11．Fermi Problem 費(fèi)米問(wèn)題
On a Monday morning in July, the world\'s first atom bomb exploded in New Mexico desert. Forty seconds later, the shock waves reached the base camp where the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi and his team stood. After a mental calculation, Fermi announced to his team that the bomb's energy had equated 10,000 tons of TNT. The bomb team was impressed, but not surprised. Fermi's genius was known throughout the scientific world. In 1938 he had won a Nobel Prize. Four years later he produced the first nuclear chain reaction, leading us into the nuclear age. Since Fermi's death in 1954, no physicist has been at once a master experimentalist and a leading theoretician.
Like all virtuosos, Fermi had a distinctive style. He preferred the most direct route to an answer. He was very good at dividing difficult problems into small, manageable bits — talent we all can use in our daily lives.
To develop this talent in his students, Fermi would suggest a type of question now known as a Fermi problem. Upon first hearing one of these, you haven\'t the remotest notion of the answer, and you feel certain that too little information had been given to solve it. Yet when the problem is broken into sub-problems, each answerable without the help of experts or books, you can come close to the exact solution.
Suppose you want to determine earth\'s circumference without looking it up. Everyone knows that New York and Los Angeles are about 3,000 miles apart and that the time difference between them is three hours. There hours is one-eighth of a day, and a day is the time it takes the planet to complete one rotation, so its circumference must be times 3,000 or 24,000 miles. This answer differs from the true value, 24,902.45 miles, by less than four percent.
Ultimately the value of dealing with everyday problems the way Fermi did lies in the rewards of making independent discoveries and inventions. It doesn't matter whether the discovery is as important as determining the power of an atom or as small as measuring the distance between New York and Los Angeles. Looking up the answer, or letting someone else find it, deprives you of the pleasure and pride that accompany creativity, and deprives you of an experience that builds up self-confidence. Thus, approaching personal dilemmas as Fermi problems can become a habit that enriches your life.
7月的一個(gè)星期一早上，世界上第一顆原子彈在新墨西哥沙漠上爆炸了。40秒鐘以后，這個(gè)震動(dòng)波傳到了美籍意大利人、物理學(xué)家恩里科·費(fèi)米和他的隊(duì)員們所駐扎的基地。經(jīng)過(guò)大腦計(jì)算，費(fèi)米向他的隊(duì)員們宣布爆炸的原子彈的能量相當(dāng)于1萬(wàn)噸烈性炸藥。費(fèi)米的話給隊(duì)員們留下深刻的印象，但他們并不驚奇。費(fèi)米的天才聞名于整個(gè)科學(xué)界。他在1938年就已獲得諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)。四年之后，他創(chuàng)造了第一次原子核的鏈反應(yīng)，帶領(lǐng)我們進(jìn)入了原子時(shí)代。自1954年費(fèi)米去世后，還沒(méi)有哪一位物理學(xué)家同時(shí)是一名精通的實(shí)驗(yàn)主義者和一名最主要的理論家。
像所有的藝術(shù)家一樣，費(fèi)米有他自己的獨(dú)特風(fēng)格。他喜歡用最直接的路徑去解決問(wèn)題。他非常善于把困難問(wèn)題分解成小的可以解決的小部分——這種能力我們?cè)谌粘Ｉ钪卸伎梢允褂谩?BR> 為了開(kāi)發(fā)他的學(xué)生們的才能，費(fèi)米會(huì)提出一種現(xiàn)在稱之為費(fèi)米問(wèn)題的問(wèn)題。當(dāng)你聽(tīng)到這樣一個(gè)問(wèn)題時(shí)，你對(duì)問(wèn)題的答案絲毫都不知道，你肯定會(huì)認(rèn)為所提供的信息太少了，因而無(wú)法解決它。但是當(dāng)這個(gè)問(wèn)題被分解為幾個(gè)次級(jí)問(wèn)題，每個(gè)問(wèn)題不用求教專家或書本都能解答時(shí)，你就接近于得到準(zhǔn)確的答案。
假設(shè)你想不通過(guò)查閱而確定地球周長(zhǎng)。每個(gè)人都知道紐約離洛杉磯大約3 000英里遠(yuǎn)，且兩地的時(shí)區(qū)差為3小時(shí)。3小時(shí)是一天的1／8，一天剛好是地球完成一次公轉(zhuǎn)的時(shí)間。所以它的周長(zhǎng)肯定是3 000英里的八倍，即24 000英里。這個(gè)答案與真正的地球周長(zhǎng)值24 902.45英里只相差不足4%。
