TEXT 1 HOW NOT TO WRITE A PERSONAL STATEMENT To prepare an effective personal statement, you need to know what to do, as well as to be aware of what not to. These tips are based on real personal statements that have been rejected by universities. 1. My first tip for you might seem obvious, but it is one that a surprising number of candidates ignore. Make sure that your statement is long makes you look enough to get your point across, but not too short tha! careless. Admission officers read hundreds if not thousands of applications, so be sure that you write a statement that keeps you to the word limits or space restrictions that have been set. 2. Don’t forget to proofread your statement very carefully. Most people don’t apply to just one college, but to several at the same time, and so they inevitably copy and paste from one application to the next. That’s understandable. What is surprising is how many people forget to change key bits of information (for example the title of the course they are applying for) 3. It gives a poor impression if your statement contains spelling or grammar mistakes, so don’t be too lazy to check your work carefully. Ask someone possible-it is always easier to pick up on someone to look through it else’s mistakes. Don’t rely on your computer's spell-check, as it will not identify all the errors and may suggest corrections that are inappropriate. 4, The above tips are all technical matters. The ones that follow relate more to the content of your personal statement and these are at least as portant. First of all, you should not, for example, just include facts about yourself that we have already have read in your application forms. We know what school you went too, for example. What we don’t know is what motivate you or what your reasons are for choosing our college and our course.5. However, what you say should not be at odds with what is contained elsewhere in the application. Don’t claim in your statement that you are Passionate about learning languages if there is no evidence of your having taken the language any language courses or passed any language exams on your application form. It’s always worth checking back to make sure that everything is consistent. 6. Don’t try to make the admission tutor feel sorry for you. Resist the temptation to use the statement as an opportunity to complain about how hard life has been for you, how unfair your school has been to you, how your parents do not understand you, how no one has ever given you a lucky break, It may sometimes be appropriate to briefly refer to some specific problem, but the focus should be on how you overcome any obstacles you have met. In that way, you may impress by demonstrating your resilience. 7. It is best not to focus on potential earning power as being your main motivation for doing the course. Even if part of your reason for wanting to do a degree in dentistry or law is the salary you should eventually earn, admission tutors are much more impressed by those students who appear to be motivated by a love of learning and an enthusiasm for the academic discipline they are applying to study. 8. Don’t try to attract your reader's atten n by being gimmicky. I've seen several applications written in verse, or in the form of a short story or an abstract painting. 9. Finally, don’t fall in the trap of thinking that a good writing style is only important if you are applying to do an English degree, So avoid cliches. We don’t expect your statements to be works of literature, but there is no doubt that we are impressed when they are written in a polished and brief style.TEXT II Motivation in Learni LUN gUAe Iguages “Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.” (George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright and critic, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, 1925) Motivation is the driving force by which people achieve their goals and fulfill their desires. No matter what man’s motivation in the process of training might be, it should be strong enough, since low motivation means low learning. It is important to point that motivation might change in the process of learning, according to one’s new intentions, desires and challenges. When taking up leaning foreign languages, people are very enthusiastic. Besides, there are many reasons for which people want to lear languages that are not their mother tongue, These reasons generally refer to aspects that, on one hand point to professional success, on the other, to personal possibility to acquire information in the given language. Different life-situations demonstrate that knowing a foreign language, namely English, will be of help, especially in circumstances of communicative type. Foreign languages are included in all curricula of universities and colleges. Among these languages, English has a special position. As the new Lingua Franca of the world, English has practically covered all fields of knowledge.Learners want to speak English fluently and correctly in a very short 7 eae liminary stages that imply greater period of time, sometimes skipping the pre! : ment effort and patience, Since we live in a highly communicative ee the majority of students points to the same goals: the possibility to communicate with people when going abroad, the chances to get a better Job, to get a scholarship, to understand movies they see, books they read. Some of them feel quite embarrassed when not being able to cope with the above-mentioned tasks, Im real life, when being asked a question, people have the freedom to answer what they want, This is somehow unforeseeable. During classes, this does not function, even if the teacher is sometimes trying to create “life Situations”. In many language manuals, students