>> Space and Time
Day4-5: Vocabulary
【图例注释】
[→] Day4-5笔记
[ △ ] Day 6笔记
[☆ ] Annie FM
△ Our present ideas about the motion of bodies date back to Galileo and Newton.
LINK>> Topic 1 △ Science is an ongoing search for truth - a perpetual struggle to discover how the Universe works that goes back to the earliest civilizations.
△ date back: If something dates back to a particular time, it started or was made at that time.
△ go back: (Quote Annie) ' It actually started at a time point in the past and has been going on. It came a long journey all the way til now, til here. Something can go back, meaning that it goes back from now, from right before you, and it goes back. So it has a long history. '
→ Before them people believed Aristotle, who said that the natural state of a body was to be at rest and that it moved only if driven by a force or impulse.
impulse: [physics]
a. the product of the average magnitude of a force acting on a body and the time for which it acts
(product: the result of the multiplication of two or more numbers, quantities, etc)
(magnitude:a number assigned to a quantity, such as weight, and used as a basis of comparison for the measurement of similar quantities)
(multiplication: an arithmetical operation, defined initially in terms of repeated addition, usually written a × b, a.b, or ab, by which the product of two quantities is calculated: to multiply a by positive integral b is to add a to itself b times.)
(arithmetic: the branch of mathematics concerned with numerical calculations, such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division)
b. the change in the momentum of a body as a result of a force acting upon it for a short period of time
(momentum: [physics] the product of a body's mass and its velocity)
(mass: a physical quantity expressing the amount of matter in a body. It is a measure of a body's resistance to changes in velocity (inertial mass) and also of the force experienced in a gravitational field (gravitational mass): according to the theory of relativity, inertial and gravitational masses are equal )
联想: mass, weight, inertia
→ So no one until Galileo bothered to see whether bodies of different weight did in fact fall at different speeds.
bother: to make (a person) alarmed or confused
△ It is said that Galileo demonstrated that Aristotle's belief was false by dropping weights from the leaning tower of Pisa. …… The situation is similar to that of heavy bodies falling vertically, but it is easier to observe because the Speeds are smaller.
△ For example, if you let go of a ball on a slope that drops by one meter for every ten meters you go along, the ball will be traveling down the slope at a speed of about one meter per second after one second.
demonstrate: to describe, explain, or illustrate by examples, specimens, experiments, or the like
e.g. He demonstrated the force of gravity by dropping an object.
versus indicate: If you indicate an opinion, an intention, or a fact, you mention it in an indirect way.
△drop: let go of; fall (vertically) ☆ The index droped 5 percent.
△fall: to drop or descend under the force of gravity, as to a lower place through loss or lack of support.
e.g. The snow had ceased to fall, the thunder was gone, and the city was quiet.
☆ let go: “放手”让小球自由顺着重力方向滚下去。"let go of a ball instead of pushing the ball down."
△go down: lose; fall (see below)
☆ Galileo's measurements indicated that each body increased its speed at the same rate, no matter what its weight.
☆ speed: 指代比velocity更为宽泛，如生活中的车速、做事情的速度等。
e.g. I'm very speedy in cleaning my room.
☆ velocity: 物理学中的"速度"
☆ rate:
① A rate is the amount of money that is charged for goods or services.
speed rate: acceleration
→ Of course a lead weight would fall faster than a feater.
lead: a heavy toxic bluish-white metallic element that is highly malleable
(metallic: (of a metal element) existing in the free state rather than in combination)
(malleable: (esp of metal) able to be worked, hammered, or shaped under pressure or blows without breaking)
→ Galileo's measurements were used by Newton as the basis of his laws of motion.
LINK>> Topic 1
form the basis of vs. lay foundations for
→ This idea was first stated explicitly in Newton's Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, and is known as Newton's first law.
explicitly: precisely and clearly expressed, leaving nothing to implication; fully stated
e.g. Something that is explicit is expressed or shown clearly and openly, without any attempt to hide anything.
☆ What happens to a body when a force does act on it is given by Newton's second law.
意群划分： 【 What happens to a body [when a force does act on it] 】 | is given by Newton's second law.
act on 指force“作用”在物体上（受力对象）
☆ This states that the body will accelerate, or change its speed, at a rate that is proportional to the force.
成正比例: proportional to
成反比例: inversely proportional to / proportional to the reciprocal of...
→ If the law were that the gravitational attraction of a star went down faster or increased more rapidly with distance, the orbits of the planets would not be elliptical, they would either spiral in to the sun or escape from the sun.
spiral: [geometry] one of several plane curves formed by a point winding about a fixed point at an ever-increasing distance from it.
