【正文】 tivities. Student: I39。m here 39。s something I don39。s website. And nothing, there is no mention of it. Director: And when did you summit this request? Student: Last Wednesday. I followed the instructions very carefully. I am sure it was Wednesday, because know announcements have be submitted three business days ahead of the posting day. Director: And what39。s no formal structure or anything. I guess you could call us the French Literature Reading Group. Director: OK. And it is a recognized group? By the university, I mean. Student: No Director: OK. Student: But the French Department is funding this, on the condition that we do all the legwork. Director: All right. Hold on a second while I check. Well, it looks like we did receive your announcement last Wednesday. Uh, looks like the editors must have decided not to include your event in this week39。t post things automatically. We get so many requests that we couldn39。t enough publicity. Is there anyone else I can talk to? Director: I don39。s schedule. But maybe you could ask the French department to post the announcement on its website. And maybe you could approach some other departments as well, you know, relevant ones. Student: I knew we should have done a poster. But everybody was like, oh, you can just post it online. In any event, thanks for you help. It39。t have the words to convey how extraordinary this find was. The Antikythera Mechanism is a relatively small device, roughly the size of a shoebox, made of gears fitted inside a wooden case. In its original state, there were rotating dials and other indicators on the top, with letters and drawings showing the Sun, the phases of the moon and different constellations. Inside the box, bronze gears would have rotated the displays. The displays, uh, the indicators of the Antikythera Mechanism, would then moved to show the motion of the Sun and moon relative to the plas and stars. The device could be used to tell the different phases of the moon and much more. Well, scientists have recently analyzed the inscriptions on the mechanism and reexamine the other cargo in the ship wreck, and the evidence makes an absolute case that this device dates back to ancient Greece somewhere between 150 and 100 . What makes that so fascinating is that before we found the Antikythera Mechanism, the earliest device we had that could track the Sun and moon like this was invented over 1,000 years later. So when this was first found, people literally would not believe it. Some of my colleagues insisted it had to have been made well after 100 . But this physical evidence was conclusive. It was that old. Of course part of what made this find so unusual is that the Antikythera Mechanism is constructed of bronze. Now, it is not that bronze was all that rare in Greece then, it is just that bronze was valuable and could easily be recycled. It would have been relatively easy for a person with knowledge of metals to melt down bronze objects and fe them into ? well, say, coins. Bronze was used to made money back then. Or mold the bronze into anything else of value for that matter. We are very fortunate that the device ended up under water, because otherwise it probably would have ended up recycled into ? who knows what. Now, it was a challenge to figure out the Antikythera Mechanism. It spent over 2,000 years at the bottom of the sea before it was discovered. And even after it was discovered, it was still a number of years before we really understood what it was. You see, the mechanism had corroded underwater, and many of the gears were stuck together in a mass. Cleaning it was only partly successful. We could only get a good look at the structure of the gears after gammarays were used to see inside, very similar to the way Xrays are used to see your bones. Now, once we got a good look inside, we saw a really plex device. The many gears not only moved in a way that could indicate the phases of the moon. The Antikythera Mechanism also tracked both the lunar year and the solar year. Additionally, the gears also moved to match the motions of the pla and predicted eclipses. But one thing that is particularly notable is that the mechanism was so precise that it even took into account a particular irregularity in the moon39。s not fet that eclipses in plaary motions had important symbolic meanings. TPO23 Lecture2 Environmental Science (Earth Budget) Narrator: Listen to part of a lecture in an environmental science class. Professor: Basically