have to answer certain svestions in a previously given manner, they are instructed to give only affirmative or negative answers, full or short ones, or make use of unique forms of response. Even in the so- called “conversation Practice” students Simply imitate pre-written dialogues or sentences according t some Prescribed model. There are no freedom, no choice and no unpred ictability in this. Outside the classroom things totally change: the learners sometime feel alone and have to manage all by themselves It is very important to distinguish between knowing how to apply grammatical rules, for instance, in types of exercises and being able to use them Outside the classroom. This ‘sone of the main problems learners have to cope with. PracticeTEXT I Learning a foreign language is a complex activity that requires the acquisition by the learners of four main skills: listening, writing, reading and speaking. The place and priorities of these skills are a problem of utmost interest. In language skill formation, a common classification is the one that points to the fact that writing and speaking are considered productive skills, while reading and listening are passive skills. When asked about the importance and order in which these skills should be taught, people are usually irresolute: everything seems to the important, at first sight, that is why a decision is difficult. Knowing a foreign language cannot equal any of the skills, but in reaching best results and a good command of language, all the stages should be equally considered. Listening and understanding are, as a rule, the first steps in the process of language acquisition. We first need to understand what we are told, before being able to perform any kind of verbal reaction. That is why, pethaps, people who live a longer period of time in a community where there are no speakers of their mother tongue, come back home with very good language knowledge. Writing is most often perceived as a “second degree” activity. For a teacher, writing is mostly used in testing activities, because written test can offer an image of the results in different stages of learning. Reading may be intensive or extensive. In the first type. each word can be explained, while extensive reading points to the general message ord words and then try t0 explain them in srlined words 1, Find the meanings of the under your own words and examples: rerience, ar with your personal exp 2. Using information from the text, together with your pt answer the following questions: > a. How could you define motivation? i 9 b. What can be life- situations created within English classes? i i ent? ¢. How would you define a highly- communicative environm : — 4. What were you motivated by when taking up English classes? e. What is the main difference between an English class and the life- situation one is supposed to use his English knowledge? nu te maipoate face s& 3. Translate into English: ,.La un moment dat, nit sari din pat cu entuziasm dimineafa. Nici macar nu e vorba de vreo depresie, ci doar de plictiseala. Te gandesti cd aterizeleaz zi de zi la acelasi birou, vezi aceleasi fete, faci aceleasi lucruri, dai aceleasi rapoarte. Ce fel de viafi e asta? Acasi la fel: aceleasi sarcini domestice, aceleasi conversatii. Primul génd explicativ pe care ti-1 adresezi: .Nu sunt motivat.” ‘Asao fi. Dar oare explicatia aceasta e suficienta? Ce este motivatia? De ce uneori ne este greu si ne apucdm si de lucrurile care ne fac, indiscutabil, placer? $i, repet, nu suntem nici pe departe deprima{i, starea aceea in care iti vine doar sa zaci si atat(...) E doar plictiseala, senzatia de vid, de lipsi de perspectiva si de seop. Sa fim sinceri: la un moment dat toti trecem prin aga ceva, viafa nu e un carusel antrenant, de stimulare permanenta si pozitiva. (Alexa luliana, Stii ce te motiveazd? Psychlologies, www.psychologies.ro)EXT IV From the leamer’s point of view, speaking represents the most difficult stage. It is the thing they “fear” most, because they find it hard to speak in a language that is not their mother tongue, a language with different rules they have to put into practice. That is why teachers should encourage their students to speak and acct spontaneously in speaking class activities. This is not easy task for both sides. Moreover, they are afraid of making mistakes, hence the huge “amount” of inhibition. One of the frequent mistakes in this respect is that people try to speak a foreign language as if they spoke their native one, To a certain extent, especially up to the intermediate level, this is quite difficult. As a rule, they should try to speak making use of short, clear statements, according to their knowledge Nevertheless, the tendency is, in almost all cases, a contradictory one people actually translate their native tongues statements that are already prepared in their mind, They want to translate them.... But the moment they realize they cannot do this (because they have not enough knowledge) they get inhibited. The relevant thing for a learner is to be able to understand and make himself understood. At the same time, he/she should be able to apply,. People are much the main idea of written information people get to. pI i f hat they read. embarrassed when being in the position of not understanding w y This is not exactly “a tragedy”. It is by far more important to get the general i i , till message of a text, than looking for each and every word in the dictionary. you lose patience and get bored. Neverthele , some people are eager to find the meaning of word ina dictionary. This is good, encouraging activity: they try to memorize the word and they feel comfortable. For the time being. But what happens when they have to use the word in their own thinking, that