物理学专业英语.docx

1、物理学专业英语物理学专业英语华中师范大学物理学院物理学专业英语仅供内部学习参考！2014一、课程的任务和教学目的通过学习物理学专业英语，学生将掌握物理学领域使用频率较高的专业词汇和表达方法，进而具备基本的阅读理解物理学专业文献的能力。通过分析物理学专业英语课程教材中的范文，学生还将从英语角度理解物理学中个学科的研究内容和主要思想，提高学生的专业英语能力和了解物理学研究前沿的能力。培养专业英语阅读能力，了解科技英语的特点，提高专业外语的阅读质量和阅读速度；掌握一定量的本专业英文词汇，基本达到能够独立完成一般性本专业外文资料的阅读；达到一定的笔译水平。要求译文通顺、准确和专业化。要求译文通顺、准确

2、和专业化。二、课程内容课程内容包括以下章节：物理学、经典力学、热力学、电磁学、光学、原子物理、统计力学、量子力学和狭义相对论三、基本要求1. 充分利用课内时间保证充足的阅读量（约12001500词/学时），要求正确理解原文。2. 泛读适量课外相关英文读物，要求基本理解原文主要内容。3. 掌握基本专业词汇（不少于200词）。4. 应具有流利阅读、翻译及赏析专业英语文献，并能简单地进行写作的能力。四、参考书 正文标记说明：蓝色Arial字体（例如 energy）：已知的专业词汇蓝色Arial字体加下划线（例如electromagnetism）：新学的专业词汇黑色Times New Roman字体加

3、下划线（例如postulate）：新学的普通词汇1 Physics 物理学Introduction to physics Physics is a part of natural philosophy and a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through space and time, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature

4、, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic disciplines, perhaps the oldest through its inclusion of astronomy. Over the last two millennia, physics was a part of natural philosophy along with chemistry, certain branches of mathematics, and biolo

5、gy, but during the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, the natural sciences emerged as unique research programs in their own right. Physics intersects with many interdisciplinary areas of research, such as biophysics and quantum chemistry, and the boundaries of physics are not rigidly defined

6、. New ideas in physics often explain the fundamental mechanisms of other sciences, while opening new avenues of research in areas such as mathematics and philosophy.Physics also makes significant contributions through advances in new technologies that arise from theoretical breakthroughs. For exampl

7、e, advances in the understanding of electromagnetism or nuclear physics led directly to the development of new products which have dramatically transformed modern-day society, such as television, computers, domestic appliances, and nuclear weapons; advances in thermodynamics led to the development o

8、f industrialization; and advances in mechanics inspired the development of calculus.Core theoriesThough physics deals with a wide variety of systems, certain theories are used by all physicists. Each of these theories were experimentally tested numerous times and found correct as an approximation of

9、 nature (within a certain domain of validity).For instance, the theory of classical mechanics accurately describes the motion of objects, provided they are much larger than atoms and moving at much less than the speed of light. These theories continue to be areas of active research, and a remarkable

10、 aspect of classical mechanics known as chaos was discovered in the 20th century, three centuries after the original formulation of classical mechanics by Isaac Newton (16421727) 【艾萨克牛顿】.These central theories are important tools for research into more specialized topics, and any physicist, regardle

11、ss of his or her specialization, is expected to be literate in them. These include classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics and statistical mechanics, electromagnetism, and special relativity.Classical and modern physicsClassical mechanicsClassical physics includes the traditional bran

12、ches and topics that were recognized and well-developed before the beginning of the 20th centuryclassical mechanics, acoustics, optics, thermodynamics, and electromagnetism. Classical mechanics is concerned with bodies acted on by forces and bodies in motion and may be divided into statics (study of

13、 the forces on a body or bodies at rest), kinematics (study of motion without regard to its causes), and dynamics (study of motion and the forces that affect it); mechanics may also be divided into solid mechanics and fluid mechanics (known together as continuum mechanics), the latter including such

14、 branches as hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, aerodynamics, and pneumatics. Acoustics is the study of how sound is produced, controlled, transmitted and received. Important modern branches of acoustics include ultrasonics, the study of sound waves of very high frequency beyond the range of human hearing

