高中英语人教版高二下课文02

[10:36.02]当他还没有被创造出来时，他很丑，
[10:39.84]INTEGRATING SKILLS
[10:49.38]Reading   MR CAVOR'S FLYING MACHINE
[10:54.55]When I first met Mr Cavor,he was about to finish building the machine
[11:01.21]in which he planned to travel to the moon.
[11:05.16]As it had neither wings nor an engine,
[11:09.60]I was amazed and asked him how his machine could fly.
[11:15.06]The secret lay in a new naterial which he had developed.
[11:20.10]Applied in his machine,it would cut off the earth's power,
[11:25.87]which science calls gravity,to keep things on the ground.
[11:31.20]If My Cavor's machine would be free from the pull of gravity,
[11:36.76]nothing would keep it from flying off into the sky.
[11:41.31]I still could not understand how it would work,
[11:46.66]so I asked him to explain it to me.
[11:50.82]Cavor said that for many years he had been doing research into materials
[11:57.17]that could block all kinds of energy in the form of waves.
[12:03.02]"Energy,"he said,"such as light or heat,X-rays,electricity or gravity,
[12:11.87]exists in the form of waves that act on bodies at a distance."
[12:18.12]Almost all materials block some form of energy.
[12:23.47]Glass,for example,blocks heat
[12:27.73]but it lets light pass through,so that it is useful as a fire screen.
[12:34.57]Metals,on the other hand,block light,
[12:39.22]but electrical energy and heat pass through them very well.
[12:44.79]So far,it sounded like a class of basic physics,
[12:50.66]and I had no difficulty understanding him.
[12:55.34]"Gravity passes through all know materials,"he said.
[13:00.70]"You can use screens of various sorts to cut off the light or heat,
[13:06.44]or electrical influence of the sun.
[13:10.60]You can screen things with sheets of metal from radioactivity,
[13:16.16]but nothing will cut off the gravity of the earth.
[13:20.73]Yet why there should be nothing is hard to say."
[13:25.17]Cavor did not see why such a material,which he called Cavorite,
[13:31.34]should not exist.He argued that such a material was possible and,
[13:38.10]under certain conditions,could be made.
[13:42.49]He explained it to me as follows.
[13:46.33]"Everybody knows that the air has weight
[13:50.69]and that it presses on everything on the surface of the earth,
[13:55.87]no less than fourteen and a half pounds to the square inch.
[14:01.19]But over a sheet of Cavorite this is not the case,
[14:06.63]because it blocks the gravity from the earth below it.
[14:11.17]The next stip would be to build a machine
[14:16.22]in which to apply that great discovery."
[14:20.68]Cavor was proud to show me the first model.
[14:25.12]"It's like this,"he said."Nothing above a layer of Cavorite weighs anything,
[14:32.49]and everything above it goes up into the air.
[14:36.96]The material itself moves up too and we are going up with it."
[14:43.02]"Like Jules Verne's thing in A Trip to the Moon,"I said,
[14:49.08]but Cavor did not read any fiction.
[14:53.34]"Imagine a ball,"he explained,"
[14:57.59]large enough to hold two people and their luggage.
[15:02.24]It will be made of steel and thick glass,and on the outside,Cavorite.
[15:08.72]As soon as the Cavorite cools down,
[15:12.87]it is no longer affected by gravity,and off you fly."
[15:18.15]"But then what is to prevent the machine from travelling in a straight line
[15:24.00]into space for ever?"I asked.
[15:27.87]"That's a practical problem
[15:31.32]for which I will still need to find a solution,"Cacor said,
[15:36.78]"but don't worry,I already have the beginning of an idea."