of all MIT educational programs are teaching and research. Both of these activities carried on together have greater potential than either performed alone. They provide experience in theory and experiment for both students and teaching staff.

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Each student pursues a degree (стремиться получить степень) in one of the departments.. Undergraduate courses at MIT lead to the degree of Bachelor of Science (S.B.). The academic programs require four years of full-time study for the Bachelor of Science. De­grees are awarded on the basis of satisfactory completion of general institute and departmental requirements (общеинститутские и ка­федральные требования) in each program.

There is enough flexibility (гибкость), however, to allow each student, in collaboration with the adviser, to develop an individual program in accordance with his or her own interests and preparation.

Дополнительные задания

Упражнение 1. А. Прочитайте словосочетания из текста НА и постарай­тесь понять значения выделенных слов.

the threshold of a new technological age

who was awarded the Noble Prize

which won for them the Noble Prize

their quality is often uneven

В. Подберите к каждому выделенному в А слову соответствующее ему по значению.

a. give or grant (by official decision)

b. irregular, changing с start, beginning

d. get by means of hard work or struggle as a result of competition

Упражнение 2. А. Прочитайте текст и постарайтесь понять значения тер­минов memory cells, windings, coils.

The practical applications of superconductivity are limited be­cause of the very low temperatures required. Some materials, for example lead, become almost perfect conductors at very low tem­peratures at the absolute zero (-273 °C). However, a number of uses have been proposed.

If a current is induced by a magnetic field in a ring of supercon­ducting material, it will continue to circulate when the magnetic field is removed. In theory this could be made use of in the memory cells of computers. Memory cells made of superconducting mate­rial could store information indefinitely. Because of the zero resis­tivity of the cells, the information could be retrieved quickly, as fast as 10~⁸ seconds.

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90 per cent of the total losses in modern transformers is due to the resistance of the windings. Transformers could be made with windings cooled to the low temperature at which superconductivity occurs. The resistance would be zero and the transformer would be almost ideal. Similarly, a 100 % efficient electric motor has been proposed using the magnetic field of superconducting coils.

В. Подберите к каждому слову в колонке А соответствующее из колонки В.

А

induce

remove

indefinitely

memory cell

retrieve

winding

coil

В

a. find, get back

b. unlimitedly с spiral

d. length of wire wound in a spi­ ral to conduct electric current

e. bring about

f. take off, away

g. the unit of computer which stores data for future use

C. Найдите в тексте, приведенном в А, три пары синонимов.

D. Заполните таблицу на словообразование.

Упражнение 3. Заполните пропуски словами conduct, superconductivity, superconductor, superconductive.

1.... at high temperatures was almost discovered in 1979. 2. The Russian scientists found an oxide of metal they were experimenting

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