万花筒 2008-09-25&09-26 世界第一“绿色”博物馆

At the New California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, you can see all the colorful creatures you’d expect to find inside a top-notch aquarium¹ or museum, but it’s the outside of the building that truly makes it unique.

 

It's as if we've lifted up the park, built the museum underneath², and then we've dropped the park back down with this wonderful turnup acre-laying roof.

 

The roof collects rain runoff and filters it to the massive rainforest below. Indoor plants also receive sunlight from dozens of skylights. All of the 1.7 million native plants on the roof are planted in these bio-trays. These are made of coconut³ plus fiber⁴. That’s biodegradable, and within 3 to 5 years this will become part of the soil. The roof’s solar panels will provide about 10% of the Academy’s energy needs while the heavy layers of soil and vegetation help keep the building cool.

 

Recycled ground-up blue jeans are used inside the museum walls. It turns out denim⁵ makes for great insulation⁶.

 

The Academy also features an extensive exhibit on global warming. Museum officials are calling it the greenest museum of its size in the world. But they hope that title doesn’t last long.

 

Others are gonna come here look what we’ve done and then take it to the next level, so if we can be, if we can promote that and encourage others to do more than us, we’ll be very happy.

 

Inspiring other museums to think outside the box or in this case outside the building.

 

Haven Daley, the Associated Press, San francisco

 

1 aquarium   

n.水族馆，养鱼池，玻璃缸

参考例句：

• The first time I saw seals was in an aquarium.我第一次看见海豹是在水族馆里。
• I'm going to the aquarium with my parents this Sunday.这个星期天，我要和父母一起到水族馆去。

2 underneath   

adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面

参考例句：

• Working underneath the car is always a messy job.在汽车底下工作是件脏活。
• She wore a coat with a dress underneath.她穿着一件大衣，里面套着一条连衣裙。

3 coconut   

n.椰子

参考例句：

• The husk of this coconut is particularly strong.椰子的外壳很明显非常坚固。
• The falling coconut gave him a terrific bang on the head.那只掉下的椰子砰地击中他的脑袋。

4 fiber   

n.纤维，纤维质

参考例句：

• The basic structural unit of yarn is the fiber.纤维是纱的基本结构单元。
• The material must be free of fiber clumps.这种材料必须无纤维块。

5 denim   

n.斜纹棉布；斜纹棉布裤，牛仔裤

参考例句：

• She wore pale blue denim shorts and a white denim work shirt.她穿着一条淡蓝色的斜纹粗棉布短裤，一件白粗布工作服上衣。
• Dennis was dressed in denim jeans.丹尼斯穿了一条牛仔裤。

6 insulation   

n.隔离；绝缘；隔热

参考例句：

• Please examine the insulation of the electric wires in my house.请检查一下我屋子里电线的绝缘情况。
• It is always difficult to assure good insulation between the electric leads.要保证两个电触头之间有良好的绝缘总是很困难的。