【正文】 , in terms of muscle relaxationand so on, can be achieved by a brief period lying, or even sitting down. Thebody39。s name on his cheques. If this facilitates forgery it is the bank which will lose, not the customer.劉曉華 liuxiaohua7214Lesson 13 The search for oilThe deepest holes of all are made for oil, and they go down to as much as 25,000feet. But we do not need to send men down to get the oil out, as we must withother 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 toimprove deep drilling than any other mining activity. When it has been decidedwhere we are going to drill, we put up at the surface an oil derrick. It has to betall because it is like a giant block and tackle, and we have to lower into theground and haul out of the. ground great lengths of drill pipe which are rotatedby 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 oftena sample is obtained with a coring bit. It cuts a clean cylinder of rock, from whichcan be seen he strata the drill has been cutting through. Once we get down tothe oil, it usually flows to the surface because great pressure, either from gas orwater, is pushing it. This pressure must be under control, and we control it bymeans of the mud which we circulate down the drill pipe. We endeavour toavoid the old, romantic idea of a gusher, which wastes oil and gas. We want it tostay down the hole until we can lead it off in a controlled manner.劉曉華 liuxiaohua7215*Lesson 14 The Butterfly EffectBeyond two or three days, the world’s best weather forecasts are speculative, and beyond six or seven theyare worthless.The Butterfly Effect is the reason. For small pieces of weather—and to a global forecaster, small can meanthunderstorms and blizzards – any prediction deteriorates rapidly. Errors and uncertainties multiply, cascadingupward through a chain of turbulent features, from dust devils and squalls up to continentsize eddies that onlysatellites can see.The modern weather models work with a grid of points of the order of sixty miles apart, and even so, somestarting data has to be guessed, since ground stations and satellites cannot see everywhere. But suppose theearth could be covered with sensors spaced one foot apart, rising at onefoot intervals all the way to to top ofthe atmosphere. Suppose every sensor gives perfectly accurate readings of temperature, pressure, humidity, andany other quantity a meteorologist would want. Precisely at noon an infinitely powerful puter takes all thedata 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 dayone month away. At noon the spaces between the sensors will hide fluctuations that the puter will notknow about, tiny deviations from the average. By , those fluctuations will already have created smallerrors one foot away. Soon the errors will have multiplied to the tenfoot scale, and so on up to the size of theglobe.劉曉華 liuxiaohua7216Lesson 15 Secrecy in industryTwo factors weigh heavily against the effectiveness of scientific in industry.One is the general atmosphere of secrecy in which it is carried out, theother the lack of freedom of the individual research worker. In so far as anyinquiry is a secret one, it naturally limits all those engaged in carrying it outfrom effective contact with their fellow scientists either in other countries or inuniversities, or even , often enough , in other departments of the same firm. Thedegree of secrecy naturally varies considerably. Some of the bigger firms are engagedin researches which are of such general and fundamental nature that it is apositive advantage to them not to keep them secret. Yet a great many processesdepending on such research are sought for with plete secrecy until the stageat which patents can be taken out. Even more processes are never patented at allbut kept as secret processes. This applies particularly to chemical industries,where chance discoveries play a much larger part than they do in physical andmechanical industries. Sometimes the secrecy goes to such an extent that thewhole nature of the research cannot be mentioned. Many firms, for instance,have great difficulty in obtaining technical or scientific books from libraries becausethey are unwilling to have their names entered as having taken out suchand such a book for fear the agents of other firms should be able to trace the kindof research they are likely to be undertaking.劉曉華 liuxiaohua7217Lesson 16 The modern cityIn the organization of industrial life the influence of the factory upon the physiological and mental state ofthe workers has been pletely neglected. Modern industry is based on the conception of the maximumproduction at lowest cost, in order that an individual or a group of individuals may earn as much money aspossible. It has expanded without any idea of the true nature of the human beings who run the machines, andwithout giving any consideration to the effects produced on the individuals and on their descendants by theartificial mode of existence imposed by the factory. The great cities have been built with no regard for us. Theshape and dimensions of the skyscrapers depend entirely on the necessity of obtaining the maximum ineper square foot of ground, and of offering to the tenants offices and apartments that please them. This causedthe construction of gigantic buildings where too large masses of human beings are crowded together. Civilizedmen like such a way of living. While they enjoy the fort and banal luxury of their dwelling, they do notrealize that they are deprived of the necessities of life. The modern city consists of mo