15、; bioacoustics the physics of animal calls and hearing, and electroacoustics, the manipulation of audible sound waves using electronics.Optics, the study of light, is concerned not only with visible light but also with infrared and ultraviolet radiation, which exhibit all of the phenomena of visible

16、 light except visibility, e.g., reflection, refraction, interference, diffraction, dispersion, and polarization of light. Heat is a form of energy, the internal energy possessed by the particles of which a substance is composed; thermodynamics deals with the relationships between heat and other form

17、s of energy. Electricity and magnetism have been studied as a single branch of physics since the intimate connection between them was discovered in the early 19th century; an electric current gives rise to a magnetic field and a changing magnetic field induces an electric current. Electrostatics dea

18、ls with electric charges at rest, electrodynamics with moving charges, and magnetostatics with magnetic poles at rest.Modern PhysicsClassical physics is generally concerned with matter and energy on the normal scale of observation, while much of modern physics is concerned with the behavior of matte

19、r and energy under extreme conditions or on the very large or very small scale. For example, atomic and nuclear physics studies matter on the smallest scale at which chemical elements can be identified. The physics of elementary particles is on an even smaller scale, as it is concerned with the most

20、 basic units of matter; this branch of physics is also known as high-energy physics because of the extremely high energies necessary to produce many types of particles in large particle accelerators. On this scale, ordinary, commonsense notions of space, time, matter, and energy are no longer valid.

21、The two chief theories of modern physics present a different picture of the concepts of space, time, and matter from that presented by classical physics.Quantum theory is concerned with the discrete, rather than continuous, nature of many phenomena at the atomic and subatomic level, and with the com

22、plementary aspects of particles and waves in the description of such phenomena. The theory of relativity is concerned with the description of phenomena that take place in a frame of reference that is in motion with respect to an observer; the special theory of relativity is concerned with relative u

23、niform motion in a straight line and the general theory of relativity with accelerated motion and its connection with gravitation. Both quantum theory and the theory of relativity find applications in all areas of modern physics.Difference between classical and modern physicsWhile physics aims to di

24、scover universal laws, its theories lie in explicit domains of applicability. Loosely speaking, the laws of classical physics accurately describe systems whose important length scales are greater than the atomic scale and whose motions are much slower than the speed of light. Outside of this domain,

25、 observations do not match their predictions. Albert Einstein【阿尔伯特爱因斯坦】 contributed the framework of special relativity, which replaced notions of absolute time and space with space-time and allowed an accurate description of systems whose components have speeds approaching the speed of light. Max P

26、lanck【普朗克】, Erwin Schrdinger【薛定谔】, and others introduced quantum mechanics, a probabilistic notion of particles and interactions that allowed an accurate description of atomic and subatomic scales. Later, quantum field theory unified quantum mechanics and special relativity. General relativity allow

27、ed for a dynamical, curved space-time, with which highly massive systems and the large-scale structure of the universe can be well-described. General relativity has not yet been unified with the other fundamental descriptions; several candidate theories of quantum gravity are being developed.Researc

28、h fieldsContemporary research in physics can be broadly divided into condensed matter physics; atomic, molecular, and optical physics; particle physics; astrophysics; geophysics and biophysics. Some physics departments also support research in Physics education.Since the 20th century, the individual

29、 fields of physics have become increasingly specialized, and today most physicists work in a single field for their entire careers. Universalists such as Albert Einstein (18791955) and Lev Landau (19081968)【列夫朗道】, who worked in multiple fields of physics, are now very rare.Condensed matter physicsCo

30、ndensed matter physics is the field of physics that deals with the macroscopic physical properties of matter. In particular, it is concerned with the condensed phases that appear whenever the number of particles in a system is extremely large and the interactions between them are strong.The most fam

31、iliar examples of condensed phases are solids and liquids, which arise from the bonding by way of the electromagnetic force between atoms. More exotic condensed phases include the super-fluid and the BoseEinstein condensate found in certain atomic systems at very low temperature, the superconducting

32、 phase exhibited by conduction electrons in certain materials, and the ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic phases of spins on atomic lattices.Condensed matter physics is by far the largest field of contemporary physics. Historically, condensed matter physics grew out of solid-state physics, which is now considered one of its main subfields. The term condensed matter physics was apparently coined by Philip Anderson when he renamed his research grouppreviously solid-state theoryin 1967. In 1978, the Division of Solid State Physics of t