回复：【翻译听写】练习之十六 -- 詹姆斯·瓦特和水壶

A little Scottish boy was sitting in his grandmother’ kitchen, staring at the red flame in the furnace, pondering in silence. Indeed, he always had many questions and always wanted to find out the answers.

“Grandma, what makes the flame burn?” he asked.

It was not the first time grandma couldn’t find an answer to his question, so she continued making her supper, ignoring his question.

Water started boiling in an old kettle hanging over the stove, with light cloudy vapour spreading out from the spout. After a short while, the lid of the kettle began to rattle, and then steam came out violently. The boy looked carefully under the lid, not finding anything.

“Grandma, what’s inside the kettle?” He asked.

“Water, baby, nothing else.”

“But there must be something else there. Something is pushing the lid up and rattling it.”

Grandma laughed, saying, “That’s the steam. You can see the steam coming out the spout and puffing under the lid”.  

“But you just said only water in the kettle, nothing else. Where does the steam come from? “

“Oh, dear, the steam comes from the boiling water. Boiling water creates steam. “ Grandma started to feel uncertain about her answer.

The child lifted the lid up and looked inside the kettle again only to find water boiling with bubbles. Steam was only visible outside the kettle.

“How strange! “ He said. “The steam must be very powerful to push up this heavy iron lid. Grandma, how much water is there in the kettle?”

“About a quarter, Jimmy”

“Wow, if the steam from this small amount of water can be so powerful, wouldn’t the steam from a large amount of water be even more powerful? Why can’t we use the steam to push up much heavier things? Why can’t we use the steam to turn wheels?”

Grandma didn’t answer, thinking to herself how difficult it was to answer these useless questions of Jimmy. She continued doing her chores whilst Jimmy sat still at the same place studying the kettle.

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• 回复：回复：【翻译听写】练习之十六 -- 詹姆斯·瓦特和水壶 -NewVoice- ♀ (1094 bytes) () 09/05/2011 postreply 03:29:37

• 我回在冲浪的帖子里了:-) -jennea- ♀ (43 bytes) () 09/05/2011 postreply 08:23:48