(plane: [mathematics] a flat surface in which a straight line joining any two of its points lies entirely on that surface)
形近辨析: elliptical vs. eclipse (见Topic1)
☆ The big difference between the ideas of Aristotle and those of Galileo and Newton is that Aristotle believed in a preferred state of rest, which any body would take up if it were not driven by some force Or impulse.
take up 进入一种状态 || 采取某个立场
☆ But it follows from Newton's laws that there is no unique standard of rest.
it follows from... : 前个假设可以推演出某个结论
A is B's father. It follows from that statement that B is A's offspring.
☆ If one carried out experiments with moving bodies on the train, all Newton’s laws would still hold.
hold: be true; remaining in the state of being true | keeps standing up “成立”
→☆ The lack of an absolute standard of rest meant that one could not determine whether two events that took place at different times occurred in the same position in space.
☆ determine: 科学实验用词，“确定”
event: [physics] in relativity, an occurrence that is sharply localized at a single point in space and instant of time
Word origin: OFr < L eventus, event, pp. of evenire, to happen || < e-, out + venire, come
→ When the famous Dr. Johnson was told of Berkeley's opinion, he cried, "I refute it thus!" and stubbed his toe on a large stone.
stub:(transitive) to strike (one's toe, foot, etc) painfully against a hard surface
stub his toe
↑ also>> (usually foll by out) to extinguish (a cigarette or cigar) by pressing the end against a surface
e.g. Instead, they were forced to compromise by having him stub out a cigarette.
→ Maxwell's equations predicted…that these would travel at a fixed speed, like ripples on a pond.
ripple: a slight wave or undulation on the surface of water
(undulation: any wave or wavelike form, line, etc)
Ripples are little waves on the surface of water caused by the wind or by something moving in or on the water.
e.g. The waves are difficult to detect because the ripples are extraordinarily small.
→ If the wavelength of these waves (the distance between one wave crest and the next) is a meter or more, they are what we now call radio waves.
crest: the top, highest point, or highest stage of something
e.g. She reached the crest of a hill and looked down.
[Synonym] peak, top
→ Shorter wavelengths are known as microwaves (a few centimeters) or infrared (more than a ten-thousandth of a centimeter).
infrared: he part of the electromagnetic spectrum with a longer wavelength than light but a shorter wavelength than radio waves; radiation with wavelength between 0.8 micrometres and 1 millimetre （红外线）
(The spectrum is the range of different colours which is produced when light passes through a glass prism or through a drop of water. A rainbow shows the colours in the spectrum.)
→ It was therefore suggested that there was a substance called the "ether" that was present everywhere, even in "empty" space.
ether: [physics] a hypothetical substance supposed to occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space.
(postulate: If you postulate something, you suggest it as the basis for a theory, argument, or calculation, or assume that it is the basis.)
☆ In particular, as the earth was moving through the ether on its orbit round the sun, the speed of light measured in the direction of the earth's motion through the ether…should be higher than the speed of light at right angles to that motion…
right angles: ∠ 90°
→ To their great surprise, they found they were exactly the same!
LINK>> Topic1 to one's astonishment
→ However, in a famous paper in 1905, a hitherto unknown clerk in the Swiss patent office, Albert Einstein, pointed out that the whole idea of an ether was unnecessary, providing one was willing to abandon the idea of absolute time.
hiterto: until this time
e.g. This was the most glorious day which I have hitherto seen.
clerk: an employee of a court, legislature, board, corporation, etc, who keeps records and accounts, etc
A clerk is a person who works in an office, bank, or law court and whose job is to look after the records or accounts.
e.g. So do three or four other claims clerks working within the same claims unit.
point out: to indicate or specify
[Synonym] indicate (see above with 'demonstrate')
→ He observed that the times at which the moons of Jupiter appeared to pass behind Jupiter were not evenly spaced, as one would expect if the moons went round Jupiter at a constant rate.
☆ times 时间、时刻
moon:
1. any natural satellite of a planet
e.g. the moons of Jupiter (暂时没找到别的例句... )
*2. The moon is the object that you can often see in the sky at night. It goes round the Earth once every four weeks, and as it does so its appearance changes from a circle to part of a circle.
e.g. The moon had climbed a little and had turned a silvery yellow.
space: to place or arrange at intervals or with spaces between
e.g. The distance of which every two students in this row is not evenly spaced.
[NOTE] The meaning of 'space' always come to my mind with the celestial concept, so it's a familar word but I learn of its new way of use in sentences with a verb term.
→ A proper theory of the propagation of light didn't come until 1865, when the British physicist James Clerk Maxwell succeeded in unifying the partial theories that up to then had been used to describe the forces of electricity and magnetism.
propagate:
1. [physics] to move through, cause to move through, or transmit, esp in the form of a wave
[NOTE] The word ‘propagate’ can be used to describe the movement of light since the light has particle-wave dual property.