最后，以費(fèi)米處理問(wèn)題的方式解決日常問(wèn)題的價(jià)值在于獨(dú)立發(fā)現(xiàn)和發(fā)明的回報(bào)。這個(gè)發(fā)明是否像確定一顆原子的能那樣重要還是像度量紐約和洛杉磯之間的距離那樣細(xì)小都沒(méi)有關(guān)系。查找這個(gè)答案，或是讓其他人去發(fā)現(xiàn)它，都是剝奪你隨創(chuàng)造而來(lái)的歡樂(lè)與自豪，剝奪了你建立自信心的一次經(jīng)歷。所以，用費(fèi)米問(wèn)題解決個(gè)人困境能形成一種使你的生活豐富多彩的好習(xí)慣。
★1).Fermi’s team was impressed by Fermi’s announcement in the base camp because he could even work out the power of the atom bomb in his mind.-R
★2).Fermi, an experimentalist as well as a theoretician, won a Nobel Prize for producing the first nuclear chain reaction in the world.-W
★3).Dividing a big problem into small problems is a talent Fermi had and a talent that has practical value in life.-R
★4).Fermi problem is to develop the talent of breaking a seemingly unanswerable problem into sub-problems and finding the solution to it, which is a typical Fermi problem.-R
★5).Then the fourth paragraph tells us how Fermi solved the problem of earth’s circumference without looking up.-W
★6).The last paragraph concludes the whole writing by stressing the value of important inventions and small discoveries.-W
★7).Fermi was famous for inventing a device to calculate bomb’s energy accurately.-N
On a Monday morning in July, the world\'s first atom bomb exploded in New Mexico desert. Forty seconds later, the shock waves reached the base camp where the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi and his team stood. After a mental calculation, Fermi announced to his team that the bomb's energy had equated 10,000 tons of TNT. The bomb team was impressed, but not surprised. Fermi's genius was known throughout the scientific world. In 1938 he had won a Nobel Prize. Four years later he produced the first nuclear chain reaction, leading us into the nuclear age. Since Fermi's death in 1954, no physicist has been at once a master experimentalist and a leading theoretician.
Like all virtuosos, Fermi had a distinctive style. He preferred the most direct route to an answer. He was very good at dividing difficult problems into small, manageable bits — talent we all can use in our daily lives.
To develop this talent in his students, Fermi would suggest a type of question now known as a Fermi problem. Upon first hearing one of these, you haven\'t the remotest notion of the answer, and you feel certain that too little information had been given to solve it. Yet when the problem is broken into sub-problems, each answerable without the help of experts or books, you can come close to the exact solution.
Suppose you want to determine earth\'s circumference without looking it up. Everyone knows that New York and Los Angeles are about 3,000 miles apart and that the time difference between them is three hours. There hours is one-eighth of a day, and a day is the time it takes the planet to complete one rotation, so its circumference must be times 3,000 or 24,000 miles. This answer differs from the true value, 24,902.45 miles, by less than four percent.
Ultimately the value of dealing with everyday problems the way Fermi did lies in the rewards of making independent discoveries and inventions. It doesn't matter whether the discovery is as important as determining the power of an atom or as small as measuring the distance between New York and Los Angeles. Looking up the answer, or letting someone else find it, deprives you of the pleasure and pride that accompany creativity, and deprives you of an experience that builds up self-confidence. Thus, approaching personal dilemmas as Fermi problems can become a habit that enriches your life.
