25 Slow Motion Taking Your Time

CHAPTER 1 What Moves Slowly? ARE YOU BUSY TODAY? ARE YOU RUNNING FROM PLACE TO PLACE? ARE THERE FAST-MOVING CARS ON THE ROADS AND FAST-MOVING PLANES IN THE SKY? Our world is moving and changing all the time. Some changes are very fast; for example, after a lot of rain a fast-moving river can wash away land. But not everything moves quickly. Some changes take millions of years. You can't see these slow changes— but they are happening every day, every week, every year. It's the same in the plant world. Some things grow quickly, and some grow very slowly. The oldest living tree in the United States is a 5,000-year-old pine tree in California, named Methuselah. It's a very slow-growing tree! Some animals also grow slowly and they move slowly, too. When you're moving quickly from place to place, think about Jonathan. He's a tortoise, and he lives on St. Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean. Jonathan is about 178 years old— he's the oldest tortoise in the world. He lives his life very slowly. He doesn't move quickly. He takes all day to eat his food. Maybe moving slowly helps him live longer. So, stop your busy, fast-moving life for a second. Think about all things slow.

第一章什么运动得慢？ 你今天忙吗？你从一个地方跑到另一个地方？ 道路上有快速行驶的汽车，天空中有快速飞行的飞机吗？ 我们的世界一直在移动和变化。 有些变化非常快；例如，大雨过后，湍急的河流会冲走土地。 但并非所有事情都进展迅速。 有些变化需要数百万年的时间。 你看不到这些缓慢的变化——但它们每天、每周、每年都在发生。 在植物界也是一样。 有些东西长得很快，有些长得很慢。 美国现存最古老的树是加州一棵5000岁的松树，名叫玛土撒拉。 这是一棵生长非常缓慢的树！有些动物也长得很慢，移动也很慢。 当你从一个地方快速移动到另一个地方时，想想乔纳森。 他是一只乌龟，他住在圣。 在南大西洋的海伦娜。 乔纳森大约178岁了，他是世界上最老的乌龟。 他过得很慢。 他行动迟缓。他吃东西要花上一整天。 也许慢慢行动能让他活得更久。 所以，暂时停止你忙碌、快节奏的生活吧。 慢慢想所有的事情。

CHAPTER 2 Slow Water WATER CAN MOVE VERY QUICKLY. WE SEE IT RUNNING DOWN MOUNTAINS, IN RIVERS AFTER RAIN, AND IN THE OCEAN IN BAD WEATHER. BUT WATER CAN MOVE VERY SLOWLY, TOO. When there are no mountains and the land is flat, the water in a river moves more slowly and gets warmer. You can see this in the Everglades in Florida. The Everglades is the name of a large piece of land that is almost flat. In some places, there is some land above the water. In other places, the land is a little below the water. Water travels through the Everglades to the ocean very, very slowly. The Everglades has hot weather and warm, slow water. So it is a good place to live for many different plants, animals, and birds. There are so many plants that some people call the Everglades the "River of Grass." Alligators love the Everglades. These animals can swim in water and walk on land. They can find a lot of food here fish, birds, and other animals. Alligators don't like people. They move away from them. But don't get too near to these big, strong animals and their long teeth. Or they may eat you!

水可以流动得很快。 我们看到水从山上流下来，雨后流进河里，天气不好时流进海里。 但是水也可以移动得很慢。 当没有山脉，地势平坦时，河水的流动速度就会变慢，温度也会变暖。 你可以在佛罗里达的大沼泽地看到这一点。 大沼泽地是一大片几乎平坦的土地的名字。 在一些地方，水面上有一些陆地。 在其他地方，陆地略低于水面。 水从沼泽地流入海洋的速度非常非常慢。 大沼泽地天气炎热，水流缓慢温暖。 所以它是许多不同植物、动物和鸟类生活的好地方。 这里有很多植物，有些人把沼泽地称为“草之河”。 短吻鳄喜欢大沼泽地。 这些动物能在水里游泳，也能在陆地上行走。 他们可以在这里找到很多食物鱼，鸟和其他动物。 鳄鱼不喜欢人。 他们会远离他们。但是不要太靠近这些大而强壮的动物和它们的长牙齿。 否则它们会吃掉你！

