full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Steven Strogatz: The science of sync

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Maybe you'd better listen to them. I'll stnad here. What I'm hoping is that they might just difrt apart because their frequencies aren't perfectly the same. Right? They did. They were in sync for a while, but then they drfetid apart. And the reason is that they're not able to communicate. Now, you might think that's a bizarre idea. How can motrmonees communicate? Well, they can communicate through mechanical forces. So I'm going to give them a chance to do that. I also want to wind this one up a bit. How can they communicate? I'm going to put them on a mlavboe platform, which is the "Guide to gartuade Study at Cornell." Okay? So here it is. Let's see if we can get this to work. My wife pointed out to me that it will work better if I put both on at the same time because otherwise the whole thing will tip over. All right. So there we go. Let's see. OK, I'm not trying to cheat — let me start them out of sync. No, hard to even do that.

Open Cloze


Maybe you'd better listen to them. I'll _____ here. What I'm hoping is that they might just _____ apart because their frequencies aren't perfectly the same. Right? They did. They were in sync for a while, but then they _______ apart. And the reason is that they're not able to communicate. Now, you might think that's a bizarre idea. How can __________ communicate? Well, they can communicate through mechanical forces. So I'm going to give them a chance to do that. I also want to wind this one up a bit. How can they communicate? I'm going to put them on a _______ platform, which is the "Guide to ________ Study at Cornell." Okay? So here it is. Let's see if we can get this to work. My wife pointed out to me that it will work better if I put both on at the same time because otherwise the whole thing will tip over. All right. So there we go. Let's see. OK, I'm not trying to cheat — let me start them out of sync. No, hard to even do that.

Solution


  1. drifted
  2. drift
  3. graduate
  4. stand
  5. metronomes
  6. movable

Original Text


Maybe you'd better listen to them. I'll stand here. What I'm hoping is that they might just drift apart because their frequencies aren't perfectly the same. Right? They did. They were in sync for a while, but then they drifted apart. And the reason is that they're not able to communicate. Now, you might think that's a bizarre idea. How can metronomes communicate? Well, they can communicate through mechanical forces. So I'm going to give them a chance to do that. I also want to wind this one up a bit. How can they communicate? I'm going to put them on a movable platform, which is the "Guide to Graduate Study at Cornell." Okay? So here it is. Let's see if we can get this to work. My wife pointed out to me that it will work better if I put both on at the same time because otherwise the whole thing will tip over. All right. So there we go. Let's see. OK, I'm not trying to cheat — let me start them out of sync. No, hard to even do that.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
single cell 3
north american 2
spontaneous order 2
male fireflies 2
water bottles 2
millennium bridge 2
flash gordon 2
light saber 2
bridge started 2
bridge engineer 2
bridge simulator 2
real bridge 2


Important Words


  1. bit
  2. bizarre
  3. chance
  4. cheat
  5. communicate
  6. cornell
  7. drift
  8. drifted
  9. forces
  10. frequencies
  11. give
  12. graduate
  13. hard
  14. hoping
  15. idea
  16. listen
  17. mechanical
  18. metronomes
  19. movable
  20. perfectly
  21. platform
  22. pointed
  23. put
  24. reason
  25. stand
  26. start
  27. study
  28. sync
  29. time
  30. tip
  31. wife
  32. wind
  33. work