Unit 08 Sciencs and Us

Unit 8 Page 74 READING exercise 5 Curious minds What makes a great scientist? Maybe it's hard work or an interest in understanding how the world works? Yes, these things are important. But one thing that many scientists have in common is that they like to observe – watch – the world carefully. Whether it was Newton watching the apple fall from the tree, or Archimedes watching the water spill out from his bath, scientists like to watch things happen and then start thinking 'why?' Then they investigate a little bit more and what they discover tells us more about the world we live in. Two of the 18th century's greatest discoveries started in exactly this way. One day in 1748, 12-year-old James Watt was sitting in the kitchen, when his aunt started to heat water in a kettle. He was watching the kettle boil, when the lid began to jump up and down. He was curious about it and decided to experiment. He held the lid of the kettle down and noticed that the steam came out of the spout. When he took his hand away, the lid started moving again. James realised that the steam had great power. It was an experiment he never forgot, and years later, he used the ideas to improve the design of the first steam engine. Another scientist whose observations changed the world was Edward Jenner. Back in the late 1700s, there was a terrible disease called smallpox. It killed many people and left many others with horrible injuries. It was an awful disease and there was no cure. Jenner wanted to do something to help fight the disease. One day he was watching some women working on a farm. The women were getting milk from the cows. While he was watching the women, Jenner had an idea. He knew that fewer people caught smallpox in the countryside than in the city. He also knew that people who worked with cows often caught a disease called cowpox. Cowpox was a less serious disease than smallpox. It made people ill, but didn't kill anybody. Jenner started to wonder if getting cowpox stopped people from getting smallpox. He decided to test his ideas with the help of a very brave boy called James Phipps. He took some cowpox disease and gave it to James. James caught cowpox and was ill, but got better soon afterwards. Then, Jenner gave James smallpox. Thankfully, James never developed the disease. Jenner's discovery was very important for two reasons. First, because Jenner discovered a way of stopping the spread of smallpox, and second, because he created the world's first vaccine. Since Jenner's discovery, vaccines have been used around the world and have saved millions of lives.

Page 77 LISTENING exercise 8 and 9 OK, everyone, quiet now. So, today we're going to focus on the importance of science and how it helps us challenge the way we think about the world and helps us explain how it works. Over the years science has helped change many of the things that people have wrongly believed about the world. For example, as I'm sure you all know, many people used to think that our planet was the centre of the universe. Everybody believed that the sun, the stars and all the other planets moved around the Earth. It was something they believed in places as far apart as ancient Greece and China. You can understand why they thought that by simply looking up at the night sky. We seem to be in the middle of it all. It wasn't until the sixteenth century when people like Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler discovered that the sun was the centre of our universe. OK. So, what other things did people use to believe that we now know aren't true? Yes, Jessica. Did people use to believe that the Earth was flat, too? Yes, they did. Thanks, Jessica. Sailors used to be afraid of sailing out too far into the sea. They thought they'd fall off the Earth and into space. And you can understand why when you look out to sea. One of the things that Christopher Columbus, the explorer, did was proving that the Earth was round. How did he do that? He sailed around the world and he didn't fall off into space! I mean, these things seem crazy to us today, but you have to remember, people didn't use to have all the scientific equipment we have these days. They had to make up their ideas about how things worked from what they could see around them. Paul. Have you got a question? What about alchemists? Are they another example? Yes, another very good example. Alchemists believed, among other things, that other metals could be turned into gold. It started in ancient Egypt where early scientists discovered you could take a substance, sand for example, and turn into another completely different one – glass in the case of sand. This led to people believing there was a way of changing almost anything into something else. In those days, gold was a symbol of great wealth and that's why so many people wanted the alchemists to be right. Yes, Daniel. So do you think we now know everything there is to know about the world? No, Daniel. Not at all. Our understanding of the world is changing all the time. Just because we believe something is true these days doesn't mean it definitely is. Maybe one day people will look back at the things we believed and have a good laugh about us. Page 77 PRONUNCIATION exercise 1 Hello, Stewart! How are you? You used to be one of my best students! Hello, Mrs Jones. I'm studying music and computing at university now. Music and computing! Isn't that an unusual combination? Not really, in the future I'd like to write music programs for computers. It's really new technology and very exciting. Page 77 PRONUNCIATION exercise 3 Hello, Stewart! How are you? You used to be one of my best students! Hello, Mrs Jones. I'm studying music and computing at university now. Music and computing! Isn't that an unusual combination? Not really, in the future I'd like to write music programs for computers. It's really new technology and very exciting.