2. If people propagate an idea or piece of information, they spread it and try to make people believe it or support it.
e.g. They propagated political doctrines which promised to tear apart the fabric of British society.
up to: until
e.g. up to 1990; up to now ; up to then
→ Space and time are now dynamic quantities: when a body moves, or a force acts, it affects the curvature of space and time - and in turn the structure of space-time affects the way in which bodies move and forces act.
curvature: the act of curving or tWhe state of being curved.
e.g. He was described by Shakespeare as having a hunchback and indeed the skeleton shows evidence of curvature of the spine.
(hunchback: A hunchback is someone who has a large lump on their back because their spine is curved.)
`Word Origin and History for 'curvature' :
1660s, from Latin curvatura "a bending," from curvatus, past participle of curvare "to bend" (see curve (v.)). In non-Euclidian geometry, from 1873.
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Day6: Mindmap
Day7: 回顾与总结
【Mindmap】
>>问题与反思<<
平心而论，这次的mindmap远远没有上一次做得令自己满意。考虑到刚回校，注册等事务繁多，学习时间一再被压缩，且文章对subject knowledge有较高要求，我也预期到会有相较topic1略微逊色的成果。
经过思考，除去时间因素，我认为这次mindmap做得略逊色于topic1的原因有以下两点：
1. 背景知识缺失导致无法准确理解文章细节，进而对把握文章逻辑走向不是十分到位；
2. 提炼关键词的能力有待提高。目前的情况是：能理解大意时，无法用“精炼”的词句表达，或提炼出的词句并未完整地覆盖main idea。这或多或少受了第一点的影响。应对方法依然在探索中。
鉴于这学期更难的专业课，开学后时间并不会比这两天更充裕。对于时间的掌控，也是需要思考如何平衡的一个方面。
>>观察与对比<<
对比两个topic中安妮的两幅mindmap：在结构上，科学简史选择的是“水平时间轴”，Space and Time采用的是“垂直时间轴”。
这两个不同的导图结构选择很有意思——科学简史总体上是不断前行的科学历史时间轴，是“面”，故而选择“横向”的水平时间轴完全没有问题；Space and Time是以物理学中科学家对于时空t的认识及相关理论的发展，它围绕着一个“点”深入探讨，故而选择在视觉上选择给人以“深入挖掘”感受的“垂直时间轴”就显得十分得当。
对于我这样的重度逻辑强迫症，一个契合逻辑线的mindmap structure能让人身心舒畅，瞬间领会重点。时间轴也是我一直很喜欢的串联方式，以后我也将多尝试采取时间轴的格局展开导图。
【思考与体悟】
这个topic十分具有挑战性，也给了我一些不一样的契机思考问题。
一是如何陌生领域探索、专业知识近乎为零时，我们如何学习，能学些什么？我认为能学习的自然有许多，其中一个是“思维逻辑”。这一点是近期同时在精读班与生活中的体悟，也让我想起了曾经纠结是否要看斯密的《国富论》时偶然看到的一句话：“在写国富论的时候，是开辟混沌之时，我要的是国富论的思维逻辑和对于社会的辩证经济化的思想。这本书一定要看，人的思维逻辑没有过时和不过时之说。”我想这句话已经表明得十分清楚明白，也就不必赘述了。希望接下来的6个topic，自己能调整好自己的学习重心。
二是对自我的认知。Day2安妮在群里说的一句话令我印象深刻：“要学会自己体会可以走多远。” 我一直认为“内心强大的人”能够走得更远，而内心的强大，建立在对自我认知到位，清楚“力所及”与“力所不及”。这一点并非看起来那么容易。G.K. Chesterton once said: "one may understand the cosmos, but never the ego, the self is more distance than any star." 有时候，“认识你自己”要比“认识这个世界”还要困难。从点滴去观察、体会，学会自我欣赏、自我反省，也要学会合理的自我定位。这次十分具有挑战性的topic，加之学习时间压缩所带来的我必须面临的困难，都让我时时面临一个“合理自我定位”的问题。这不是我第一次面对类似的问题，但却是我第一次在多重压力下，学着和自我 不断对抗与妥协。我想，这会是一笔宝贵的财富。
最后，附上一则网站链接链接，是我高中时很喜欢的一篇演讲稿，主题为discover yourself，演讲者诸康妮（21世纪英语演讲比赛高中组全国总冠军）。Discover yourself-诸康妮
"Growing up is a process that discover yourselves."
鲸鱼
2017年3月5日
