大学英语精读听力第二册 2_un05

[00:00.00]Unit Five Text
[00:24.08]Seen through the eyes of a young friend Einstein was a simple,
[00:30.33]modest and ordinary man.
[00:34.38]THE PROFESSOR AND THE YO-YO
[00:38.01]Thomas Lee Bucky with Joseph P.Blank
[00:42.84]My father was a close friend of Albert Einstein.
[00:47.80]As a shy young visitor to Einstein's home,
[00:52.66]I was made too feel at easy when Einstein said,
[00:57.52]"I have something to show you."
[01:00.97]He went to his desk and returned with a Yo-Yo.
[01:05.72]He tried to show me how it worked but he couldn't make it roll back up the string.
[01:11.89]When my turn came,
[01:15.36]I displayed my few tricks and pointed out of him
[01:20.12]that the incorrectly looped string had thrown the toy off balance.
[01:26.36] Einstein nodded,properly impressed by my skill and knowledge.
[01:32.42]Later,I bought a new Yo-Yo and mailed it to the Professor as a Christmas present,
[01:39.08]and received a poem of thanks.
[01:43.24]As a boy and then as an adult,
[01:47.08]I never lost my wonder at the personality that was Einstein.
[01:53.03]He was the only person I knew who had come to terms with himself
[01:58.70]and the world around him.
[02:01.94]He knew what he wanted and he wanted only this:
[02:06.80]to understand within his limits as a human being the nature of the universe
[02:13.15] and the logic and simplicity in its functioning.
[02:17.80]He knew there were answers beyond his intellectual reach.
[02:22.97]but this did not frustrate him.
[02:26.49]He was content to go as far as he could.
[02:31.04]In the 23 years of our friendship,I never saw him show jealousy,
[02:37.28]vanity,bitterness,anger,resentment,or personal ambition.
[02:44.05]He seemed immune to these emotions.
[02:48.18]He was beyond any pretension.
[02:52.04]Although he corresponded with many of the world's most important people,
[02:58.21]his stationery carried only a watermark--W--for Woolworth's.
[03:04.97]To do his work he needed only a pencil and a pad of paper.
[03:11.03]Material things meant nothing to him.
[03:15.29]I never knew him to carry money because he never had any use for it.
[03:21.35]He believed in simplicity,
[03:24.83]so much so that he used only a safety razor and water to shave.
[03:31.36]When I suggested that he try shaving cream,he said,
[03:36.50]"The razor and water do the job."
[03:40.34]"But Professor,why don't you try the cream just once?"I argued.
[03:46.90]"It makes shaving smoother and less painful." He shrugged.
[03:53.27]Finally,I presented him with a tube of shaving cream.
[03:58.63]The next morning when he came down to breakfast,
[04:02.76]he was beaming with the pleasure of a new, great discovery.
[04:08.32]"You know,that cream really works," he announced.
[04:13.47]"It doesn't pull the beard.It feels wonderful."
[04:18.14]Thereafter,he used the shaving cream every morning until the tube was empty.
[04:24.99]Then he reverted to using plain water.
[04:29.14]Einstein was purely and exclusively a theorist.
[04:34.89]He didn't have the slightest interest in the practical application
[04:40.32]of his ideas and theories.
[04:43.95]His E=MCxC is probably the most famous equation in history yet Einstein
[04:52.10]wouldn't walk down the street to see a reactor create atomic energy.
[04:58.95]He won the Nobel Prize for his Photoelectric Theory,
[05:04.30]a series of equations that he considered relatively minor in importance,
[05:10.67] but he didn't have any curiosity in observing how his theory made TV possible.
[05:17.73] My brother once gave the Professor a toy,
[05:22.30]a bird that balanced on the edge of a bowl of water
[05:27.16]and repeatedly dunked its head in the water.
[05:31.31]Einstein watched it in delight,trying to deduce the operating principle.
[05:38.16]But he couldn't. The next morning he announced,
[05:43.72]"I had thought about that bird for a long time before I went to bed
[05:50.28]and it must work this way... "He began a long explanation.Then he stopped,
[05:58.03]realizing a flaw in his reasoning. "No,I guess that's not it,"he said.