is the moment they are free to express thoughts, ideas, opinions? Sometimes they get panicked, realizing that they cannot do this. Then, of course, the context can be of great help. Some people find reading boring; others feel quite comfortable especially in silent reading ‘asks, Generally speaking, they all consider they can cope with this activity. Itis, no doubt, important to have a rich vocabui g00d language acquisition. Words are dead un! ‘ary, but this is not enough for less used in the right context, After all, knowing a language does not mean kno wing as many as possible words, as history, for instance, is not the mere enumeration of data and events. Words have their life and capacity to move from active to passive areas, in other words, if not used, a word that belongs to the active Vocabulary may return to the dhand and can be anytime correctly used, Passive vocabulary is made up of those words we once knew, but because we do not use them so often, they retreat in a dark comer of our memory.PEXT_V fish American and B It would be a mistake to consider that the American English differs so much from the British English, so that people coming from the two countries would not understand each other. To call the American English as a dialect of the Bristish English is also wrong, since there are dialects within both territories. It is well known that, in many respects, the English language has replaced French and gua Franca of the world, In its tun,the American English thus became the newL has visibly gained ground and detaching from the British English, has become an individual object of study in the universities of the world. Besides, it is to be considered that English language is so differently spoken around the world: there is a Chinese English, an Indian one, the one spoken in New Zeeland and the list may continue. In other words, we face a complex linguistic phenomenon that doesnot include only the distinction between the language of the ‘Americans and that of the English. ‘The first and most important thing is to clearly admit that the English tanguage is one language and the differences that appear between the American English and the British one do not affect the communication between people. This is , by far, the most important aspect of the topic. One first perspective of approaching the topic refers to the correctness” of the two" varieties’ Unfortunately, one cannot draw a conclusion, since the criteria according 9 which such grading could function. People use to think that American English is somehow more innacurrate then the Bristish English and the mainstream Is thattheoretical knowledge with no effort (as he/she do this when Speaking his/her mother tongue). It is also important to point to the fact that one of the concerns is to speak grammatically correct. Generally speaking, most learners require the systematic teaching of grammar, because, according to their opinion, the long run effort in this Tespect represents a guarantee for success. At the same time, let us be fair: too much grammar may be of no such use: after all, how many occasions are there in life (except, of course, an exam or a test) when people will be asked ‘© Prove that they know impeccably all grammar rules without exception? On the other hand, one cannot have a good command of language unless one’s grammar knowledge can be of help in mastering all the main skills. Motivated attitude, accompanied by self-trust are one of the main aspects in the process of language acyuisition. From the teacher's point of view, when teaching each skill, it is important to create real life circumstances, so that the students should feel that what they do in the classroom will be of help later on, when they are on their own, that is in real life circumstances that differ so much from the forced situations that are mainly created during the classes.American English is more difficult to understand. Moreover, at a certain moment there was a kind of rivalry” between the two. None of the two English varieties” won this battle. According to recent studies, the British English continued to keep its place and have numerous advocates and, in spite of what oen might think, to evolve more rapidly than the American English which proved to be slower in the changing process. At a certain moment another idea emerged: the American English, being somehow considered more agrestic tended to ruin” the Bristish English that was (and still is) perceived as being more elegant, even elitist as compared with the variant across the ocean, American English was the language of the street, the language lacking any inhibitions TEXT VI an_and Bris In the year 1965, two famous linguists, Albert H. Marckwardt and Randolf Quirk published a transcription of a radio dialogue. Marckwardt was was coming from the American University of Princeton, Quirk was British (The University College from London). The dialogue of the authors approched in an informal way, the topic of the two varieties of the English language. The study was entitled .4 Common Language ~ British and American English” and contained numerousat r tinent linguistic a_pertinen| Frat demonstrated the preocupation [0 offe s that det example: demonstration of the main idea can ane speak of 90 he followin: rm American En} variety” of English. ‘ons was, of course tl ish”, preferred the te 2 ‘The essential questi * Marckward different language .e language spoken in Ameri considering that thi than a dialect. The questions of the study are very diver sh in American Englis! whether one should include Canadian Engli English, such a question ica is rather a» se, such as, for example fh, considering the few existing differences. In the case of the British seems never to occur