SAT写作素材——科学发明领域的重大事件

　　SAT考试的一个主要组成部分就是SAT写作，而写作也常常是一件令人头疼的事情，尤其在文章中需要举例说明问题的时候，很多学生往往很苦恼，接下来我们来看SAT写作中常用的例证素材科学发明领域发生的重大事件。

　　Early1300s: Gunpowder first used in Europe

　　Although gunpowder is believed to have been invented in China as early as the ninth century, it wasnt until the early 1300s that it was first used in battle in Europe. A relatively simple mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter, gunpowder has been making the worlds wars more deadly ever since.

　　1522:First circumnavigation of the globe completed

　　In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan and a crew of 237 men and five ships set out on a voyage to claim the Spice Islands as the property of Spain. Although Magellan himself was killed while trying to convert a native Philippine chief to Christianity in 1521, one ship and the remainder of his crew, by then eighteen men, completed the voyage around the world and returned to Spain on September 8, 1522.

　　1859:Darwins Origin of Species

　　Charles Darwin shocked the world with his theory of evolution as proposed in Origin of Species. He explained that, over time, species adapt to their environment in order to survive and then pass along these acquired traits to future generations in a process known as natural selection. Although his ideas are widely accepted today, the notion that species could have evolved from an entirely different species caused outrage from those believing that all living creatures were created by God.

　　1492:Columbus lands in America

　　Although Leif Ericson was reportedly the first to land in America in 1000, his voyage ultimately brought about little change to the continent. On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus and his crew landed in what is now part of the Bahamas. With him, he brought about European colonization and slew of changes: Christianity, disease, guns, and horses to name a few.

　　1543:Copernicus disputes earth is center of universe

　　Nicolaus Copernicus may have tried to avoid public outrage by waiting until the year of his death to publish On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, but he was the first person to propose that the sun, and not the earth, was at the center of the universe. Later, Johannes Kepler argued the orbital paths of planets were actually elliptical, not circular, and in 1610, despite strong opposition from the Catholic Church, Galileo Galilei used his telescope to prove that the earth does, in fact, revolve around the sun.

　　1666:Newtons Law of Gravity

　　In 1666, after watching an apple fall from a tree, Isaac Newton realized that the force holding any object to the Earth is the same as the force holding the moon and planets in their orbits. He created a mathematical equation that defined the gravitational pull between two objects. In essence, our bodies pull on the Earth just as the Earth pulls on our bodies. However, since we weigh so much less than the Earth, we do not affect its motion at all.

　　1905:Einsteins Theory of Relativity

　　In 1905, Albert Einstein concluded that if the energy of motion could change mass, mass itself could become energy. The relationship between mass and the energy is described in what is probably the most famous equation in science, E=mc2 .

　　1957:First satellite launched

　　The successful launch of Sputnik-1 on October 4, 1957, indicated to the world that the Soviet Union had taken the lead in space exploration. It also caused fear that this technology would allow the Soviet Union to launch nuclear weapons into space. In response, the United States established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration , embarking on a quest to the moon where Neil Armstrong took his revolutionary first steps in 1969.

　　计算机科学

　　In study of up to date deep-sub micrometer semiconductor technology, for example, physics helps to explain quantum effect which tends to be more and more dominant in the device behaviors; materials science plays crucial role in device packaging and photoresist; and mathematics enhances the abilities of simulating software which help predict the characteristics of the integrated circuits before the chips are put into production.

　　Moreover, recently computer science research is increasingly related with more other disciplines, such as electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, biology, linguistics, and even psychology, in the applications of biochip, voice recognition, artificial intelligence and so on.

　　海王星Neptune的发现

　　After the planet Uranus had been discovered, a Cambridge mathematician, Adams, predicted the existence of an unseen planet, to account for the fact that Uranus was being pulled slightly out of position in its orbit. According to Isaac Newtons theory of gravitation, Adams attributed this pull to the gravitational effect of an unknown body, and calculated its position. One year later , this new planet, Neptune, was discovered, and its position was quite in accordance with the prediction.

