III. Match the words from two columns A and B to make common collocations used in science and technology. Give their Ukrainian equivalents.

IV. Read and translate the text. Make a list of discoveries mentioned in the text and prove their importance for humanity.

History of Science

The world we live in today would no doubt be a different place if it weren't for the amazing discoveries produced by the scientists. Their ideas, research, experiments and determination are an inspiration to those that follow in their footsteps. Covering a broad range of scientific fields these people have pushed the world of science forward, allowing the human race to answer impossible questions. The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Greeks and the Romans, had all contributed something to the first vague notions of science and scientific investigation.

The age of science really led off in the middle of the 17th century. The seventeenth century had still preferred to investigate the far off heavens and to study the position of our planet in relation to the solar system. Even so, the Church had disapproved of this unseemly curiosity, and Copernicus who first of all had proved that the sun was the centre of the universe, did not publish his work until the day of his death. Galileo spent the greater part of his life under the supervision of the clerical authorities, but he continued to use his telescope and provided Isaac Newton with a mass of practical observations, which greatly helped the English mathematician when he discovered the Law of Gravitation.

The 18th century was a period of remarkable scientific breakthroughs. During the 18th century chemistry made great advances. In 1766 Henry Cavendish isolated hydrogen and studied its properties. Perhaps the greatest chemist of the 18th century was Antoine Lavoisier. He discovered the role of oxygen in respiration and corrosion of metals. A landmark in geology came in 1785 when James Hutton published his book “Theory of the Earth”. Meanwhile people began to investigate electricity. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin proved that lightning is a form of electricity.

During the 19th century science made great progress. John Dalton published his atomic theory in 1803. According to the theory matter is made of tiny, indivisible particles and atoms of different elements had different weight. A Russian, Dmitri Mendeleev formulated the Periodic Table, which arranged all the known elements according to their atomic weight. The Englishman Michael Faraday invented the dynamo.

During the 20th century science continued to go forward at fantastic speed. In 1910 Ernest Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus. In 1900 Planck suggested quantum theory, which states that energy is exchanged in discrete packets he called quanta. Einstein published his theory of Special Relativity in 1905 and his General Theory of Relativity in 1915. Also in the 1920s Edwin Hubble showed that our galaxy is only one of many galaxies. He also proved that the universe is expanding.

Our life outwardly has changed more in the last one hundred years than it did in thousands of years earlier, because of the scientific knowledge accumulated over the last three centuries. So the impact of science on society is very visible; progress in agriculture, medicine and health care, telecommunications, transportation, computerization and so on, is part of our daily living.

Date: 2016-03-03; view: 1553