Donna Strickland was awarded the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics jointly with Arthur Ashkin and Gérard Mourou. It's the first time in 55 years that a woman has won this famous prize, but why has it taken so long? We look at five other pioneering female physicists—past and present—who actually deserve the prize.
Jocelyn Bell Burnell
Perhaps the most famous snub (冷落): thenstudent Bell discovered the first radio pulsars in 1967, when she was a PhD student at Cambridge. The Nobel Prize that recognised this landmark discovery in 1974, however, went to her male supervisor, Antony Hewish. Recently awarded a ￡ 2.3 million Breakthrough Prize, which she gave away to help underrepresented students, she joked to The Guardian, "I feel I've done very well out of not getting a Nobel Prize."
Lene Hau
Hau is bestknown for leading the research team at Harvard University in 1999 that managed to slow a beam of light, before managing to stop it completely in 2001. Often topping Nobel Prize prediction lists, could next year be Hau's year?
Vera Rubin
Rubin discovered dark matter in the 1980s, opening up a new field of astronomy. She died in 2016, without recognition from the committee.
ChienShiung Wu
Wu's "Wu experiment" helped disprove the "law of conservation of parity". Her experimental work was helpful but never honoured, and instead, her male colleagues won the 1957 Nobel Prize for their theoretical work behind the study.
Lise Meitner
Meitner led groundbreaking work on the discovery of nuclear fission(核裂变). However, the discovery was acknowledged by the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which was won by her male coleader, Otto Hahn.
Charles Darwin was a naturalist who described his findings in many papers and published works. The basis of his works was the theory of evolution (进化). Darwin pieced together information from his earliest studies to continuously expand upon the heart of his theory called "natural selection".
The root of Darwin's theory can be traced back to his time at the University of Edinburgh. There he first became interested in invertebrates (无脊椎动物) and the possibility that other creatures evolved from simpler organisms like them. Then in Christ's College in Cambridge, Darwin began to collect knowledge about plants and the earth.
Though Darwin began his life as a somewhat religious person, several ideas like the argument that nature was a process of "God's design" did not seem to match his rapidly increasing understanding of nature and geology. When the chance to contribute to his study as a naturalist on the HMS Beagle presented itself, Darwin was excited to undertake that role. Though the voyage lasted five years and was extremely difficult and tiring, it provided the basis of knowledge that Darwin would build upon to write his description of natural selection.
Darwin's time aboard the HMS Beagle and his time spent off the ship in South America were full of observation and collection. Apart from the creatures, Darwin explored the rise and fall of the land and grasped the massive time span (时间跨度) of the earth and the changes it had experienced as an environment during its time span.
Upon his return, Darwin worked for years to produce the first edition of his theory of natural selection in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species.
Darwin drew his theory from years of studies of various creatures including some extinct animals. It was paired with knowledge of geology and how the earth had evolved as an environment in which every living thing has existed.
In the future your automobile will run on water instead of gas! You will be able to buy a supercomputer that fits in your pocket! You might even drive a flying car!
Not all past predictions have been proven wrong. A few of them have been surprisingly accurate. Some great thinkers predicted the arrival of the credit card, the fax machine and even the Internet—years before they happened. But for each prediction that has come true, some others have missed by a mile. Many of these predictions didn't consider how people would want to use the technology or whether people really needed these hightech things in their lives or not. Let's look at some predictions from the nottoodistant past.
Robot helpers
Where's the robot in my kitchen? Nowhere, of course. And he's probably not coming anytime soon. Robots do exist today, but mostly in factories and other working environments.
Back in the 1950s, however, people said that by now personal robots would be in most people's homes.
So why hasn't it happened? Maybe because robots are still too expensive and clumsy. And probably the idea of robots cooking our dinners and washing our clothes is just too weird. At home we seem to be doing fine without them.
Telephones of tomorrow
In 1964 an American company introduced the video telephone. They said by the year 2000 most people would have a video phone in their homes. But of course the idea hasn't caught on yet.
Why? The technology worked fine, but it overlooked something obvious: people desire for privacy. Would you want to have a video phone conversation with someone after you just stepped out of the shower? Probably not—it could be uncomfortable! Just because technology doesn't always mean people will want to use it.
And finally, how about that crazy prediction of the flying car? It's not so crazy any more! But a flying car remains one of the most wonderful technology ideas to catch our imagination. Keep watching the news or perhaps the sky outside your window to see what the future will bring.
Electric cars are dirty. In fact, not only are they dirty, they might even be dirtier than their gasoline-powered cousins.
People in California love to talk about "zero-emissions vehicles", but people in California seem to be clueless about where electricity comes from. Power plants mostly use fire to make it. Aside from the new folks who have their roofs covered with solar cells, we get our electricity from generators (发电机). Generators are fueled by something—usually coal, oil, but also by heat generated in nuclear power plants. There are a few wind farms and geothermal (地热) plants as well, but by far we get electricity mainly by burning something.
In other words, those "zero-emissions" cars are likely coal-burning cars. It's just because the coal is burned somewhere else, it looks clean. It is not. It's as if the California Greens are covering their eyes—"If I can't see it, it's not happening." Gasoline is an incredibly efficient way to power a vehicle; a gallon of gas has a lot of energy in it. But when you take that gas (or another fuel) and first use it to make electricity, you waste a nice part of that energy, mostly in the form of wasted heat—at the generator, through the transmission lines, etc.
A gallon of gas may propel your car 25 miles. But the electricity you get from that gallon of gas won't get you as far. If our electricity came mostly from nukes or geothermal, or hydro or wind or solar, then an electric car truly would be clean. But for political, technical, and economic reasons, we don't use much of those energy sources.