since the Bristish themselves consider tha English language is unique and is only theirs. ‘The conclusion of the first chapter refers to an interesting fact: people are more interested in linguistic differences rather then in the similarities. Although the two varieties have a common source, that is the language spoken during Shakespeare's time, they developed separately, with periodic tendencies of unifying or separation. Later on, during the 18 th century, as the literary language began to circulate, one can mention the standardization of the English. The powerful British Empire also contributed to people’s access to the forms of literary language Nevertheless, the Industrial Revolution and the Americans’ wish for independence, created a discontinuity in the process of unification. Between 1900 and 1920 it was even a tendency to accentuate the differences The examples in the study belong to various domains of activity and they refer to similarities and differences in morphology (collective nouns, compound nouns, the use of the past tense or the present perfect, the going ro future, transitive verbs, ete.) spelling and pronunciationFour functions of the mechanical engineer, common to all branches of mechanical engineering, can be cited. The first is the understanding of and dealing with the bases of mechanical science. These include dynamics, concerning the relation between forces and motion, such as in vibration; automatic control; thermodynamics, dealing with the relations among the various forms of heat, energy, and power; fluid flow; heat transfer; lubrication; and properties of materials. Second is the sequence of research, design, and development. This function attempts to bring about the changes necessary to meet present and future needs. Such work requires a clear understanding of mechanical science, an ability to analyze a complex system into its basic factors, and the originality to synthesize and invent. Third is production of products and power, which embraces planning, operation, and maintenance. The goal is to produce the maximum value with the minimum investment and cost while maintaining or enhancing longer term viability and reputation of the enterprise or the institution. Fourth is the coordinating function of the mechanical engineer, including management, consulting, and, in some cases, marketing. In these functions there is a long continuing trend toward the use of scientific instead of traditional or intuitive methods. Operations research, value engineering, and PABLA (problem analysis by logical approach) are typical titles of such rationalized approaches. Creativity, however, cannot bemainly in the c aspects occur It is also worth mentioning, that the common asp hte sya 7 or, as compare’ m. academic language, where the evolution 1§ slower, as COMP! an an when reading an academic text it W rthe spoken language. That is why, fj of the spoken language or British English ric difficult to establish whether it was written in. Ameri / . . e world include a significant number © Moreover, certain famous dictionaries of th 4 Z science). Scientilic words followed by the Initials 1.V.S, (Ixlemational Vaoalalazy of Science). es not admit dialects or idioms; from this language, it is well known and do perspective, the changes are less spectacular. The analysis continues in the field of the vocabulary from most different ee i inventions, etc. Today. one can speak about the ,miracle” of the English language, a phenomenon consisting in the huge interest for this language people from all over the world continue to manifest. Moreover, as no other language on the Earth, the English language reflects the fame of the two great countries: the United Kingdom and The United States of America. The conclusion of the study is an optimistic one: we should not look for a winner in this competition”, as long as it is better to talk about the American English and the British English, and not the American English versus the British English. Regarding the teachers of foreign languges, here the answer is very simple: they should teach that form of the language they know better and have the necessary resources for,Power; this > Was done princi . princi turbine and associates ee the development of the steam witnessed a continued rated m oilers. The 20th century has driving electric a Pid growth in the power output of turbines for efficiency Aa ea lelecele) together with a steady increase in thermal cee eduction : capital cost per kilowatt of large power 7 7 ly, mechanical engineers acquired the resource of nucl energy, whose application has d aa lemanded an exceptional standard of reliability and safety i y involving the solution of entirel (see nuclear engineering). Yew probes , The mechanical engineer is also responsible for the much smaller internal combustion engines, both reciprocating (gasoline and diesel) and rotary (gas-turbine and Wankel) engines, with their widespread transport applications. In the transportation field generally, in air and space as well as on land and sea, the mechanical engineer has created the equipment and the power plant, collaborating increasingly with the electrical engineer, especially in the development of suitable control systems. The skills applied to war by the mechanical engineer are similar to those required in civilian applications, though the purpose is to enhance destructive power rather than to raise creative efficiency. The demands of war have channeled huge resources into technical fields, however, and led to developments that have profound benefits in peace. Jet aircraft and nuclear reactors are notable examples. The earliest efforts of mechanical engineers were aimed at controlling the human environment by draining and irrigating land