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Magazine Article - Physics
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/physics
Introduction
This support pack accompanies the magazine article:
Physics
To read or listen to the article online, go to:
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/
physics
This support pack contains the following materials:
•
a pre-reading vocabulary activity;
•
the article;
•
a comprehension task
Before you read / listen
Match the words and phrases in the table to their definitions.
1. strenuous
2. recollections
3. right angle
4. mass
6. fuzzy
7. constants
8. quark
9. tiny
5. particle
accelerators
10. crouching
down
Definitions:
a. Amount of matter in a solid object
b. One of the most basic forms of matter
c.
Neither true nor false
d. With bent knees and close to the ground
e. Descriptions of memories
f.
Very small
g. Numbers or amounts that never change
h. 90º space where two lines touch
i.
Machines making small pieces of matter move at high speed
j.
Requiring a lot of strength
© The British Council, 2010
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.
Page 1 of 3
Magazine Article - Physics
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/physics
Article: Physics by John Kuti
School days are supposed to be the best days
of your life and part of that experience usually
involves some strenuous physical activity. Here
are some recollections of what happened on the
sports field…
In the square outside the British Library in
London is a sculpture of Sir Isaac Newton - The
first man who asked why apples seem always to
fall towards the centre of the earth. Maybe they
chose it for the spot because it shows a great
scientist at work. Actually, it is a critical view of
a great scientist, which comes originally from a
drawing by William Blake, the romantic poet and
artist. Blake wanted to show the limits of
science, that it could never understand the
beauty and strangeness of nature. The
sculpture shows a man crouching down to draw
a right-angle on the ground or to measure
something he can’t see. Maybe he’s trying to
find the direction to the centre of the earth. In
Blake’s original you can see strange
complicated rocks around Newton that he does
not seem interested in studying.
A lot of things in the universe can be measured,
but people want to know why they are that size.
We know the mass of a quark and the charge
on an electron. These are constants. It turns out
that these numbers HAVE to be exactly what
they are, because if they were different we
would not be here. You, me and the physicists,
we’re part of the universe. We have to be here
to make physics, so physics has to describe a
universe where there can be people. Gravity is
another problem for physics - because it is
everywhere and acts on everything, including
space itself. It’s different from other forces like
electricity or radiation, because you can’t stop it
or turn it off.
Modern physicists still look mostly at things we
can’t see. (They think gravity might happen
because of something no-one has ever
detected called the Higg’s boson.) Either very
small things in quantum physics or very big
things like galaxies. Putting them together is the
main problem of modern physics. The universe
and space and time described by Einstein and
the fuzzy fast-moving little sub-atomic particles
and small things that might make them up. If
you want to know how the universe began - with
a tiny size but very big mass, then you need a
theory that fits both together. At the moment,
the theory suggests that the things we can see
– stars and planets etc. make up only 5% of the
universe. The rest is 25% “dark matter” and
70% “dark energy”.
A theory that could explain all that would be a
‘theory of everything” - the real laws of nature.
There are already suggestions of what it might
be. Scientists think that the laws of nature might
be rather simple, even though the real world is
full of strange and beautifully complicated
things. One suggestion is called “string theory”,
the idea is that inside every particle there is
some energy that is like the string of a musical
instrument – the way it vibrates makes a
different sort of particle. At the moment they say
there are 18 sorts.
Physicists say that string theory needs extra
dimensions. There are other directions where
energy can get carried away, and other particles
which no one has seen. They try to find them in
particle accelerators where protons go round in
circles in tunnels getting faster and faster until
they reach almost exactly the speed of light.
This year the Large Hadron Collider should start
work in Switzerland and it is just possible that
they will find the Higg’s boson, or even the little
strings inside it. In 2005, there are also still
poets and romantics who would prefer to look
for nature’s secrets in other places.
© The British Council, 2010
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.
Page 2 of 3
Magazine Article - Physics
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/magazine/physics
Comprehension task
True or false
Read the questions below and select the right answer.
1. We know there are ________ things that can't be measured.
a. a lot of
b. mostly
c. full
2. Gravity is ________ other forces because we don't know how it works.
a. almost exactly
b. different from
c. part of
3. Physicists ________ study things that we can't see.
a. other
b. mostly
c. small
4. Quantum physics is a science of very ________ things.
a. extra
b. a lot of
c. small
5. String theory says there must be ________ dimensions.
a. another
b. other
c. others
6. The constants in physics are ________ what they should be.
a. exactly
b. particularly
c. occasionally
7. Gravity is ________ problem for physics.
a. another
b. other
c. others
8. Uniting quantum theory and relativity is the ________ problem of modern physics.
a. mostly
b. main
c. exactly
9. The real world is ________ of strange and beautiful things.
a. part
b. different
c. full
10. We are ________ of the universe.
a. part
b. full
c. main
Answers
© The British Council, 2010
The United Kingdom’s international organisation for educational opportunities and cultural relations. We are registered in England as a charity.
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