Florida is very warm. The water there moves slowly— but it does move. Travel up to Alaska, and you're going to see very different slow-moving water. The water there moves slowly because it's ice! There are more than 100,000 glaciers in Alaska. Many people think they are ice mountains. They're not— they are rivers of ice. This ice moves all the time. Most glaciers move about 0.3 meters a day but can move as fast as 31 meters in one day! What makes these slow-moving glaciers? In cold weather, water comes down from the clouds as snow. The top layer of snow is heavy. It makes the lower layers of snow into hard ice. Ice in high places slowly moves down to the ocean. Some glaciers are so small you can walk over them in one or two hours. But others are very big. The biggest glacier in the world, the Lambert Glacier in Antarctica, is more than 40 kilometers wide and more than 400 kilometers long! It's possible that one day soon the world is going to get warmer. Then the slow-moving glaciers are going to change into fast-moving rivers again. Alaska and the Everglades are very different places. But they are both places where there is a lot of slow-moving water.

佛罗里达非常温暖。那里的水流动缓慢——但它确实在流动。 前往阿拉斯加，你会看到非常不同的缓慢流动的水。 那里的水流动缓慢，因为是冰！阿拉斯加有超过十万个冰川。 许多人认为它们是冰山。 它们不是，它们是冰河。 这些冰一直在移动。 大多数冰川每天移动0.3米，但一天可以移动31米！是什么造就了这些缓慢移动的冰川？ 在寒冷的天气里，水以雪的形式从云层中降下来。 顶层的雪很厚。 它使下层的雪变成坚硬的冰。 高处的冰慢慢地向海洋移动。 有些冰川非常小，你可以在一两个小时内走过去。 但是其他的都很大。世界上最大的冰川，南极洲的兰伯特冰川，宽40多公里，长400多公里！有可能不久的某一天，世界会变暖。 然后缓慢移动的冰川将再次变成快速移动的河流。 阿拉斯加和大沼泽地是非常不同的地方。 但这两个地方都有很多缓慢流动的水。

CHAPTER 3 Slow Land IT'S NOT ONLY WATER THAT MOVES SLOWLY. THE LAND UNDER OUR FEET IS MOVING VERY SLOWLY, TOO. Think about a mountain on a very wet and windy day. The wind and the water break small pieces from the rocks. These pieces move down the mountain. Maybe they fall into a river. Very, very slowly, they cover the water, and the water goes under the land. The river becomes land. This is a big change and it takes millions of years. Under the land, there are more changes. More than 300 million years ago, trees and plants covered a lot of the world. These trees and plants died, and the land covered them. Very slowly, the trees and plants changed into coal. It takes a long time for the land to change. We can't see the mountains move. We can't see trees change into coal. But we can see things that move slowly in the plant and animal worlds.

第三章缓慢的陆地移动缓慢的不仅仅是水。 我们脚下的土地也在缓慢移动。 想象一下，在一个非常潮湿和刮风的日子里，一座山。 风和水把岩石打得粉碎。 这些碎片往山下移动。 也许他们掉进河里了。 非常非常缓慢地，它们覆盖了水面，然后水就流到了陆地下面。 这条河变成了陆地。这是一个巨大的变化，需要数百万年的时间。 在土地之下，有更多的变化。 3亿多年前，树木和植物覆盖了世界的大部分地区。 这些树木和植物死了，土地覆盖了它们。 慢慢地，树木和植物变成了煤。 土地的变化需要很长时间。 我们看不到山在移动。 我们看不到树木变成煤。 但是我们可以在植物和动物的世界里看到移动缓慢的东西。