andrationalized. The ability to take the important and unexpected step that opens up new solutions remains in mechanical engineering, as elsewhere, largely a personal and spontaneous characteristic, The high standard of living in the developed countries owes much to mechanical engineering. The mechanical engineer invents machines to produce goods and develops machine tools of increasing accuracy and complexity to build the machines. The principal lines of development of machinery have been an increase in the speed of operation to obtain high rates of production, improvement in accuracy to obtain quality and economy in the product, and minimization of operating costs. These three requirements have led to the evolution of complex control systems. The most successful production machinery is that in which the mechanical design of the machine is closely integrated with the control system. A modern transfer (conveyor) line for the manufacture of automobile engines is a good example of the mechanization of a complex series of manufacturing processes. Developments are in hand to automate production machinery further, using computers to store and process the vast amount of data required for manufacturing a variety of components with a small number of versatile machine tools. TEXT Vill The steam engine provided the first practical means of generating power from heat to augment the old sources of power from muscle, wind, and water. One of the first challenges to the new profession of mechanical engineering was to increase thermal efficiencies andby ventilating mines. Refrigeration and air conditioning are examples of the use of modern mechanical devices to control the environment. Many of the products of mechanical engineering, together with technological developments in other fields, give rise to noise, the pollution of water and air, and the dereliction of land and scenery. The rate of production, both of goods and power, is rising so rapidly that regeneration by natural forces can no longer keep pace. A rapidly growing field for mechanical engineers and others is environmental control, comprising the development of machines and processes that will produce fewer pollutants and of new equipment and techniques that can reduce or remove the pollution already generated. TEXT IX Mechanics, science concerned with the motion of bodies under the action of forces, including the special case in which a body remains at rest. Of first concern in the problem of motion are the forces that bodies exert on one another. This leads to the study of such topics as gravity, electricity, and magnetism, according to the nature of the forces involved. Given the forces, one can seek the manner in which bodies move under the action of forces; this is the subject matter of mechanics proper. Historically, mechanics was among the first of the exact sciences to be developed. Its internal beauty as a mathematical discipline and its early remarkable success in accounting in quantitative detail for the motions of the Moon, Earth, and other planetary bodies had enormous influence on philosophical thought and provided impetus for the systematic development of science.Mechanics may be divided into three branches: stati 7 which deals with forces acting on and in a body at rest; kinematics, which Yeseribes the possible motions of a body or system of bodies; ; ics, which attempts to explain or predict the motion that will Scour in a given situation. Alternatively, mechanics may be divided according to the kind of system studied. The simplest mechanical system is the particle, defined as a body so small that its shape and eternal structure are of no consequence in the given problem. More complicated is the motion of a system of two or more particles that exert forces on one another and possibly undergo forces exerted by bodies outside of the system. The principles of mechanics have been applied to three general realms of phenomena. The motions of such celestial bodies as stars, planets, and satellites can be predicted with great accuracy thousands of years before they occur. (The theory of relativity predicts some deviations from the motion according to classical, or Newtonian, mechanics; however, these are so small as to be observable only with very accurate techniques, except in problems involving all or a large portion of the detectable universe.) As the second realm, ordinary objects on Earth down to microscopic size (moving at speeds much lower than that of light) are properly described by classical mechanics without significant corrections. The engineer who designs bridges or aircraft may use the Newtonian laws of classical mechanics with confidence, even though the forces may be very complicated, and the calculations lack the beautiful simplicity of celestial mechanics. The third realm of phenomena comprises the behaviour of matter and electromagnetic radiation on the atomic and subatomic scale. ‘Although there were some limited early successes in describing the behaviour of atoms in terms of classical mechanics, these phenomena are properly treated in quantum mechanics. Classical mechanics deals with the motion of bodies under the influence of forces or with the equilibrium of bodies when all forces are balanced. The subject may be thought of as the elaboration and application of basic postulates first enunciated by Isaac Newton in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687), commonly known as the Principia. These postulates, called Newton's laws ofmotion, are set forth below. They may be used to predict with great precision a wide variety of phenomena ranging from the motion of individual particles to the interactions of highly complex systems. A variety of these applications are discussed in