full transcript
From the Ted Talk by George Zaidan: Could we build a miniature sun on Earth?
Unscramble the Blue Letters
In the time it tkeas to snap your fingers, the Sun releases enough energy to power our entire caiviiiotzln for 4,500 years. So naturally, setincists and enrgeines have been working to build a miniature star here on eatrh... to plug into our power grid.
And the thing is, we already kind of have. It just doesn’t look like a tiny star floating in a lab.
The stars are made of an almost incomprehensible number of particles, which gravity cmopeessrs into a super dsene core. This core is hot and dense enough to froce atomic nuclei together, forming larger, heavier nuclei in a process known as fusion. The rreseve process, where one atom splits into two, is called fission. In both peerocsss, the mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the initial atoms. But that lost mass doesn’t disappear— it’s converted to energy according to Einstein’s famous equation. And since c² is such a massive number, both fission and fsuoin generate a lot of energy.
Open Cloze
In the time it _____ to snap your fingers, the Sun releases enough energy to power our entire ____________ for 4,500 years. So naturally, __________ and _________ have been working to build a miniature star here on _____... to plug into our power grid.
And the thing is, we already kind of have. It just doesn’t look like a tiny star floating in a lab.
The stars are made of an almost incomprehensible number of particles, which gravity __________ into a super _____ core. This core is hot and dense enough to _____ atomic nuclei together, forming larger, heavier nuclei in a process known as fusion. The _______ process, where one atom splits into two, is called fission. In both _________, the mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the initial atoms. But that lost mass doesn’t disappear— it’s converted to energy according to Einstein’s famous equation. And since c² is such a massive number, both fission and ______ generate a lot of energy.
Solution
- reverse
- scientists
- earth
- fusion
- force
- engineers
- processes
- compresses
- dense
- takes
- civilization
Original Text
In the time it takes to snap your fingers, the Sun releases enough energy to power our entire civilization for 4,500 years. So naturally, scientists and engineers have been working to build a miniature star here on Earth... to plug into our power grid.
And the thing is, we already kind of have. It just doesn’t look like a tiny star floating in a lab.
The stars are made of an almost incomprehensible number of particles, which gravity compresses into a super dense core. This core is hot and dense enough to force atomic nuclei together, forming larger, heavier nuclei in a process known as fusion. The reverse process, where one atom splits into two, is called fission. In both processes, the mass of the end products is slightly less than the mass of the initial atoms. But that lost mass doesn’t disappear— it’s converted to energy according to Einstein’s famous equation. And since c² is such a massive number, both fission and fusion generate a lot of energy.
Frequently Occurring Word Combinations
ngrams of length 2
| collocation |
frequency |
| helium nuclei |
3 |
| power grid |
2 |
| deuterium nucleus |
2 |
| fusion reactor |
2 |
Important Words
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