Page 78 READING exercise 4 We asked you, our readers, 'What invention or discovery would make your life better?' Here are some of your answers. A clone. If I had a clone of myself, I would have so much more time. I'd send my clone to do all the boring stuff I don't like doing. He would take all my exams and he would wait in all those long boring queues for me. That would leave me more time to do the things I really want to do. Oliver I wish someone would find a way to stop me feeling tired in the mornings. It doesn't matter what time I go to bed, I never want to get out of bed the next morning, even at the weekends when I don't have to get up early for school. I'd stay in bed until the afternoon if I could. Life without an alarm clock – that would be perfect! Eve I wish I had a super-quick travel machine like they have in the Star Trek films. You know what I mean, a machine that could transport me anywhere in the world in seconds. So, imagine you're in one place. You enter some coordinates into the machine and two seconds later you're there. For example, you could have breakfast in Italy, visit the Amazon in the morning and spend the afternoon at the South Pole. If there was a machine like that, I'd visit the whole world. Matthew I want to be a scientist when I grow up, so the thing that I would like most is a huge laboratory underneath my house. A secret one that only I knew about. Down there I'd do lots of research and experiments. Then I would invent lots of different things that would make peoples' lives better, like cures for diseases. If anyone can help make my dream come true, please get in touch. Aimee

Page 80 Culture exercise 2 AMAZING INVENTIONS FROM ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS Throughout history, humankind has progressed thanks to amazing inventions and discoveries. Some of the inventions we use in our everyday life are a lot older than you might think. Here are four of them. 1 Nanotechnology – Ancient Italy The Lycurgus Cup is a beautifully decorated glass cup that was made in Italy in the fourth century. For years, it confused scientists because it seems to change colour. When light shines through it from the front, it looks green, but when it shines from the back, it appears red. In the 1990s, scientists looked at the glass under a microscope. They discovered something amazing. Whoever had made the glass had used tiny pieces of gold and silver. Some of these pieces measured 50 nanometres across – about one – thousandth the size of a piece of salt. It is these tiny pieces that make the cup change colour. The Lycurgus Cup shows that the ancient Romans were using nanotechnology more than 1,600 years ago. 2 Earthquake detector – Ancient China More than 2,000 years ago, an inventor called Zhang Heng built the world's first earthquake detector. The machine was a large metal vase on which there were eight dragon heads. The dragons marked the eight points of a compass, and each one had a metal ball in its mouth. Below each dragon head, there was a metal frog. When the machine detected tremors in the earth, one of the dragons (facing in the direction of the tremor) would drop its ball into the mouth of the frog that sat below it. This made a loud noise that warmed people of the earthquake. The machine could detect earthquakes hundreds of kilometres away. 3 Electricity – Iraq In 1936, during some excavations in an ancient village near Baghdad, an archaeologist found some unusual clay pots. The pots were more than 2,000 years old. Hanging inside each pot was a copper cylinder and inside this cylinder was a piece of iron. Nobody knew why somebody had made these pots with metal inside, but the archaeologist thought that they could be some sort of early battery. A few years later American scientists made copies of the pots. They discovered that the original theory was right: they could make electricity. But why? What did people use this electricity for? That is the great mystery of this discovery. 4 The calendar – Ancient Scotland Very early calendars from ancient civilizations have been found in many countries around the world. But archaeologists believe that they have discovered a calendar in Scotland that is 10,000 years old. It was made by Stone Age Britons, who used it from 8000 BCE to 4000 BCE. The calendar was made of 12 pits dug into the ground. The pits represented the months of the year and were laid out in a long line that was 50 metres long. The Ancient Britons would measure time using the sun and the moon. This ancient calendar used both to keep track of the days, weeks and months of the year.

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