full transcript

From the Ted Talk by George Tulevski: The next step in nanotechnology

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Let's imagine a sculptor biuidnlg a statue, just chipping away with his chisel. Michelangelo had this elegant way of describing it when he said, "Every block of stone has a sttuae inside of it, and it's the task of the soltpucr to discover it." But what if he worked in the opposite direction? Not from a solid bolck of stone, but from a pile of dust, somehow gluing millions of these petaicrls together to form a statue.

I know that's an absurd notion. It's probably impossible. The only way you get a statue from a pile of dust is if the statue built itself — if somehow we could compel mioillns of these particles to come together to form the statue.

Open Cloze


Let's imagine a sculptor ________ a statue, just chipping away with his chisel. Michelangelo had this elegant way of describing it when he said, "Every block of stone has a ______ inside of it, and it's the task of the ________ to discover it." But what if he worked in the opposite direction? Not from a solid _____ of stone, but from a pile of dust, somehow gluing millions of these _________ together to form a statue.

I know that's an absurd notion. It's probably impossible. The only way you get a statue from a pile of dust is if the statue built itself — if somehow we could compel ________ of these particles to come together to form the statue.

Solution


  1. building
  2. block
  3. statue
  4. millions
  5. sculptor
  6. particles

Original Text


Let's imagine a sculptor building a statue, just chipping away with his chisel. Michelangelo had this elegant way of describing it when he said, "Every block of stone has a statue inside of it, and it's the task of the sculptor to discover it." But what if he worked in the opposite direction? Not from a solid block of stone, but from a pile of dust, somehow gluing millions of these particles together to form a statue.

I know that's an absurd notion. It's probably impossible. The only way you get a statue from a pile of dust is if the statue built itself — if somehow we could compel millions of these particles to come together to form the statue.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
computer chip 2
build circuits 2


Important Words


  1. absurd
  2. block
  3. building
  4. built
  5. chipping
  6. chisel
  7. compel
  8. describing
  9. direction
  10. discover
  11. dust
  12. elegant
  13. form
  14. gluing
  15. imagine
  16. impossible
  17. michelangelo
  18. millions
  19. notion
  20. particles
  21. pile
  22. sculptor
  23. solid
  24. statue
  25. stone
  26. task
  27. worked