Unit III scientists (famous people)

prepared by

Marina Berezina

e-mail: [e-mail]

Lesson 1

The lesson plan

1. Lead-in (10 min)

2. Active vocabulary; prereading discussion (15 min)

3. Reading (10 min)

4. Reading comprehension (10 min)

5. Listening (20 min)

6. On/Off-line. Speaking practice. Work in groups (25 min)

7. Homework

LEAD-IN

We tried to give more additional materials, than necessary, in order to help the teachers to make the lesson more attractive and interesting.

These are the photos of:

Alexander Graham Bell – the inventor of the telephone. He was born in Edinburgh (1847 – 1922), then moved to the USA. It was on the 10^th of March, 1876, when A. Bell invented the telephone. He worked with his friend Watson. In 1915, the first transcontinental line was opened.

T. Polyakova, E. Sinyavskaya, Moscow, 2007

Sofia Krukovsky Kovalevskaya was born in Moscow (1850 – 1891). An extraordinary woman, Sofia Kovalevskaya was not only a great Russian mathematician, but also a writer and advocate of women's rights in the 19th century. It was her struggle to obtain the best education available which began to open doors at universities to women. In addition, her ground-breaking work in mathematics made her male counterparts reconsider their archaic notions of women's inferiority to men in such scientific arenas.

Becky Wilson, Class of 1997 (Agnes Scott College);

Popular Dictionary Europedia, Moscow, Olma-Press, 2003).

Albert Einstein (1879 -1955) one of the most famous scientists in the world, whose Theory of Relativity brought him fame of five continents, was slow, shy and backward in his childhood. He found it extremely difficult to learn even to talk. He was born in Germany, lived in Switzerland, then moved to the USA. Mrs. Einstein said that her husband liked order in his thinking, but he didn’t like it in his living. He did whatever he wanted to, whenever he wanted to, he had only two rules of conduct. The first was: don’t have any rules whatever. And the second was: be independent of the opinions of others. In 1921 he became a Nobel Prize Winner for the discovery of the Photoeffects Laws.

T. Polyakova, E. Sinyavskaya, Moscow, 2007;

Popular Dictionary Europedia, Moscow, Olma-Press, 2003).

Thomas Alva Edison (1847 – 1931) is known as one of the greatest American inventors. He invented so much that it is difficult to say which of his achievements is the greatest. He was an experimenter and a practical man more than a theoretician. He improved Bell’s telephone, organized the first world electrostation in New-York in 1882, etc.).

(Popular Dictionary Europedia, Moscow, Olma-Press, 2003).

Marie Sklodovska Curie, the greatest woman – scientist of her day, was born in Warsaw, in 1867. The daughter of a teacher of science and mathematics in a school in the town she wished to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. She finally left her native land in 1891 and began a course of hard study and simple life in Paris. After she obtained her Master’s Degree in Physics and Mathematics, she wished to obtain a Doctor’s degree. Pierre Curie, her husband, joined her in the effort to find the unknown chemical element, which they called “radium”, because it was more strongly radioactive than any known metal. In 1903 they together with Henry Becquerel were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1911 Marie received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. So Mme. Sklodovska-Curie has become the first person to receive a Nobel Prize twice.

T. Polyakova, E. Sinyavskaya, Moscow, 2007;

Popular Dictionary Europedia, Moscow, Olma-Press, 2003)

Rudolf Diesel was a German engineer. He was born in 1858 and died in 1913. In 1897 he invented a new internal combustion engine. The engine is known as a diesel and it began a transport revolution in cars, trucks, trains and ships. The main advantage of diesels is that they run on rather cheap fuel.

T. Polyakova, E. Sinyavskaya, Moscow, 2007

Then ask students to read the names of these people and match their names on the left with profession on the right.