In addition, electric cars' batteries which are poisonous for a long time will eventually end up in a landfill. And finally, when cars are the polluters, the pollution is spread across all the roads. When it's a power plant, though, all the junk is in one place. Nature is very good at cleaning up when things are too concentrated, but it takes a lot longer when all the garbage is in one spot.
Griffin Kubik spent two years at Chicago Waldorf preschool before his parents pulled the plug on his formal education. The 6-year-old now spends his days with his parents travelling in their newly purchased touring car. "." said Griffin's mom.
Griffin is one of about 3.5 million homeschooled children in the nation. This number has been growing by 3 to 8 percent each year, since 2012, according to the National Center for Education Statistics., ranging from parents' ideas to more practical issues including globally-focused families who don't want to tie their children to a set way of learning and school-based issues.. There are parents who teach kids at home loosely, and others who do a full homeschool program delivered by tutors and teachers in the home.
But homeschooling isn't problem-free. As public school teachers, Genola Johnson and her husband are homeschooling their children." . Besides, your child loses interest and is bored, which can be due to no social interaction (互动),'' Johnson said. "You have to find ways for them to socialize with their peers (同龄人) regardless of them having brothers or sisters at home."
. In the early years, parents may consider teaching their own children, but as they advance—or as the child needs classes or other opportunities for socializing—the fees can quickly add up.
A.Tasks can easily get out of control
B.Homeschooling is becoming more unacceptable
C.Homeschooling can also become very expensive
D.We suggest creating a schedule for homeschooling
E.That growing popularity can result from a number of things
F.Homeschooling can also be designed to fit a family's lifestyle
G.For our family, learning while travelling is of more benefit than going to school
The Internet can be a dark place. Readers generally don't show their true1 and thus feel free to leave bitter comments.
So2 , schoolteacher Decker in Florida felt worried when her son wanted to share her3 online. He posted a photo of Decker shyly holding her painting and wrote: "My mom painted this and said no one would be4 of it. It's her 2nd painting."
To Decker's surprise, more than 24,000 people praised her painting! An artist saw the photo and made a decision to express his5 for the mother by painting Decker carrying her painting. He even6 the shy look on her face. He then7 himself holding his painting of Decker with her painting and posted the image online.
Two days later, a journalism student8 her own picture of the artist holding his painting of Decker holding her painting online. Well, thus the Internet just stepped in and9 . More and more people joined in and10 the "fun". By this time, the paintings and pictures of paintings had got over one million people's attention online.
Instead of the11 remarks she was expecting, Decker said so many people were very friendly to her. She registered a social media account to12 their support. She wrote, "I was really13 I was going to read a lot of hateful comments. I was 14 . You all are sympathetic, caring, and a ton of fun! You all have15 me and strengthened my confidence. Thank you!"
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute is America's only (science) organization that investigates life on other planets. Project Phoenix, is SETI's main research project, uses the world's most advanced equipment to look at outer space. They look especially for signals on the microwave band from 1,000 MHz to 3,000 MHz, the band that researchers believe life on other plants could use to get touch with us.
Project Phoenix has not detected any extraterrestrial (外星的) signals yet. If an unusual signal is discovered, the scientists must be able (keep) track of it. In 1977, an unusual signal was heard at the Ohio State Radio Observatory. (unfortunate), the signal was irrelevant to life. The signal was never heard again. Nothing like this (happen) at SETI since then. In the (absent) of such signals, no one could tell whether there is any other life form out there in space. But what if SETI discovered a signal? Would they reply to the signal? Right now, SETI does not plan to reply to any signals they might discover. If they heard a signal, the nations of the Earth would have to decide whether not to reply. This means senders of signal may never know the Earth received their signal. Also, it's never easy to send signals back. The receivers would be very far away, and it (take) many years for the signals to travel to them.
Alice had just been appointed in the multinational bank. After one month of severe training, today was her first day to go to work.
She got up a bit earlier than usual, and decided to skip her gym workout as she did not want to risk being tired or getting late to her office on her first day. She went through her morning routine and spent a lot of time in selecting what to wear. None of her dresses seemed to appeal to her—they were either a little too casual or too dull and she definitely wanted to make an impression right from the start. Finally she settled on the white embroidered (刺绣的) dress.
She waved bye to her mom and set off cheerfully towards the bus stop. But she saw a bus leaving the stop just as she crossed the street. Now she would have to wait for a good 15 minutes. 15 minutes passed and then 30 minutes and there was no sign of the bus. "It must be stuck in heavy traffic", a kind lady who was also waiting for the bus told her. Hearing that, Alice got anxious. She had to reach her office on time. Then she saw a taxi approaching but when she tried to stop it, the taxi driver sped by without even taking a glance at her. Alice was wondering what she could do.
It was then that a car stopped near her and a man waved to her. The driver asked her where she was going and after Alice told him that she was going to the bank at Nariman Point, the man said "Oh, my office is in the nearby building. Can I give you a lift?" Alice hesitated for a moment and got into the car. They exchanged names and began to talk for a while. Then the driver switched on the radio and was absorbed in the song. Alice looked out of the window and imagined her first day at work, worrying whether she was capable of the new job, and if she could get along well with her colleagues. After about ten minutes, Alice realized they were not on the familiar route to her office.
注意：1.续写词数应为150左右； 2.请按如下格式在答题卡的相应位置作答。
She began to worry that she might get into the car of a bad man.
……
Then the car turned around a corner and Alice saw the tall building where her office was unexpectedly.
