【正文】 Lesson 13 The search for oil 探尋石油 The deepest holes of all made for oil, and they go down to as much as 25,0000 feet. But we not need to send men down to get the oil our, as we must with other mineral deposits. The holes are only borings, less than a foot in diameter. My particular experience is largely in oil, and the search for oil has done more to improve deep drilling than any other mining activity. When is has been decided where we are going to drill, we put up at the surface an oil derrick. It has to be tall because it is like a giant block and tackle, and we have to lower into the ground and haul out of the ground great lengths of drill pipe which are rotated by an engine at the top and are fitted with a cutting bit at the bottom. The geologist needs to know what rocks the drill has reached, so every so often a sample is obtained with a coring bit. It cuts a clean cylinder of rock, from which can be seen the strata the drill has been cutting through. Once we get down to the oil, it usually flows to the surface because great pressure, either from or water, is pushing it. This pressure must be under control, and we control it by means of the mud which we circulate down the drill pipe. We endeavour to avoid the old, romantic idea of a gusher, which wastes oil and gas. We want it to stay down the hole until we can lead it off in a controlled manner.參考譯文 在所有洞穴中，為尋找石油所鉆出的洞是最深的，這些洞可深達25,000英尺。但是，我們不必像開采其他礦藏那樣，把人送到地下去把石油取出。這些洞只不過是一些鉆孔，直徑不到1英尺。我是專門搞石油的，尋找石油比其他任何采礦業(yè)對改進鉆探作的貢獻都要大。當確定鉆孔地點后，我們就在那里豎起一個井架。井架必須很高，因為它像一個巨型滑輪組。我們必須把很長的鉆桿一節(jié)節(jié)地鉆入地下，然后再從地下拉出來。鉆桿頂部安裝的發(fā)動機帶動鉆桿旋轉(zhuǎn)，它的底部裝有鉆頭。 地質(zhì)學家需要知道鉆頭已以到達什么樣的巖層，因此時常要用芯鉆頭取樣。這種鉆頭能切割一段光滑的圓柱形巖石，從中能看出所鉆透的地層。一旦到達油層，石油就會由于地下巨大的壓力流到地面上來，這種巨大的壓力來自地下天然氣或水。這種壓力必須加以控制，我們讓泥槳順著鉆桿向下循環(huán)，用這種方法來控制壓力。我們盡量避免使用陳舊天真的噴井方法，那樣會浪費石油和天然氣。我們要讓石油留在井下，直到我們能用一種有控制的方法把它引上來為止。Lesson 14 The Butterfly Effect 蝴蝶效應 Beyond two or three days, the world39。s best weather forecasts are speculative, and beyond six or seven they are worthless. The Butterfly Effect is the reason. For small pieces of weather and to a global forecaster, small can mean thunderstorms and blizzards any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascading upward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continentsize eddies that only satellites can see. The modern weather models work with a grid of points of the order of sixty miles apart, and even so, some starting data has to guessed, since ground stations and satellites cannot see everywhere. But suppose the earth could be covered with sensors spaced one foot apart, rising at onefoot intervals all the way to the top of the atmosphere. Suppose every sensor gives perfectly accurate readings of temperature, pressure, humidity, and any other quantity a meteorologist would want. Precisely at noon an infinitely powerful puter takes all the data and calculates what will happen at each point at , then , then ... The puter will still be unable to predict whether Princeton, New Jersey, will have sun or rain on a day one month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the puter will not know about, tiny deviations from the average. By , those fluctuations will already have created small errors one foot away. Soon the errors will have multiplied to the tenfoot scale, and so on up to the size of the globe.參考譯文 世界上最好的兩三天以上的天氣預報具有很強的猜測性，如果超過六七天，天氣預報就沒有了任何價值。 原因是蝴蝶效應。對于小片的惡劣天氣 對一個全球性的氣象預報員來說，“小”可以意味著雷暴雨和暴風雪 任何預測的質(zhì)量會很快下降。錯誤和不可靠性上升，接踵而來的是一系列湍流的徵狀，從小塵暴和暴風發(fā)展到只有衛(wèi)星上可以看到的席卷整塊大陸的旋渦。 現(xiàn)代氣象模型以一個坐標圖來顯示，圖中每個點大約是間隔60英里。既使是這樣，有些開始時的資料也不得不依靠推測，因為地面工作站和衛(wèi)星不可能看到地球上的每一個地方。假設地球上可以布滿傳感器，每個相隔1英尺，并按1英尺的間隔從地面一直排列到大氣層的頂端。再假定每個傳感器都極極端準確地讀出了溫度、氣壓、溫度和氣象學家需要的任何其他數(shù)據(jù)。在正午時分，一個功能巨大的計算機搜集了所有的資料，并算出在每一個點上12：012：012：03時可能出現(xiàn)的情況。 計算機無法推斷出1個月以后的某一天，新澤西州的普林斯頓究竟是晴天還是雨天。正午時分，傳感器之間的距離會掩蓋計算機無法知道的波動、任何偏平均值的變化。到12：01時，那些波動就已經(jīng)會在1英尺遠的地方造成偏差。很快這種偏差會增加到尺10英的范圍，如此等等，一直到全球的范圍。Lesson 15 Secrecy in industry 工業(yè)中的秘密 Two factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific research in industry. One is the general atmosphere of secrecy in which it is carried out, the other the lack of freedom of the individual research worker. In so far as any inquiry is a secret one, it naturally limits all those engaged in carrying it out from effective contact with their fellow scientists either in other countries or in universities, or even, often enough, in other departments of the same firm. The degree of secrecy naturally varies considerably. Some of the bigger firms are engaged in researches which are of such general and fundamental nature that it is a positive advantage to them not to keep them secret. Yet a great many processes depending on such research are sought for with plete secrecy until the stage at which patents can be taken out. Even more processes are never patented at all but kept as secret processes. This applies particularly to chemical industries, where chance discoveries play a much larger part than they do in physical and mechanical industries. Sometimes the secrecy goes to such an extent that the whole nature of the research cannot be mentioned. Many firms, for instance, have great difficulty in obtaining technical or scientific books from libraries because they are unwilling to have names entered as having taken out such and such a book, for fear the agents of other firms should be able to trace the kind of research they are likely to be undertaking.參考譯文 有兩個因素嚴重地妨礙工業(yè)中科學研究的效率：一是科研工作中普遍存在的保密氣氛；二是研究人員缺乏個人自由。任何一項研究都涉及到保密，那些從事科研的人員自然受到了限制。他們不能和其他國家、其他大學、甚至往往不能與本公司的其他部門的同行們進行有效的接觸。保密程度自然差別很大。某些大公司進行的研究屬于一般和基礎的研究，因此不保密對他們才有利。然而，依賴這種研究的很多工藝程序是在完全保密的情況下進行的，直到可以取得專利權的階段為止。更多的工藝過程根本就不會取得專利權，而是作為秘方保存著。在這化學工業(yè)方面尤為突出。同物理和機械工業(yè)相比，化學工業(yè)中偶然發(fā)現(xiàn)的機會要多得多。有時，保密竟達到了這樣的程度，即連研究工作的整個性質(zhì)都不準提及。比如，很多公司向圖書館借閱科技書籍時感到困難，因為它們不愿讓人家記下它們公司的名字和借閱的某一本書。他們生怕別的公司的情報人員據(jù)此摸到他們可能要從事的某項科研項目。Lesson 16 The modern city 現(xiàn)代城市 In the organization of industrial life the influence of the fa