英语PK台 第184期:让孩子爱上动手科学(2)

 Section 2：

And so this is how we work. I let the imaginations of my students run wild. And my job is to try to collect the best of each kid's idea and try to combine it into something that hopefully would work.

What was really cool about this project is that the students saw a local problem, and boom¹ -- they are trying to immediately address it. But my students in Hong Kong are hyper-connected kids. And they watch the news, they watch the Internet, and they came across this image. This was a child, probably under 10, cleaning up an oil spill bare-handed, in the Sundarbans, which is the world's largest mangrove² forest in Bangladesh. So I was very compelled by doing the second experiments, and I wanted to take it even further -- maybe addressing an even harder problem and it's also closer to my heart.

You can see a progression here -- we've gone from a local problem to a remote problem to a global problem. So plastic, oil and radioactivity are horrible, horrible legacies³, but the very worst legacy⁴ that we can leave our children are lies. We can no longer afford to shield the kids from the ugly truth because we need their imagination to invent the solutions. So citizen scientists, makers⁵, dreamers -- we must prepare the next generation that cares about the environment and people, and that can actually do something about it. Thank you.

Vocabulary:

Oil spill, compel, legacy, shield

1 boom   

n.隆隆声；vt.发隆隆声

参考例句：

• The country is having a great boom in industry.这个国家的工业正蓬勃发展。
• Boom!Boom!Boom!A series of explosions shook the valley.轰！轰！轰！一连串爆破声震撼山谷。

2 mangrove   

n.(植物)红树，红树林

参考例句：

• It is the world's largest tidal mangrove forest.它是世界上最大的红树林沼泽地。
• Many consider this the most beautiful mangrove forest in all Thailand.许多人认为这里是全泰国最美丽的红树林了。

3 legacies   

n.遗产( legacy的名词复数 )；遗留之物；遗留问题；后遗症

参考例句：

• Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind. 书是伟大的天才留给人类的精神财富。 来自辞典例句
• General legacies are subject to the same principles as demonstrative legacies. 一般的遗赠要与指定数目的遗赠遵循同样的原则。 来自辞典例句

4 legacy   

n.遗产，遗赠；先人(或过去)留下的东西

参考例句：

• They are the most precious cultural legacy our forefathers left.它们是我们祖先留下来的最宝贵的文化遗产。
• He thinks the legacy is a gift from the Gods.他认为这笔遗产是天赐之物。

5 makers   

n.制造者，制造商（maker的复数形式）

参考例句：

• The makers of the product assured us that there had been no sacrifice of quality. 这一产品的制造商向我们保证说他们没有牺牲质量。
• The makers are about to launch out a new product. 制造商们马上要生产一种新产品。 来自《简明英汉词典》