this artic In the framework of modern physics, classical mechanics can be understood to be an approximation arising out of the more profound Jaws of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity. However, that view of the subject's place greatly undervalues its importance in forming the context, language, and intuition of modern science and scientists. Our present-day view of the world and man’s place in it is firmly rooted in classical mechanics. Moreover, many ideas and results of classical mechanics survive and play an important part in the new physics. TEXT X The central concepts in classical mechanics are force, mass, and motion. Neither force nor mass is very clearly defined by Newton, and both have been the subject of much philosophical speculation since Newton. Both of them are best known by thei: effects. Mass is a measure of the tendency of a body to resist changes in its state of motion. Forces, on the other hand, accelerate bodies, which is to say they change the state of motion of bodies to which they are applied. The interplay of these effects is the principal theme of classical mechanics. Although Newton’s laws focus attention on force and mass, three other quantities take on special importance because their total amount never changes. These three quantities are energy, (linear) momentum, and angular momentum. Any one of these can be shifted from one body or system of bodies to another. In addition, energy may change form while associated with a single system, appearing as kinetic energy, the energy of motion; potential energy, the energy of position; heat, or internal energy, associated with the random motions of the atoms or molecules composing any real body; or any combination of the three. Nevertheless, the total energy, momentum, and angularmomentum in the universe never changes. This fact is expressed in phy ing that energy, momentum, and angular momentum are conserved. These three conservation laws arise out of Newton's laws, but Newton himself did not express them. They had to be discovered later. It is a remarkable fact that, although Newton's laws are no longer considered to be fundamental, nor even exactly correct, the three conservation laws derived from Newton’s laws—the conservation of energy, momentum, and angular momentum—remain exactly true even in quantum mechanics and relativity. In fact, in modern physics, force is no longer a central concept, and mass is only one of a number of attributes of matter. Energy, momentum, and angular momentum, however, still firmly hold centre stage. The continuing importance of these ideas inherited from classical mechanics may help to explain why this subject retains such great importance in science today. TEXT XI id Foundations Of History The discovery of classical mechanics was made necessary by publication, in 1543, of the book De revolutionibus orbium coel libri VI (“Six Books Concerning the Revolutions of the Heavenly Orbs”) by the Polish astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus. The book was about revolutions, real ones in the heavens, and it sparked the metaphorically named scientific revolution that culminated in Newton's Principia about 150 years later. The scientific revolution would change forever how people think about the universe.In his book, Copernicus pointed out that the calculations needed to predict the positions of the planets in the night sky would be somewhat simplified if the Sun, rather than Earth, were taken to be the centre of the universe (by which he meant what is now called the solar system). Among the many problems posed by Copernicus’s book was an important and legitimate scientific question: if Earth is hurtling through space and spinning on its axis as Copernicus's model prescribed, why is the motion not apparent? To the casual observer, Earth certainly seems to be solidly at rest. Scholarly thought about the universe in the centuries before Copernicus was largely dominated by the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. According to Aristotelian science, Earth was the centre of the universe. The four elements—earth, water, air, and fire—were naturally disposed in concentric spheres, with earth at the centre, surrounded respectively by water, air, and fire. Outside these were the crystal spheres on which the heavenly bodies rotated. Heavy, earthy objects fell because they sought their natural place. Smoke would rise through air, and bubbles through water for the same reason. These were natural motions. All other kinds of motion were violent motion and required a proximate cause. For example, an oxcart would not move without the help of an ox. When Copernicus displaced Earth from the centre of the universe, he tore the heart out of Aristotelian mechanics, but he did not suggest how it might be replaced. Thus, for those who wished to promote Copernicus’s ideas, the question of why the motion of Earth is not noticed took on a special urgency. Without suitable explanation, Copernicanism was a violation not only of Aristotelian philosophy but also of plain common sense. The solution to the problem was discovered by the Italian mathematician and scientist Galileo Galilei. Inventing experimental physics as he went along, Galileo studied the motion of balls rolling on inclined planes. He noticed that, if a ball rolled down one plane and up another, it would seek to regain its initial height above the ground, regardless of the inclines of the two planes. That meant, he reasoned, that, if the second plane were not inclined at allbut were horizontal instead, the ball, unable to regain its original height, would keep rolling forever. From this observation he deduced that bodies do not need a proximate cause to stay in motion. Instead, a body