新西兰出生的年轻人欧内斯特•卢瑟福与一位名叫弗雷德里克•索迪的同事一起发现了放射性元素的半衰期。只要计算出一种物质现在有多少放射量,在以多快的速度衰变,你就可以推算出它的年龄。卢瑟福测试了一块沥青铀矿石--铀的主要矿石--发现它已经有7亿年--比大多数人认为的地球的年龄还要古老~~~

❤《万物简史》推出部落节目版,戳这里订阅:http://bulo.hujiang.com/menu/6004/




书本的朗读语音很charming的磁性英音~~~大家可以好好学着模仿哦~~~!!
因为原著为美国人所写,单词采用美式拼法,不抄全文,也不用写序号。答完一空换行继续下一空作答。文中需听写单词或词组用[-No-]表示,句子用[---No---]表示。请边听写边理解文意,根据下面的TIPS训练听写。这样可以提高听力准确度,并为训练听译打下基础哦~~~


TIPS听写训练点:单词拼写,时态,单复数,连读,长难句(请边听边用符号先记下内容,然后自己回头组织语句,最后校对,不要逐字逐句听写)



Hints:
pragmatist
half-life



At McGill University in Montreal the young New Zealand–born Ernest Rutherford became interested in the new [-1-] materials. With a colleague named Frederick Soddy he discovered that [-2-] reserves of energy were bound up in these small amounts of matter, [---3---]. They also discovered that radioactive elements decayed into other elements—that one day you had an atom of uranium, say, and the next you had an atom of lead. This was truly extraordinary. It was alchemy, [-4-]; no one had ever imagined that such a thing could happen naturally and spontaneously.

[-5-], Rutherford was the first to see that there could be a valuable practical application in this. He noticed that in any sample of radioactive material, it always took the same amount of time for half the sample to decay—[-6-]—and that this steady, reliable rate of decay could be used as a kind of clock. [---7---] He tested a piece of pitchblende, the principal ore of uranium, and found it to be 700 million years old—[---8---]



radioactive immense and that the radioactive decay of these reserves could account for most of the Earth's warmth pure and simple Ever the pragmatist the celebrated half-life By calculating backwards from how much radiation a material had now and how swiftly it was decaying, you could work out its age. very much older than the age most people were prepared to grant the Earth.
在蒙特利尔的麦克吉尔大学,新西兰出生的年轻人欧内斯特•卢瑟福对新的放射性材料产生了兴趣。他与一位名叫弗雷德里克•索迪的同事一起,发现很少量的物质里就储备着巨大的能量,地球的大部分热量都来自这种储备的放射衰变。他们还发现放射性元素衰变成别的元素--比如,今天你手里有一个铀原子,明天它就成了一个铅原子。这的确是非同寻常的。这是地地道道的炼金术;过去谁也没有想到这样的事儿会自然而自发地发生。   卢瑟福向来是个实用主义者,第一个从中看到了宝贵的实用价值。他注意到,无论哪种放射物质,其一半衰变成其他元素的时间总是一样的--著名的半衰期--这种稳定而可靠的衰变速度可以用做一种时钟。只要计算出一种物质现在有多少放射量,在以多快的速度衰变,你就可以推算出它的年龄。他测试了一块沥青铀矿石--铀的主要矿石--发现它已经有7亿年--比大多数人认为的地球的年龄还要古老。