7月的一個(gè)星期一早上，世界上第一顆原子彈在新墨西哥沙漠上爆炸了。40秒鐘以后，這個(gè)震動(dòng)波傳到了美籍意大利人、物理學(xué)家恩里科·費(fèi)米和他的隊(duì)員們所駐扎的基地。經(jīng)過(guò)大腦計(jì)算，費(fèi)米向他的隊(duì)員們宣布爆炸的原子彈的能量相當(dāng)于1萬(wàn)噸烈性炸藥。費(fèi)米的話給隊(duì)員們留下深刻的印象，但他們并不驚奇。費(fèi)米的天才聞名于整個(gè)科學(xué)界。他在1938年就已獲得諾貝爾獎(jiǎng)。四年之后，他創(chuàng)造了第一次原子核的鏈反應(yīng)，帶領(lǐng)我們進(jìn)入了原子時(shí)代。自1954年費(fèi)米去世后，還沒(méi)有哪一位物理學(xué)家同時(shí)是一名精通的實(shí)驗(yàn)主義者和一名最主要的理論家。
像所有的藝術(shù)家一樣，費(fèi)米有他自己的獨(dú)特風(fēng)格。他喜歡用最直接的路徑去解決問(wèn)題。他非常善于把困難問(wèn)題分解成小的可以解決的小部分——這種能力我們?cè)谌粘Ｉ钪卸伎梢允褂谩?BR> 為了開(kāi)發(fā)他的學(xué)生們的才能，費(fèi)米會(huì)提出一種現(xiàn)在稱之為費(fèi)米問(wèn)題的問(wèn)題。當(dāng)你聽(tīng)到這樣一個(gè)問(wèn)題時(shí)，你對(duì)問(wèn)題的答案絲毫都不知道，你肯定會(huì)認(rèn)為所提供的信息太少了，因而無(wú)法解決它。但是當(dāng)這個(gè)問(wèn)題被分解為幾個(gè)次級(jí)問(wèn)題，每個(gè)問(wèn)題不用求教專家或書本都能解答時(shí)，你就接近于得到準(zhǔn)確的答案。
假設(shè)你想不通過(guò)查閱而確定地球周長(zhǎng)。每個(gè)人都知道紐約離洛杉磯大約3 000英里遠(yuǎn)，且兩地的時(shí)區(qū)差為3小時(shí)。3小時(shí)是一天的1／8，一天剛好是地球完成一次公轉(zhuǎn)的時(shí)間。所以它的周長(zhǎng)肯定是3 000英里的八倍，即24 000英里。這個(gè)答案與真正的地球周長(zhǎng)值24 902.45英里只相差不足4%。
最后，以費(fèi)米處理問(wèn)題的方式解決日常問(wèn)題的價(jià)值在于獨(dú)立發(fā)現(xiàn)和發(fā)明的回報(bào)。這個(gè)發(fā)明是否像確定一顆原子的能那樣重要還是像度量紐約和洛杉磯之間的距離那樣細(xì)小都沒(méi)有關(guān)系。查找這個(gè)答案，或是讓其他人去發(fā)現(xiàn)它，都是剝奪你隨創(chuàng)造而來(lái)的歡樂(lè)與自豪，剝奪了你建立自信心的一次經(jīng)歷。所以，用費(fèi)米問(wèn)題解決個(gè)人困境能形成一種使你的生活豐富多彩的好習(xí)慣。
★1).Fermi’s team was impressed by Fermi’s announcement in the base camp because he could even work out the power of the atom bomb in his mind.-R
★2).Fermi, an experimentalist as well as a theoretician, won a Nobel Prize for producing the first nuclear chain reaction in the world.-W
★3).Dividing a big problem into small problems is a talent Fermi had and a talent that has practical value in life.-R
★4).Fermi problem is to develop the talent of breaking a seemingly unanswerable problem into sub-problems and finding the solution to it, which is a typical Fermi problem.-R
★5).Then the fourth paragraph tells us how Fermi solved the problem of earth’s circumference without looking up.-W
★6).The last paragraph concludes the whole writing by stressing the value of important inventions and small discoveries.-W
★7).Fermi was famous for inventing a device to calculate bomb’s energy accurately.-N