Alexander Bell an inventor

Sofia Kovalevskaya a mathematician

Thomas Edison an inventor

Albert Einstein a scientist, a physicist

Marie Curie a physicist

Pyotr Kapitsa a physicist, a scientist

Rudolf Diesel an engineer

ACTIVE VOCABULARY

Ask students to guess the meaning of the following words and word combinations, giving them synonyms or close meanings of them:

Prominent, to be expelled, fortress, science, scientist, scientific, founder, nuclear, to establish, incredible, to devote to, to defend, defence, entirely, technology, common knowledge, device, valve, to transmit, to prove, to disprove, capable, to list.

prominent–well-known(хорошо известный, выдающийся);

to be expelled – to be officially forced to leave a place, organization, or school, for example, because of their bad behaviour (быть исключенным, изгнанным);

fortress – a strong building that is used by soldiers for defending a place (крепость);

science – the study and knowledge of the physical world and its behaviour, that is based on experiments and facts and is organized into a system (наука);

scientist – someone who is trained in science, especially someone whose job is to do scientific research (ученый);

scientific – relating to science, or based on the methods of science (научный);

founder – someone who starts an organization or institution (основатель, учредитель);

nuclear – relating to energy that is produced by changing the structure of the central part of an atom=atomic; nuclear power/energy (ядерный);

to establish – to make something to start to exist or start to happen; to start an organisation or a company (oсновать,учредить);

incredible – 1)surprising or difficult to believe, 2) great, extreme, or extremely good (невероятный);

to devote to – to spend a lot of time or effort doing something (посвятить) ;

to defend – to protect someone or something (защищать);

defence – protection (защита);

entirely – completely, or in every way (всецело);

technology – advanced scientific knowledge that is used for practical purposes, especially in industry (технология, техника);

common knowledge – something that everyone knows (общеизвестный);

device – a machine or piece of equipment that does a particular job (прибор, устройство);

valve – something that opens and closes in order to control the flow of the air or liquid (лампа);

to transmit – to send an electronic signal such as a radio or telephone signal (передавать);

to prove – to provide evidence that shows that something is true (доказать);

to disprove – to prove that something is not correct or true (опровергнуть);

capable of(doing)smth. – able to do something (способный к чему-либо);

to list – to mention or write things one after another (вносить в список).

Macmillan Essential Dictionary, International Student Edition.

READING

Prereading discussion

This is the photo of one of the most famous Russian physicists Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa (1894 – 1984) who discovered superfluidity with contribution from John F. Allen and Don Misener in 1937, the founder of the Institute of Physical Problems in Moscow. The Institute was built according to a plan which had been drawn by Kapitsa himself with equipment purchased by the Soviet Government from the Mond Laboratory in Cambridge with the assistance of Ernest Rutherford, once it was clear that Kapitsa would not be permitted to return to England.

He was appointed Director of the Institute, named after him. Kapitsa was also one of the founders of Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

After the war, P. Kapitsa began to work in an entirely new field of science and technology - high-power electronics.

Kapitsa won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1978 for his work in low temperature physics. He shared the prize with Arno Allan Penzias and Robert Woodrow Wilson (who won for unrelated work).

Kapitsa was born in the city of Kronstadt, and graduated from the Petrograd Polytechnical Institute in 1918. He worked in the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge with Ernest Rutherford for over 10 years, was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1929, and was the first director of the Mond Laboratory from 1930 to 1934. During this period, he originated techniques for creating ultrastrong magnetic fields by injecting high currents into specially constructed air-core electromagnets for brief periods of time. In 1934 he developed a new and original apparatus for producing significant quantities of liquid helium, based on the adiabatic principle.

In 1934 he was on a professional visit to the Soviet Union when his passport was detained and he was not permitted to leave the country.

In August 1946, Kapitsa was removed from his role as head of the institute he created and exiled to his dacha near Moscow, over his refusal to take part in the Soviet hydrogen bomb project. In a letter to Stalin, Kapitsa described the project's leader, Lavrenty Beria, as "like the conductor of an orchestra with the baton in hand but without a score". After Stalin's death he regained his position, and remained a director of the institute until 1984. At his death in 1984 he was the only member of the presidium of the Soviet Academy of Sciences who was not a member of the Communist Party.

