Translate the following sentences paying attention to comparison.

1. If one consults the archeological record, it seems clear that the Babylonian and Sumerian civilizations had rather more than rudimentary grasp of medicine, astronomy and applied mathematics, not to mention engineering.

2. Thales proposed that the prime substance was water; Anaxagoras believed it to be air while Xenophanes proposed the rather less glamorous option of mud.

3. In the works of pre-Socratic philosophers we see glimmerings of the scientific method and the search for causes and principles based on observation and reason, the truth became a province of thinkers, rather than priests.

4. Aristotelian physics and cosmology were less successful although none the less influential: his views dominated the mind of science down to the Renaissance.

5. Yet, in some ways his inventions were the least of his achievements.

6. Sociology is a science with greatest number of methods and the least results.

7. One key idea that emerges in Ada’s notes is the notion that the Engine might have far wider applications than purely mathematical ones.

8. The great equations are just as rich a stimulus as poetry to the prepared imagination.

9. Just as gravity pulls the apple to the Earth, so gravity keeps the Moon in its orbit round the earth and the planets round the Sun.

10. Archimedes immersed in water a piece of gold that weighed the same as the wreath and pointed out the subsequent rise in the water level.

 

Fill the gaps using the following words. Translate the sentences.

a) better        b) greater     c) insatiable d) possible        e) short

Example: The degree of one’s emotion varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts − the less you know, the hotter you get.  B. Russell

Степень эмоций человека обратно пропорциональна его знанию фактов −чем меньше вы знаете, тем больше вы горячитесь.

 

1.  Today’s most powerful instruments probe distances as … as 10 ^-18 meter.

2. Ada was convinced of her mathematical prowess, writing to Babbage that ‘the more I study the more… I feel my genius for it to be’.

3. You compress things into computer programs, into concise algorithmic descriptions. The simpler the theory, the… you understand something.

4. In using the instrument an experimenter has to make use of his or her own skills to obtain as accurate reading as….

5. According to Einstein’s General Theory, objects with mass create distortions, or curvatures, in space-time, and the larger the object, the … the distortion

CONFUSABLES : Comparatives

Choose the right word.

1. Hooke and Huygens made their own telescopes, especially Huygens whose telescopes were technically superior/inferior to anything that had been done before.

2. Models by definition are less/lesser than the reality they represent, and for models of the Universe this constraint obviously must be particularly stringent.

3. Hypothesis is any sentence that has as a consequence at least/lest one empirical generalization.

4. A theory is deduced as a plausible explanation of facts derived from observation or experiment. A theory gains credibility through the farther/further accumulation of evidence or predictions.

5. As Hooke grew elder/older, he became increasingly depressed and withdrawn.

6. As early/late as 1909, the great British physicist J. J. Thomson was insisting: “The ether is not a fantastic creation of the speculative philosopher; it is as essential to us as the air we breathe” — this more than four years after it was pretty incontestably established that it didn’t exist.

It’s interesting to know

· The Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge (The Royal Society) was the premier English scientific society. Probably the most famous scientific society in the world, it has a claim to be the oldest surviving. It has its origin in the weekly meetings of scientists in London in the 1640s and was granted a royal charter by Charles II in 1660. Past presidents include Sir I. Newton and Lord Rutherford.

· The Royal Institution is the English scientific society founded in 1799 by B Thompson to encourage scientific study and the spread of scientific knowledge.  It has association with many eminent men of science, including H. Davy and M. Faraday.

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