【英语时差8,16】碳，氧，氢（上）

Robert Frost once wrote a poem about coming across an old woodpile in the forest. In describing it he refers to the “slow, smokeless burning of decay.” What a great line of poetry. The neat part about it is, it’s also technically¹ correct. Decay is an extremely slow burning process. Or, you could say, fire is an extremely fast decaying process. In either case, what you have is the combination of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Carbon and oxygen atoms love to link up with each other and form carbon dioxide. Right behind them in the race to merge³ come hydrogen and oxygen, which love to form di hydrogen oxide². It’s this kind of rapid merging⁴ of atoms that we call fire. Hold on! you say. Fire has, like, flames and stuff!

1 technically   

adv.专门地，技术上地

参考例句：

• Technically it is the most advanced equipment ever.从技术上说，这是最先进的设备。
• The tomato is technically a fruit,although it is eaten as a vegetable.严格地说，西红柿是一种水果，尽管它是当作蔬菜吃的。

2 oxide   

n.氧化物

参考例句：

• Oxide is usually seen in our daily life.在我们的日常生活中氧化物很常见。
• How can you get rid of this oxide coating?你们该怎样除去这些氧化皮？

3 merge   

v.(使)结合，(使)合并，(使)合为一体

参考例句：

• I can merge my two small businesses into a large one.我可以将我的两家小商店合并为一家大商行。
• The directors have decided to merge the two small firms together.董事们已决定把这两家小商号归并起来。

4 merging   

合并（分类）

参考例句：

• Many companies continued to grow by merging with or buying competing firms. 许多公司通过合并或收买竞争对手的公司而不断扩大。 来自英汉非文学 - 政府文件
• To sequence by repeated splitting and merging. 用反复分开和合并的方法进行的排序。