Recommended resources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyotr_Leonidovich_Kapitsa

READING COMPREHENSION

1. There were three professional physicists were there in Russia at the turn of the XXth century: Academician Krylov and Kapitsa who was then only twenty-seven.

2. Young Kapitsa was keenly interested in physics.

3. He didn’t enter the University, because had been expelled from the Kronstadt classic school for poor academic progress.

4. He completed the laboratory course in two weeks instead of the usual two years.

5. Ernest Rutherford took personal interest in him and Kapitsa became his favourite pupil.

6. In the war years, Kapitsa devoted all his talent of a scientist and an engineer to the cause of the country's defence.

7. He proved the fact that the electrons are capable of transmitting millions of kilowatts over long distances.

Ask students to make a brief retelling about Pyotr Kapitsa, using active vocabulary

LISTENING

Transcript

ENGINEERING PROJECTS

These days engineers – rather than setting out to create new inventions – work on refining designs that already exist. These refinements can be related to size, shape, increased power or more efficiency. And usually we are talking about a combination of these refinements.

Let’s take the motor as an example. You are probably all familiar with the name Michael Faraday who invented the electric motor in the 1820’s. Well, the first motor was a fairly simple device – and we have been improving on its design and looking for new applications for it ever since its birth.

These days there are endless projects going on around the globe where engineers are trying to modify existing motors in order to be able to use them in new contexts and in traditional contexts – but with better – more efficient results.

In Faraday’s time engineers and scientists had a more or less free rein when it came to experimenting and research. If they had enough money to carry out their plans then there was nothing to stop them. These days engineers have to take into consideration all kinds of environmental issues. We are driven by different quests – to conserve energy is one of the most important. Industry demands quality and efficiency but we must never forget the environmental issues that lie behind every single engineering advance.

So – back to motors. What’s happening at the moment is very exciting. A new kind of motor has been developed which uses internal permanent magnets embedded within the rotor. These magnets improve the motors’ flux density and torque density. What does this mean? Well, for a start the motors use less energy – considerable less than traditional motors. This is because there is less heat loss. A side effect of this is that the machines using the new motors have increased precision. Size and speed are two further aspects. The new motors are a lot smaller and speed control is more efficient. This is especially important when we use the motors in gearboxes or cranes for example.

Omron has just developed a motor with an internal magnet that is being applied to high power applications. Things like huge industrial plants and building projects. There is already talk of using the new motors to replace the ones currently used in hydraulic systems.

Yaskawa Electric is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of motors. They have developed a motor with a power rating of 55KW and a rated speed of 1500rpm. This is much greater power than we have seen up till now. So, motors are increasing in power and decreasing in size. In the world of engineering this is a notable achievement.

Optional activity:

Sentence	True or false?
1. Recently great advances have been made in motor technology.	True
2. Engineers are constantly looking for new ways to use existing models.	True
3. Engineers have more freedom for experimentation than in Faraday’s times.	False
4. The newest motors lose more heat than the traditional motors.	False
5. The newest motors are more compact than they used to be.	True
6. A new motor developed by Omron may replace motors currently used in hydraulic systems.	True

LearnEnglish Professionals

www.britishcouncil.org/professionals.htm

Homework

Online/Offline activity

Work in groups

Divide students into two groups and ask them to do the following task:

The first group: to find the information on the Internet:

a) about the son – Sergey Petrovich Kapitsa, his life, family and his contribution into Russian science, his activity on TV, etc.

The second group:

b) about the farther – Pyotr Leonidovich Kapitsa: how and when he won the Nobel Prize, using active vocabulary.

Both groups are given the same websites, but they should find different information and then prepare short reports.