moving in the horizontal direction would tend to stay in motion unless something interfered with it. This is the reason that Earth's motion is not apparent; the surface of Earth and everything on and around it are always in motion together and therefore only seem to be at rest. This observation, which was improved upon by the French philosopher and scientist René Descartes, who altered the concept to apply to motion in a straight line, would ultimately become Newton's first law, or the law of inertia. However, Galileo’s experiments took him far beyond even this fundamental discovery. Timing the rate of descent of the balls (by means of precision water clocks and other ingenious contrivances) and imagining what would happen if experiments could be carried out in the absence of air resistance, he deduced that freely falling bodies would be uniformly accelerated at a rate independent of their mass. Moreover, he understoud that the motion of any projectile was the consequence of simultaneous and independent inertial motion in the horizontal direction and falling motion in the vertical direction. In his book Dialogues Concerning the Two New Sciences (1638), Galileo wrote, It has been observed that missiles and projectiles describe a curved path of some sort; however, no one has pointed out tie fact that this path is a parabola. But this and other facts, not few in number or less worth knowing, Thave succeeded in proving. Just as Galileo boasted, his studies would encompass many aspects of what is now known as classical mechanics, including not only discussions of the law of falling bodies and projectile motion but also an analysis of the pendulum, an example of harmonic motion. His studies fall into the branch of classical mechanics known as kinematics, or the description of motion. Although Galileo and others tried to formulate explanations of the causes of motion, the focus of the field termed dynamics, none would succeed before Newton.TEXT XII Galileo's fame during his own lifetime rested not so much on his discoveries in mechanics as on his observations of the heavens, which he made with the newly invented telescope about 1610. What he saw there, particularly the moons of Jupiter, either prompted or confirmed his embrace of the Copernican system. At the time, Copernicus had few other followers in Europe. Among those few, however, was the brilliant German astronomer and mathematician Johannes Kepler. Kepler devoted much of his scientific career to elucidating the Copernican system. Although Copernicus had put the Sun at the centre of the solar system, his astronomy was still rooted in the Platonic ideal of circular motion. Before Copernicus, astronomers had tried to account for the observed motions of heavenly bodies by imagining that they rotated on crystal spheres centred on Earth. This picture worked well enough for the stars but not for the planets. To “save the appearances” (fit the observations) an elaborate system emerged of circular orbits, called epicycles, on top of circular orbits. This system of astronomy culminated with the Almagest of Ptolemy, who worked in Alexandria in the 2nd century cE. The Copernican innovation simplified the system somewhat, but Copernicus's astronomical tables were still based on circular orbits and epicycles. Kepler set out to find further simplifications that would help to establish the validity of the Copernican system. In the course of his investigations, Kepler discovered the three laws of planetary motion that are still named for him. Kepler's first law says that the orbits of the planets are ellipses, with the Sun at one focus. This observation swept epicycles out of astronomy. His second law stated that, as the planet moved through its orbit, a line joining it to the Sun would sweep out equal areas in equal times. For Kepler, this law was merely a rule that helped him make precise calculations for his astronomical tables. Later, however, it would be understood to be a direct consequence of the law ofconservation of angular momentum. Kepler's third law stated that the period of a planet's orbit depended only on its distance from the Sun. In particular, the square of the period is proportional to the cube of the semimajor axis of its elliptical orbit. This observation would suggest to Newton the inverse-square law of universal gravitational attraction. By the middle of the 17th century, the work of Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and others had set the stage for Newton’s grand synthesis. Newton is thought to have made many of his great discoveries at the age of 23, when in 1665-66 he retreated from the University of Cambridge to his Lincolnshire home to escape from the bubonic plague. However, he chose not to publish his results until the Principia emerged 20 years later. In the Principia, Newton set out his basic postulates concerning force, mass, and motion. In addition to these, he introduced the universal force of gravity, which, acting instantaneously through space, attracted every bit of matter in the universe to every other bit of matter, with a strength proportional to their masses and inversely Proportional to the square of the distance between them. These principles, taken together, accounted not only for Kepler’s three laws and Galileo's falling bodies and projectile motions but also for other phenomena, including the precession of the equinoxes, the oscillations of the pendulum, the speed of sound in air, and much more. The effect of Newton's Principia was to replace the by-then discredited Aristotelian worldview with a new, coherent view of the universe and how it worked. The way it worked is what is now referred to as classical mechanics. TEXT XTi Fundamental conceptsUnits and dimensions