full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Ali Hajimiri: How wireless energy from space could power everything

Unscramble the Blue Letters


So all of these things are great. But the question is, if it has been known for such a long time and it's such a great thing, why hasn't it been done so far?

footnote

The main reason is that the way it has been envisioned before, they've been thinking about it as a big elephant. If you're thinking about putting big slaor panels in space, cotenllicg the power, generating a lot of energy, and then puinttg it into a massive parabolic dish antenna and sidenng it to a fixed location on Earth. Sending things to spcae is expensive. You pay dloalrs -- and that's plural -- per gram. The other problem is that even if you could afford it, assembly of something like this in space is still beyond the capabilities that we have tadoy.

Open Cloze


So all of these things are great. But the question is, if it has been known for such a long time and it's such a great thing, why hasn't it been done so far?

footnote

The main reason is that the way it has been envisioned before, they've been thinking about it as a big elephant. If you're thinking about putting big _____ panels in space, __________ the power, generating a lot of energy, and then _______ it into a massive parabolic dish antenna and _______ it to a fixed location on Earth. Sending things to _____ is expensive. You pay _______ -- and that's plural -- per gram. The other problem is that even if you could afford it, assembly of something like this in space is still beyond the capabilities that we have _____.

Solution


  1. solar
  2. space
  3. collecting
  4. sending
  5. today
  6. putting
  7. dollars

Original Text


So all of these things are great. But the question is, if it has been known for such a long time and it's such a great thing, why hasn't it been done so far?

footnote

The main reason is that the way it has been envisioned before, they've been thinking about it as a big elephant. If you're thinking about putting big solar panels in space, collecting the power, generating a lot of energy, and then putting it into a massive parabolic dish antenna and sending it to a fixed location on Earth. Sending things to space is expensive. You pay dollars -- and that's plural -- per gram. The other problem is that even if you could afford it, assembly of something like this in space is still beyond the capabilities that we have today.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
send energy 5
wireless energy 3
energy transfer 3
solar panels 3
long time 2
perfect synchronization 2
focal points 2
light bulb 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
wireless energy transfer 3

Important Words


  1. afford
  2. antenna
  3. assembly
  4. big
  5. capabilities
  6. collecting
  7. dish
  8. dollars
  9. earth
  10. elephant
  11. energy
  12. envisioned
  13. expensive
  14. fixed
  15. footnote
  16. generating
  17. gram
  18. great
  19. location
  20. long
  21. lot
  22. main
  23. massive
  24. panels
  25. parabolic
  26. pay
  27. plural
  28. power
  29. problem
  30. putting
  31. question
  32. reason
  33. sending
  34. solar
  35. space
  36. thinking
  37. time
  38. today