【英语时差8,16】阿基米德用镜子烧了罗马船？（上）

I’ve always been intrigued¹ by the story that the Greek scientist Archimedes used mirrors to focus sunlight on Roman ships and set them on fire during the siege of Syracuse. Is this true, or is it a myth? Very cool question. And one that scholars have debated since at least the European Renaissance². Philosopher René Descartes, for example, rejected the story as a fabrication. More recently, a group of students at MIT tested whether or not Archimedes could have really burned Roman ships using mirrors. On the TV show Mythbusters they used more than 120 one foot square mirrors to focus sunlight on a wooden ship at a distance of about 100 feet. They did manage to raise a flame and cause some charring. But only after the ship had been still for about ten minutes and the sky was perfectly³ clear.

1 intrigued   

adj.好奇的，被迷住了的v.搞阴谋诡计(intrigue的过去式)；激起…的兴趣或好奇心；“intrigue”的过去式和过去分词

参考例句：

• You've really intrigued me—tell me more! 你说的真有意思—再给我讲一些吧！
• He was intrigued by her story. 他被她的故事迷住了。

2 renaissance   

n.复活，复兴，文艺复兴

参考例句：

• The Renaissance was an epoch of unparalleled cultural achievement.文艺复兴是一个文化上取得空前成就的时代。
• The theme of the conference is renaissance Europe.大会的主题是文艺复兴时期的欧洲。

3 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。