Look at the trees near you. Some grow very quickly, but others take hundreds of years to get big and tall. The world's slowest-growing tree is a White Cedar in Canada. After 155 years, it was only 10.2 cm tall! Interestingly, many slow-growing trees live longer than fast-growing trees. It's the same for animals. Remember Jonathan the tortoise? Tortoises move slowly because they have heavy, hard shells on their backs and short, fat legs. They don't need to run away from other animals because these shells make them safe. And they don't need to move quickly to catch their food because they eat plants and other slow-moving animals. The world's slowest animal is the sloth. Sloths live in trees and they sleep a lot up to 20 hours a day. When they're not sleeping, they don't move much! They stay in trees and get most of their food and water from the plants and fruit near them. When they come down from the trees and want to go to another place, they move about two meters a minute only 120 meters in an hour. We walk about five kilometers in an hour. So, not everything in the world wants to move fast!

看看你附近的树。 有些长得很快，但有些则需要数百年才能长得又大又高。 世界上生长最慢的树是加拿大的白雪松。 155年后，它只有10.2厘米高！有趣的是，许多生长缓慢的树木比生长迅速的树木寿命更长。 动物也是一样。 还记得乌龟乔纳森吗？ 乌龟行动缓慢，因为它们背上有又重又硬的壳，腿又短又胖。 它们不需要逃离其他动物，因为这些壳让它们很安全。 它们不需要快速移动来捕捉食物，因为它们吃植物和其他行动缓慢的动物。 世界上最慢的动物是树懒。 树懒生活在树上，它们每天要睡20个小时。 当他们不睡觉的时候，他们不怎么动！它们呆在树上，从附近的植物和水果中获取大部分的食物和水。 当它们从树上下来，想去另一个地方时，它们大约每分钟移动两米，一小时移动120米。 我们一小时走大约五公里。 所以，并不是世界上所有的东西都想要快速移动！

CHAPTER 4 Slow Sky WATCH A BIRD OR A PLANE FLY ABOVE YOUR HEAD. THEY MOVE VERY QUICKLY, DON'T THEY? BUT NOT ALL FLYING THINGS ARE SO FAST. Every year, millions of people fly between cities and countries because a plane is much faster than a car or train. But some people don't want to fly quickly. They want to know the land below. To really see it, you need to fly slowly. You can't see much from a fast airplane high above the clouds. A hot air balloon is better! The wind moves these balloons. If the wind is not strong, they move very slowly through the sky. In France in 1783, brothers Jacques and Joseph Montgolfier were the first people to travel in a hot air balloon. In 1785, Jean Pierre Blanchard and an American, John Jeffries, flew from England to France in a hot air balloon. Their balloon started to go down into the ocean. They threw everything heavy out of the balloon into the water below. But the balloon didn't go up. They took off their clothes and threw them into the water! The balloon moved up into the sky again. It took them 2.5 hours to travel less than 40 kilometers. Now it only takes seven hours to fly from New York to London— and that's more than 5,500 kilometers!

第四章缓慢的天空观察一只鸟或一架飞机从你的头顶飞过。 它们移动得很快，不是吗？ 但并不是所有的飞行器都这么快。 每年，数以百万计的人在城市和国家之间飞行，因为飞机比汽车或火车快得多。 但是有些人不想飞得很快。 他们想知道下面的土地。 要真正看到它，你需要慢慢飞。 在云层之上快速飞行的飞机上，你看不清多少东西。 热气球更好！风吹动这些气球。 如果风不强，它们在天空中移动得很慢。 1783年在法国，雅克和约瑟夫·蒙戈菲兄弟是第一个乘坐热气球旅行的人。 1785年，让·皮埃尔·布兰查德和美国人约翰·杰弗里斯乘坐热气球从英国飞往法国。 他们的气球开始往海里掉。 他们把所有重的东西从气球里扔到下面的水中。 但是气球没有上升。 他们脱下衣服扔进了水里！气球又升上了天空。 他们花了2.5个小时才走了不到40公里。 现在从纽约飞到伦敦只需要7个小时，距离超过5500公里！