International Students NZ

Today’s picture: Mountains near Marlborough, taken through an airplane window, October 2009

I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv'n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov'd; in which the world
And all her train were hurl'd.

from ‘The World’ by Henry Vaughan

Part 1: Today's word

The configuration of a system is the particular order or pattern in which it has been designed to work. It’s used in computing to talk about the way the system has been set up. It’s also used in art to talk about the way different shapes and patterns have been put together.

Click here
for interactive exercises on academic vocabulary and writing.

Part 2: Test

Here are FOUR sentences with the word of the day. But only THREE are correct. Which is the Odd One Out?

By analysing the particular configuration of rocks, it was possible to determine the sequence of volcanic events in the region.

This particular bone configuration is nowadays only found in birds.

The project requires close configuration in order to organise its various components in a common purpose.

By mapping the current configuration of the universe and applying physical laws it is possible to determine its approximate age.

Part 3: Practice Questions:
What is the configuration of your desk?
What is the typical configuration of a large supermarket?

Part 4: The Idiomatic Five

a shooting star
once in a blue moon
over the moon
pie in the sky
the sky’s the limit

Part 5: Kiwi Quiz Question

How many visitors does Auckland’s Stardome Observatory receive every year?

Part 6: Today’s online listening

This is a major public lecture by the Scottish astronomer, Brian Boyle, director of a project in Australia to build the world’s largest radio telescope (the Square Kilometre Array).

Vocabulary for the article:

feeble
resolution
scatter
faint
optical
extra-terrestrial

Questions for the article:

1) Why is Galileo such a famous scientist?

He was the first to use a telescope to view the stars
He was a great communicator
He was the first person to make a map of the moon

2) The new radio telescope will pick up in one day the same amount of information as ...

spoken in the history of the world
all the telescopes in the rest of the world
all the information uploaded onto the internet in one year

3) Brian believes that astronomy will move into ...

a knowledge age
a wisdom age
an information age

4) Radio telescopes are able to detect ...

gas
nearby stars
far away planets

5) Pulsars are so dense that one teaspoon of matter from a pulsar would have ..

five times the mass of every person on earth
ten times the mass of an elephant
three times the mass of the moon

6) Compared to normal light, radio waves are much ..

stronger and sharper
more regular and energetic
larger and weaker

7) The new radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA), will comprise ....

several thousand radio antennas
100 antennas
several antennas scattered over one kilometre

8) Apart from a strong scientific community, what other key factors make Australia and New Zealand good locations for this project?

climate and political stability
geography and population
economic growth and government support

9) How much of the universe is made up of normal matter?

25%
4%
75%

10) The SKA may provide evidence of which prediction by Einstein?

gravity waves
relativity
cosmic magnetism

11) The SKA could also be used to detect ....

the number of planets in the solar system
sunspots
life on other planets

12) How long is the SKA predicted to last?

50 years
500 years
10 000 years

13) Moore’s law predicts that computing power will double every

decade
year
18 months

14) How will the SKA be powered?

solar or geothermal energy generation
diesel fuel
electricity from the grid

15) Recently, Australian schoolchildren have used the existing radio telescope to ...

film a supernova
analyse a gas cloud
record a pulsar switching off

16) The new radio telescope, the SKA Pathfinder due to be ready in 2012, will be _______ times more powerful than existing other radio telescope?

100
1000
10 000

Grammar Focus: Unreal present / future

Quite often we imagine a different – unreal – present or future. Here is an example from the lecture:

If you had radio eyes and looked up at the heavens, you would see a very different picture to the one we see with our own eyes.

Really we don’t have radio eyes and we don’t see a different picture. Brian is asking us to imagine an unreal present. The grammar is:

If + past tense (in one half of the sentence)
would / might / could do (in the other half of the sentence)

One other thing to remember is that in these sentences, it’s more common to use ‘were’ instead of ‘was’, especially in the common expression ‘if I were you’.

Complete these example sentences, using the unreal present or future (it’s also called ‘the second conditional’)

1) If it (not be) Labour Day next Monday, we (have) lectures.

2) I (not wear) that shirt, even if you (give) me a thousand dollars.

3) I (not do) that if I (be) you.

4) If I (not have) to finish this assignment I (be) able to travel this weekend.

5) I (probably join) you for a bungee jump if I (not be) so scared of heights.

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Today’s news story:
Cosmos and Culture

Today’s Video suggestion:
Faraway So Close by U2
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