　　From the fact that planet Uranus was a bit pulled out of its normal orbit, some mathematicians logically reasoned the existence of a new planet, Neptune, and even precisely calculated its position according to Newtons theory of universal gravitation in 1845. One year later Neptune was discovered just around the predicted position.

　　哈雷彗星的发现

　　After thoroughly comparing several comet observation records, Halley eventually found the similarities of the periods of some records. He further induced that these records actually refer to a unique comet, Halley comet, and predicted that the comet would appear again after another period of 76 years.

　　after several years careful observation and thorough calculation, Halley predicted that the comet appeared in 1682 was periodic and it would return after 76 years in 1758. Halley passed away fifteen years ago before his prediction was confirmed.

　　克隆

　　Clone, one of the most astonishing and challenging biomedical techniques, is thought to be quite promising in gene savings. However, human cloning s is not only dangerous technically but also perilous to the morality and ethics, thus many ethicists, religious, political leaders, and others call for to banning human cloning for reproductive purposes and even any purpose. Nevertheless, some scientists, in spite of moral and ethical standards, insists on doing experiments on cloning humans stealthily.

　　The clone of human beings has been criticized by many scientists, politicians, and moralists, and even banned by some governments, for it is not only dangerous technically, but most importantly, is in defiance of our social morality. If the clone of human beings is carried out, our current moral systems may be overturned and thus the society would be in disorder.

　　心脏专家

　　A patient who suffers from heart disease may go to hospital for advice. If the physician who examines the patient has never met the illness before, he may be perplexed and ask for suggestion from a skillful doctor who is a cardiologist. It is possible that the cardiologist can find the key pathogeny at the first glance and give the correct treatment in a short time.

　　科技对人们生活的改变

　　Obviously, nowadays we can never imagine living in a world that there is no cars for traveling to offices, no televisions for watching TV shows, no cellular phones for communications with our family, and so forth. Technological advancement has knitted the world to be a seamless web of information and phone lines, in which people are able to get the requisites much more easily than ever before. When we are at work, we surf the internet for suggestions and information; when we are hungry, we call an express delivery service; when we feel tired, we book an airplane ticket to Hawaii for weekends.

　　It seems a paradox that our efficiencies are much higher than ever before while our leisure time is increasingly diminishing, but it is actually the reality. The greater our mobility, the more our destinations each day; the more time-saving facilities we use, the more activities we try to attend each day; with more convenient access to information, we try to assimilate more of it each day. Nowadays we are forced to do more by the superiors, the competitors, or even by ourselves. Fortunately, we have more opportunities and choices than our predecessors, but at the same time, unfortunately, we have to confront with much more challenges and suffer from much more pressure. Therefore, people may be not able to enjoy their leisure time much in such an increasingly competitive society, consequently resulting in some serious social problems, such as unemployment, resentment, high suicide rate, anti-social behaviors, and so forth.

　　伦琴发现X射线

　　In 1895, when Wilhelm Roentgen was working in darkened room, trying to determine the penetrating power of cathode rays, he noticed that a faint light appeared. These rays had special penetrating power to pass through various substances, and they are the very X-rays which comprehensively utilized in medical services and scientific researches.

　　Penicillin

　　In 1928, Alexander Fleming left some unwashed plates containing some bacteria in his lab while he was on holiday. When he came back, he found that a mold was all over the plate and all the bacteria were dead. This amazing mold, Penicillin, could inhibit the growth of many deathful bacteria, and was later comprehensively used in medical treatment.

　　二战中利用人来做实验

　　Although scientific research has produced substantial social benefits, it has also posed several troubling ethical problems. Public attention was drawn to reported abuses of human subjects in biomedical experiments, especially during the Second World War. The physicians and scientists who had conducted biomedical experiments on concentration camp prisoners were judged guilty in trials.

　　在SAT写作时如果可以加入这些科学发明领域的事件，不但可以让你的作文出现亮点，也会让教授感觉到你对美国的历史很了解，印象分也会大大提高哦!所以大家一定要努力记住这些素材，对你的SAT写作会有很大的帮助的!