WORD FORMATION: Suffices of Adjectives  (-al, -ant, -ic, -ive, -ous)

13. Form adjectives from the following nouns.

1) atom −                                         2) importance − 3) hypothesis −                                4) fame − 5) nucleus  −                                   6) number − 7) radiation                                      8) statistics −

Fill the gaps using the adjectives from the exercise 14.

How Fermi’s С contribution was С commemorated

Fermi Enrico (1901-1951) an Italian … (1) physicist who was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1938. His first …(2) contribution was his examination of the properties of the …(3) gas whose particles obeyed Pauli’s exclusion principle. The laws he derived can be applied to the electrons in a metal, and explain … (4) properties of metals. Later he showed that most elements may have isotopes produced by neutron bombardment. Fermium

      (Fm) is a … (5) transuranium          element found in the debris from the first hydrogen bomb. Fermi was also co-discoverer of the … (6) Fermi-Dirac statistics. In quantum mechanics it describes the … (7) behavior of indistinguishable particles with a number of … (8) states, each of which may be occupied at any one time by a single particle only.  Such particles are

   Enrico Fermi                        termed fermions.

 

   GRAMMAR PRACTICE: Complex Object (GR-9 p.201)

Translate the sentences paying attention to Complex Object:

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

2. Newton showed Kepler’s laws to be a consequence of the theory of universal gravitation.

3. Abbe George Lamaitre said that the investigations revealed the age of the earth to be about 4,5 billion years.

4.  Only a few substances that we now know to be elements, twelve to be exact, were known in 1630.

5. Eco-friendly firms are willing to put themselves at the disadvantage by allowing their competitors to get away with environmental pollution. These firms are as keen as eco-cops to see stiff anti-pollution laws approved and enforced.

6. Examination with X-rays shows halogens to possess diatomic molecules even in the solid state.

7. We can hardly expect the public to permit many mistakes in a field that aims to alter the skein of life upon which our existence depends.

8. They discovered phosphorus fumes to enter the body, causing necrosis to develop in the lower jawbone.

 

UNIT 8 MATHEMATICS − THE LANUAGE OF SCIENCE

Read the text and compare physics and mathematics specifying similarities and differences.

Physics and Mathematics

      The traditional view is that physics and mathematics are quite different. However, many scientists, especially working in both fields, find that there is no big difference between the two fields. It is a matter of degree, of emphasis, not an absolute difference. After all, mathematics and physics coevolved. For mathematics to progress you actually need new ideas and plenty of room for creativity. Mathematicians should not isolate themselves. They should not cut themselves off from rich sources of new ideas.

     Physics describes the universe and depends on experiment and observation. The particular laws that govern our universe – whether Newton’s laws of motion or Standard Model of particle physics – must be determined empirically and then asserted like axioms that cannot be logically proved, merely verified.

Mathematics, in contrast, is somehow independent of the universe. Results and theorems, such as the properties of the integers and real numbers, do not depend in any way on the particular nature of reality in which we find ourselves. Mathematical truths would be true in any universes.

   Yet both fields are similar. In physics and indeed in science generally, scientists compress their experimental observations into scientific laws. They often show how their observations can be deduced from these laws. In mathematics, too, something like this happens – mathematicians compress their computational experiments into mathematical axiom, and they then show how to deduce theorems from these axioms.

An emerging field of science is experimental mathematics. In this area there are many similarities: the discovery of new mathematical results by looking at many examples using a computer. Whereas this approach is not persuasive as a short proof, it can be more convincing than a long and extremely complicated proof, and for some purposes it is quite sufficient. Extensive computer calculations can be extremely persuasive, but do they render proof unnecessary? Yes and no. In fact, they provide a different kind of evidence. In important situations both kinds of evidence are required, as proofs may be flawed, and computer searchers may have the bad luck to stop just before encountering a counterexample that disproves the conjectured result.

Mathematics differs from physics that is truly empirical but perhaps is not as different as most people tend to think. A Hungarian-born scientist Imre Lakatos came up with an expression quasi-empirical, which means that even though there are no true experiments that can be carried out in mathematics, something similar does take place. Some conjectures are arrived at experimentally, by noting empirically what is true for certain sets of numbers. Some conjectures have not been proved yet, but verified to a certain degree.

 

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