墨尔本PTE素材库——Another Ellipse around the sun

墨尔本PTE素材库——Another Ellipse around the sun

中文批注

这篇音频篇幅不长，如果大家有些许航空方面的小词汇的话，那么理解起来并不是问题。比如说你知道Perihelion和aphelion是什么意思吗？（答案在vocabulary list中哦！）如果对于航空方面的词汇较为匮乏，那么可能理解起来就会有点小困难，可能会有1-2句话并不明白是什么意思。不过不用担心，这些航空类的专业词汇，如果能作为大家的阅读词汇，对于应付考试就已经足以了哦！

音频中的数字信息较多，如果是对于听写数字有问题的同学，可以反复播放音频中的数字信息部分，锻炼自己听写数字的能力。

澳大利亚语言学院会定期整理一些PTE的相关话题素材，填入PTE素材库中。让大家在平日里也有靠谱的音频/视频可以学习，从根本意义上锻炼提升自己的英语能力。如果无法一次性全部听懂音频的内容，那么大家就需要参考下文的Full Transcript和vocabulary list来进一步的学习哦！

【Key Vocabulary】

NASA: 全称National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 美国国家航空航天局

Zip: Vt/Vi. 拉上或拉开拉链

Orbit: n. 轨道，眼眶；V. 绕…轨道而行

Ellipse: 椭圆形，椭圆

Figure out: 解决，算出，想出

Perihelion: 近日点，最高点

Aphelion: 远日点

Farthest: adv. 最远地 (far的最高级), adj. 最远的 (far 最高级)

Tile: 瓷砖，瓦片

Axis: 轴，轴线

Sweep: 扫除，掸去

Full Transcript

The last year took you far–hundreds of millions of miles, in fact. Steve Mirsky reports

Happy New Year! And don’t feel bad about taking today off. After all, you’ve travelled far. And I’m not talking about the trip home from the party last night. According to NASA, just by being on the planet Earth in the last year, you’ve zipped about 584 million miles around the sun to get back where you were. At an average speed of about 67,000 miles per hour. Again, not talking about the drive home last night.

Of course, the trip was not a perfect circle. As Kepler showed, the Earth’s orbit is an ellipse, with the sun at one of the two focal points. He also figured out the planet goes faster when it’s at perihelion, nearer the sun, than when it’s at aphelion, its farthest distance.

Which would explain why summer seems to zip by, except the seasons are a function of the tilt of the Earth’s axis, not its different distances from the sun. And the Earth rotated 365 and a quarter times during its sweep around the sun. The trip took 8,766 hours. Or 31,557,600 seconds. Or 525,960 minutes just like this one.

—Steve Mirsky

(http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/another-ellipse-around-the-sun-11-01-01/)