full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Magnus Larsson: Turning dunes into architecture

Unscramble the Blue Letters


Sand dunes are almost like ready-made biligduns in a way. All we need to do is solidify the parts that we need to be solid, and then excavate the sand, and we have our architecture. We can either excavate it by hand or we can have the wind excavate it for us. So, the wind carries the sand onto the site and then it carries the redundant sand away from the sutcturre for us.

But, by now, you're probably asking, how am I planning to solidify a sand dune? How do we glue those grnais of sand together? And the answer is, perhaps, that you use these guys, Bacillus pasteurii, a micro-organism that is readily available in wetlands and mrshaes, and does precisely that. It takes a pile of loose sand and it creates sannodste out of it. These images from the American siteocy for Microbiology show us the porcses.

Open Cloze


Sand dunes are almost like ready-made _________ in a way. All we need to do is solidify the parts that we need to be solid, and then excavate the sand, and we have our architecture. We can either excavate it by hand or we can have the wind excavate it for us. So, the wind carries the sand onto the site and then it carries the redundant sand away from the _________ for us.

But, by now, you're probably asking, how am I planning to solidify a sand dune? How do we glue those ______ of sand together? And the answer is, perhaps, that you use these guys, Bacillus pasteurii, a micro-organism that is readily available in wetlands and _______, and does precisely that. It takes a pile of loose sand and it creates _________ out of it. These images from the American _______ for Microbiology show us the _______.

Solution


  1. buildings
  2. marshes
  3. sandstone
  4. structure
  5. grains
  6. process
  7. society

Original Text


Sand dunes are almost like ready-made buildings in a way. All we need to do is solidify the parts that we need to be solid, and then excavate the sand, and we have our architecture. We can either excavate it by hand or we can have the wind excavate it for us. So, the wind carries the sand onto the site and then it carries the redundant sand away from the structure for us.

But, by now, you're probably asking, how am I planning to solidify a sand dune? How do we glue those grains of sand together? And the answer is, perhaps, that you use these guys, Bacillus pasteurii, a micro-organism that is readily available in wetlands and marshes, and does precisely that. It takes a pile of loose sand and it creates sandstone out of it. These images from the American Society for Microbiology show us the process.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
sand dunes 3
sandstone wall 2
sand dune 2
planting trees 2
habitable spaces 2
bacillus pasteurii 2
cubic meter 2


Important Words


  1. american
  2. answer
  3. architecture
  4. bacillus
  5. buildings
  6. carries
  7. creates
  8. dune
  9. dunes
  10. excavate
  11. glue
  12. grains
  13. guys
  14. hand
  15. images
  16. loose
  17. marshes
  18. microbiology
  19. parts
  20. pasteurii
  21. pile
  22. planning
  23. precisely
  24. process
  25. readily
  26. redundant
  27. sand
  28. sandstone
  29. show
  30. site
  31. society
  32. solid
  33. solidify
  34. structure
  35. takes
  36. wetlands
  37. wind