Unite 5 The latest materials

Discussion:

• Name any materials that you know

• Look around and find things made of different materials

• Do you prefer natural or manmade materials?

• Are you interested in the materials your clothes, shoes or furniture made of?

• Is the matter of material important for the human’s health?

KEY VOCABULARY

1. previous - предыдущий

2. research - исследование

3. fabric - ткань

4. textile - текстиль

5. polymer - полимер

6. plastic - пластик

7. packaging material – упаковочный материал

8. biomaterial - биоматериал

9. film – пленка

10. furniture – мебель

11. aircraft industry - авиастроение

12. flexible - гибкий

13. shrinkable - термоусадочный

14. retort – реторт -упаковка

15. foam - пена

16. weightlessness - невесомость

17. semi-conductor - полупроводник

18. sophisticated - изощренный

19. unique - уникальный

20. rechargeable - перезаряжаемый

21. approach - подход

22. motile - подвижный

23. compound - компонент

24. admixture - примесь

25. challenging – вызывающий, манящий

26. stem cell – стволовая клетка

27. blood vessels – кровеносные сосуды

28. Higgs boson – бозон Хиггса

29. the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) – большой андронный коллайдер

30. particle - частица

Text: The latest materials

During the previous century lots of new technologies have changed the life of the mankind. Many new things and materials appeared after scientific researches and inventions. Fabrics and textiles, polymers and plastics, new packaging materials, biomaterials and nanostructures have been invented to improve the quality of everyday life and modern devices.

The results of scientific researches are used to make our life easier and more comfortable. For example we need some materials to pack or wrap our things, food and clothes. A great variety of new materials appeared in packaging industry. Not long ago the most usable materials for packing were paper and cardboard. Nowadays we can use different types of food packaging such as flexible barrier films, shrinkable films, packaging with modified gas atmosphere and vacuum. A new type of retort packaging is made of multilayer films that provide the possibility of product sterilization inside of the packaging and long shelf life of the product. Such materials as polyamide, foam polyethylene and polypropylene can be applied in mechanical engineering, aircraft industry, furniture industry, packaging for medical products and technical needs.

We see great changes in the sphere of robots manufacturing. The robots can be very sophisticated and unique, but they have been widely used in different industries. But they need power, constant electricity supply or rechargeable units. Lots of researches have been done to solve this problem. Scientists always try to find new and unusual approaches. For example, a chemical gel that can walk like a worm or caterpillar has been demonstrated in Japanese robotic laboratory. It is the color-changing motile gel produced from combining polymers that changes in size depending on their chemical environment. This is based on a chemical reaction called the Belousov – Zhabotinsky reaction. The result is an autonomous material that moves without electronic stimulation. This ability could be used to make some compounds of future robots.

The beginning of space era which started in the middle of the 20^th century has given a great chance for the scientists to research materials in new conditions. The most important of them is weightlessness. Weightlessness allows the scientists to create new materials or find unknown and unusual features of the ordinary ones. In the state of weightlessness there is no weight, but there are forces of gravity. Dealing with this problem, the experiments are conducted in five main areas: space metallurgy, production of semi-conductors materials, crystals and ceramics production, medico-biological materials and overall physical effects in weightlessness. The aim of these experiments is to develop new materials which are cleaner and purer, without admixtures which can’t be avoided in usual conditions on the Earth. Several tones of such materials with the cost more than 10 billion dollars have been already produced in space on board of the former Soviet Union station Soyuz and on the International Space station. Further developments for achieving the industrial scale in this business will be done in the nearest future.

The biomedical research laboratories start to make the future changes in the tomorrow’s life saving therapies using new biomaterials. It can be called the scientists’ quest to solve the most challenging mysteries of the human body. Diseases and disorders with no therapies and treatment or at best, partially effective ones are the lure of the pursuit of stem cell research. A significant progress that has already been achieved is a prologue to an era of medical discovery of cell-based therapies. Hope, that in the near future they will restore the disable functions of the human body. For example, stem cells extracted from fat tissue after liposuction may one day be used to create and then to replace faulty arteries in the heart.

The researches in nanostructures, for example, nanocomposites or nanotubes

have a great potential in industrial areas such as nanotechnology, electronics, optics, material science, and architecture. These materials have great advantages in their unique electrical properties, extraordinary strength and efficiency in heat conduction.

The latest and maybe the greatest researches and inventions in the sphere of super small materials have been done with the Higgs boson using the Large Hadron Collider. There are many theories as to what will result from these collisions. For decades, the Standard Model of particle physics has served physicists well as a means of understanding the fundamental laws of nature, but it does not tell the whole story. Only experimental data using the high energies reached by the LHC can push knowledge forward, challenging those who seek confirmation of established knowledge, and those who dare to dream beyond the paradigm. Last but not least, an essential ingredient of the Standard Model, a particle called the Higgs boson, has to be found in an experiment. The race is on to hunt for the Higgs – the key to the origin of particle mass. Finding it has become a big step for particle physics, although its discovery has not written the final ending to the story. Perhaps it is only a part of a bigger picture that includes new physics that has so far been hidden deep in the subatomic world or in the dark recesses of the Universe. New data from experiments at the Large Hadron Collider are sure to help us find more of these missing pieces. You are welcome to join.