Are these statements true (T) or false (F) according to the text or is there no information (NI)?
Warm-up
1 Match the Key Words with the four branches of science: biology, information technology, physics, astronomy/cosmology. Add more words.
KEY WORDS: antibiotics, artificial intelligence, atom, bacteria, black hole, data processing, deep space, DNA, molecule, electric current, energy, equation, galaxy, gene, gravity, human genome, light year, mass, microchip, microscope, online, radioactivity, radio telescope, search engine, solar system
2 Think about the answers to these questions.
a) How has science affected our lives in the last two hundred years? Think of:
communication, entertainment, housing, medicine, transport, war, work
b) Which of the changes in our lives have not been beneficial? Why?
c) In what areas do you think we need to do more research?
Work in pairs. Discuss these questions.
Before you start
1.Try to match the discoveries (1-5) with how they were discovered (a-e).
1) the equation e=mc²
2) Hubble’s law
3) penicillin
4) the first computer
5) the model of DNA
a) scientists worked together as a team
b) there was a lucky accident
c) a scientist observed something very carefully
d) a scientist had a moment of inspiration
e) scientists were competing to make a discovery
2. Read the text and check your guesses from Exercise 1.
Landmarks of Science
In the summer of 1905, a young man was sitting at home after day's work. While rocking his one-year-old baby, he thought something over. Suddenly, it came to him! The equation ‘e=mc²’ was born, an equation which would change our understanding of the universe but would help to create the nuclear bomb. Albert Einstein was aware of recent development such as Marie Curie's research into radioactivity, but he had been working on his own. His mould-breaking equation showed how a small piece of mass could produce an unbelievable amount of energy. Einstein then demonstrated in his 'theory of relativity' that not even time, mass or length are constant - they vary according to our perspective of them. For example, if we could see people moving at the speed of light, they would appear much heavier and larger and would seem to move in slow motion.
By the time Einstein had become world-famous, a young ex-lawyer returning from the First World War started work at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California. Using the most high-powered telescope of its time, he began a painstakingly, slow observation of nebulae, small patches of light that appeared outside our galaxy. Edwin Hubble was on the brink of making the greatest astronomical breakthrough of the century. He discovered that these nebulae were in fact galaxies like our own, millions of light years away from us, which proved that the universe larger than had previously been thought. Then, Hubble proved that the universe is actually expanding and that the further away galaxies are the faster they move.
Just before Hubble's Law was published in 1929, another far-reachingfinding was made by the son of a Scottish shepherd. Before going on holiday, he left a dish with bacteria near the window of his laboratory. When he came back, he was just about to throw the dish away when he noticed something out of the ordinary. He double-checked and saw a blue mould in the dish around which the bacteria had been destroyed. This blue mould was in fact the natural form of penicillin which Fleming realised was an effective way of killing bacteria. A few years later, penicillin was being mass-produced and helping to save the lives of millions. Despite the outcome of his discovery, Fleming remained modest and unassuming. 'Nature makes penicillin,' he said, 'I just found it’
During the Second World War when penicillin was first being used, the US Navy were looking for ways of improving the accuracy of their artillery shells, but this involved incredibly complex calculations. The navy turned to Eckert, an engineer, and Mauchly, a physicist to produce a machine to do the job. Although they and their team did not finish the machine until after the war, in February 1946, it did not matter. They had produced the world's first computer. Eniac (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) was huge, measuring 100 feet long by over 10 feet high and weighing over 30 tons. It contained 18,000 tubes and had more than 6,000 switches.
It consumed so much energy that whenit was turned on, the lights in the local town went dim. /However, it worked and it was the first programmable computer. The computer arrived too late to help in the next groundbreaking find. From the mid 1940s, biologists knew about a molecule that had an important role in passing on genetic information for all living things. However, they did not know how it worked and the race to find this out had begun. Then, two young scientists at Cambridge University saw the results of some studies by Rosalind Franklin. The last piece of the jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place. In 1953, Watson and Crick published their model of the DNA molecule. As a result, in 2000, after years of time-consuming and expensive research, using computerised data processing and despite many setbacks, the so-called 'genome' for human beings was discovered. The four chemicals in our DNA combine to produce a code that would fill, over 500,000 pages of a telephone directory and that contains information about our 100,000 genes. Already, this has helped doctors to cure some hereditary illnesses and the outlook for the future seems promising.
Are these statements true (T) or false (F) according to the text or is there no information (NI)?
1. Einstein was at work when he thought of the formula ‘e=mc²’.
2. Einstein participated in the programme that developed the nuclear bomb.
3. Einstein observed changes in time, size and mass.
4.Hubble studied the nebulae for over twenty years.
5. Hubble discovered that our galaxy is bigger than we thought it was.
6. Fleming had been studying bacteria in his laboratory when the discovery happened.
7. There was a blue mould around the bacteria in the dish.
8. Fleming developed the process for manufacturing penicillin.
9. The Eniac project failed to meet its original objective.
10. The Eniac computer was extremely difficult to program.
11. The code for a DNA molecule has over half a million letters in it.
12. The process of decoding the human genome was long and costly.
Speaking.
4.Work in pairs. Discuss these questions with your partner.
1. Which of the discoveries mentioned in the text has been the most important so far? Why?
2. Which discovery will have the most important consequences in the future? Why?
3. Which of the scientists in the text do you admire most? Why?
Which of the discoveries is the most difficult to understand?
Writing.
5. Write about the discovery which you think is the important one for people.