英语PK台 第183期:让孩子爱上动手科学

 Speaker biography：

A French-Japanese inventor and TED¹ senior fellow, he is the creator of Protei, a revolutionary sailing technology -- featuring a front rudder, flexible hull² and open-source hardware -- that allows for efficient cleanup of both oil and plastics from the sea. Currently based in London, Harada recently traveled to Japan and is designing Protei to measure radioactivity along the country's coast. The general coordinator³ of the future International Ocean Station, Harada teaches at Goldsmiths University London. A former project leader at MIT, he graduated form the Royal College of Arts Design Interactions in London and worked at the Southampton University Hydrodynamics laboratory on wave energy.

Section 1：

When I was a kid, my parents would tell me, "You can make a mess, but you have to clean up after yourself." So freedom came with responsibility. But my imagination would take me to all these wonderful places, where everything was possible. So I grew up in a bubble of innocence⁴ -- or a bubble of ignorance, I should say, because adults would lie to us to protect us from the ugly truth. And growing up, I found out that adults make a mess, and they're not very good at cleaning up after themselves.

Fast forward, I am an adult now, and I teach citizen science and invention at the Hong Kong Harbor School. And it doesn't take too long before my students walk on a beach and stumble upon piles of trash. So as good citizens, we clean up the beaches. And so it's sad to say, but today more than 80 percent of the oceans have plastic in them. It's a horrifying⁵ fact.

And in past decades, we've been taking those big ships out and those big nets and we collect those plastic bits that we look at under a microscope, and we sort them, and then we put this data onto a map. But that takes forever, it's very expensive, and so it's quite risky⁶ to take those big boats out. So with my students, ages 6 to 15, we've been dreaming of inventing a better way. So we've transformed our tiny Hong Kong classroom into a workshop.

Vocabulary:

Innocence, ignorance, stumble upon

1 ted   

vt.翻晒，撒，撒开

参考例句：

• The invaders gut ted the village.侵略者把村中财物洗劫一空。
• She often teds the corn when it's sunny.天好的时候她就翻晒玉米。

2 hull   

n.船身；(果、实等的)外壳；vt.去(谷物等)壳

参考例句：

• The outer surface of ship's hull is very hard.船体的外表面非常坚硬。
• The boat's hull has been staved in by the tremendous seas.小船壳让巨浪打穿了。

3 coordinator   

n.协调人

参考例句：

• The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, headed by the Emergency Relief Coordinator, coordinates all UN emergency relief. 联合国人道主义事务协调厅在紧急救济协调员领导下，负责协调联合国的所有紧急救济工作。
• How am I supposed to find the client-relations coordinator? 我怎么才能找到客户关系协调员的办公室？

4 innocence   

n.无罪；天真；无害

参考例句：

• There was a touching air of innocence about the boy.这个男孩有一种令人感动的天真神情。
• The accused man proved his innocence of the crime.被告人经证实无罪。

5 horrifying   

a.令人震惊的，使人毛骨悚然的

参考例句：

• He went to great pains to show how horrifying the war was. 他极力指出战争是多么的恐怖。
• The possibility of war is too horrifying to contemplate. 战争的可能性太可怕了，真不堪细想。

6 risky   

adj.有风险的，冒险的

参考例句：

• It may be risky but we will chance it anyhow.这可能有危险，但我们无论如何要冒一冒险。
• He is well aware how risky this investment is.他心里对这项投资的风险十分清楚。