Quantities have both dimensii their fundamental nature, and units, which are chosen by convention to express magnitude or size. For example, a series of events have a certain duration in time. Time is the dimension of the duration. The duration might be expressed as 30 minutes or as half an hour. Minutes and hours are among the units in which time may be expressed. One can compare quantities of the same dimensions, even if they are expressed in different units (an hour is longer than a minute). Quantities of different dimensions cannot be compared with one another. vhich are an expression of The fundamental dimensions used in mechanics are time, mass, and length. Symbolically, these are written as t, m, and I, respectively. The study of electromagnetism adds an additional fundamental dimension, electric charge, or q. Other quantities have dimensions compounded of these. For example, speed has the dimensions distance divided by time, which can be written as l/t, and volume has the dimensions distance cubed, or ls. Some quantities, such as temperature, have units but are not compounded of. fundamental dimensions. There are also important dimensionless numbers in nature, such as the number = 3.14159 . . .. Dimensionless numbers may be constructed as ratios of quantities having the same dimension. Thus, the number zis the ratio of the circumference of a circle (a length) to its diameter (another length). Dimensionless numbers have the advantage that they are always the same, regardless of what set of units is being used. Governments have traditionally been responsible for establishing and enforcing standard units for the sake of orderly commerce, navigation, science, and, of course, taxation. Today all such units are established by international treaty, revised every few years in light of scientific findings. The units used for most scientific measurements are those designated the International System of Units (Systeme International@Unités), or SI fo adopted officially by the Bi thes They are based on the metric system, first rance in 1795. Other units, such as those of ish engineering System, are still in use in some places, but are now defined in terms of the SI units. The fundamental unit of length is the me ‘tre. A metre used to be defined as the distance between two scratch marks on a metal bar kept in Paris, but it is now much more precisely defined as the distance that light travels in a certain time interval (4/299,792,458 of a second). By contrast, in the British system, units of length have a clear human bias: the foot, the inch (the first joint of the thumb), the yard (distance from nose to outstretched fingertip), and the mile (one thousand standard paces of a Roman legion). Each of these is today defined as some fraction or multiple of a metre (one yard is nearly equal to one metre). In the SI or the metric system, lengths are expressed as decimal fractions or multiples of a metre (a millimetre = one- thousandth of a metre; a centimetre = one-hundredth of a metre; a kilometre = one thousand metres). Times longer than one second are expressed in the units seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years. Times shorter than one second are expressed as decimal fractions (a millisecond = one-thousandth of a second, a microsecond = one-millionth of a second, and so on). The fundamental unit of time (i.e., the definition of one second) is today based on the intrinsic properties of certain kinds of atoms (an excitation frequency of the isotope cesium-133).TEXT XIV Units of mass are also defined in a way that is technically sound, but in common usage they are the subject of some confusion because they are easily confused with units of weight, which is a different physical quantity. The weight of an object is the consequence of Earth's gravity operating on its mass. Thus, the mass of a given object is the same everywhere, but its weight varies slightly if it is moved about the surface of Earth, and it would change a great deal if it were moved to the surface of another planet. Also, weight and mass do not have the same dimensions (weight has the dimensions mi/t:). The Constitution of the United States, which calls on the government to establish uniform “weights and measures,” is oblivious to this distinction, as are merchants the world over, who measure the weight of bread or produce but sell it in units of kilograms, the SI unit of mass. (The kilogram is equal to 1,000 grams and is defined in terms of Planck’s constant, the speed of light, and the second.) The equations of mechanics are typically written in terms of Cartesian coordinates. At a certain time t, the position of a particle may be specified by giving its coordinates x(t), y(t), and z(t) ina particular Cartesian frame of reference. However, a different observer of the same particle might choose a differently oriented set of mutually perpendicular axes, say, x’, y’, and z’. The motion of the particle is then described by the first observer in terms of the rate of change of x(t), y(t), and z(t), while the second observer would discuss the rates of change of x(t), y(t), and z(t). That is, both observers see the same particle executing the same motion and obeying the same laws, but they describe the situation with different equations. This awkward situation may be avoided by means of a mathematical construction called a vector. Although vectors are mathematically simple andCS extremely useful in discussing mechanics, they were not developed in their modern form until late in the 19th century, when J. Willard Gibbs and Oliver Heaviside (of the United States and Britain, respectively) each applied vector analysis in order to help express the new laws of electromagnetism proposed by James Clerk Maxwell.