The Physicist

 
 
 

Vocabulary

 

tasty	facility	material (2)
bake	field (3)	experiment
exist	extreme	property (2)
wrap	innovate	revolutionize
area (2)	figure out	shake/shook
device	brand new	break (2)/broke (2)
sit still	encounter	essentially
density	storage	room temperature
loss	handful	superconductor
attach	exhibit	present (2)
impact	in order to	fortunately
hope	lasting	particularly

 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Video

 
 
 
 

Transcript

Elizabeth Green, Scientist: I enjoy baking. By baking, we’re taking existing materials and turning it into something new.

And hopefully tasty.

This is very similar to what I do in my profession.

My name is Elizabeth Green. I’m 30 years old. I come from the USA. And I am an experimental physicist. I work at the High-Magnetic Field Facility located in Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf.

We’re interested in studying the properties of materials . . . in a variety of extreme conditions at high magnetic fields and low temperatures.

It’s almost like Christmas when you get a wrapped present. And you want to figure out what’s in that present, but you can’t open it…so you can shake it… you can throw it…if it’s not breakable.

It’s essentially what we do here is we use these instruments to figure out what is going on inside a particular material, and what properties it exhibits.

Some of these materials are brand new, and have never been studied before.

We never know what we are going to encounter — we may discover a device that will revolutionize the area of computers…or cell phones and make technology run faster…we may make higher storage, density material . . .

We never know.

If we find a room-temperature superconductor, that would be a revolution.

We can replace the power lines. So with a superconductor, however, there’s no loss: whatever you put into it, you get out of it in the end.

The High Field Lab is an excellent place for my research. However there are very few facilities like that in the world — only a handful.

And a lot of this technology that we are using, we innovated right here — we built.

I love to have everything hands-on: I love attaching samples…I love playing with the equipment…I just, I can’t sit still.

That’s terrible.

It’s great having my husband work here — directly next door to my laboratory.

Often, one person will have to give up their dreams in order to follow the other . . . particularly when you move to a new country.

But we were very, very fortunate.

Honestly, the part I like about Germany the best is our work-life balance; our institute helped us find our . . . . It’s absolutely amazing.

I truly hope that the research that I do will have a lasting impact — so after I’m gone, I hope I’ve made the world a better place for my son.

Questions

1. Elizabeth Green is only interested in science. Is this right or wrong?

2. What does she study? Does she investigate magnetic fields and temperature?

3. Do the scientists use a lot of expensive, high-tech equipment?

4. Green’s research is purely theoretical that will never have any practical applications. True or false?

5. Would discovering superconductivity be revolutionary? What would happen?

6. She likes mostly class lectures, reading, calculations and computer work. Yes or no?

7. Is Green single or married? Where does her husband work?

8. Does she consider herself lucky? Why does she consider herself lucky?

 

A. Are you doing scientific research? Do you know any scientists or people doing scientific research? What are they studying?

B. Would you like to do scientific research? What would you like to study or investigate?

C. What are some advanced research institutes in your city or country?

D. Is it easy or difficult or in the middle for married couples to balance work and life?

E. More young people, especially women, should be encouraged to study and take up science and engineering careers. What do you think?

F. Should the government and private enterprise invest more in R&D?

G. What will happen in the future regarding scientific study and research?