三册第四单元课后作业阅读My Teacher

My Teacher: Jozsef Oveges

By Tamas Isoldos

Physicist, science book writer, TV personality, Professor Oveges was a wonderful teacher of science with a charming and humorous personality. His enthusiasm for education, his ability to inspire learning and his effective teaching methods have made a lasting impression on many people. How did Oveges encourage his students to learn? What can we learn from him? After reading the text you will know the answers.

I was seven years old when I first saw Jozsef Oveges. Our primary school class in Marcali, Hungary, knew that the slight man was a famous physics professor from Budapest, so we were surprised when he took a balloon from his pocket and blew it up. The usually noisy class watched silently.

\you think of that?\rockets.\

Then he asked, \ \ \

\

\

\tower are picked up by the receiver at home and changed back into sound.\keen about science. My correct answer interested the professor.

\ I felt very excited when my parents brought me to the professor's flat six months later. I was ushered into a book-lined study. While he arranged things on his desk, I sat on chair and fidgeted with anticipation. Finally the professor asked me to approach. When I got up, I cried sharply as I felt the sting of an electric spark. He laughed at my surprise and urged me to sit back down, then get up and touch the chair. Sure enough, another big spark was produced.

\your feet were touching the floor, you conducted the electric charge in an unbroken flow. When you stood up, you left the chair charged. When you touched its metal leg, it produced sparks as the charged jumped from it, and your hands conducted them into the ground.\

On a table was the professor's \ \we'll do something new,\ \

I watched skeptically as he wrapped a tin can with a piece of drawing paper dampened with a special liquid, then linked the can to the positive pole of a battery. He attached a nail to the negative pole, then handed it tome and said, \something.\

I was amazed as the rusty nail left a string of blood-red letters on the damp paper. \the liquid, a caustic chemical reaction resulted,\ \ I felt thrilled and proud. I now understood a serious scientific phenomenon.

From that moment, this wonderful teacher and scientist-- who again and again proved that the most complicated theories could be demonstrated with ordinary objects -- became my model. His enthusiasm inspired many students to explore the basic knowledge of science.

The Oveges's method of teaching made science and mathematics fun instead of a chore. Today, inspired by this great man, I teach my students the secrets of nature at a technical high school.

Over several decades Professor Oveges's charm, dialect and sense of humor made him a favorite IB personality for millions of Hungarians. His joyous exclamation as he completed an experiment -- \

One of my favorite memories of the professor happened a few years after I first met him. One day my dad yelled from the next room, \. Come, quick.\

The professor was standing beside a little paper dog kennel with a tiny wooden dog inside the door. \\

shouted, and the dog jumped out of the kennel. How did he do that? I wondered. The professor showed the simple circuit inside the kennel, whose breaker was attached to its wall. He put his hand against the wall, and when he shouted at a certain pitch, the paper wall vibrated.

I watched with my mouth open as he explained the phenomenon: When the paper wall vibrated, the electrical circuit was interrupted, and an electromagnet released the spring that forced Heki out of his kennel. I was so fascinated that the next day I bought the professor's book, Let's Experiment and Think! and decided to become a physicist.

Jozsef Oveges was born on November 10, 1895, in Hungary. Coming from a family of educators, he showed an early liking for teaching. After his father's death, the family moved to the city of Gyor, where the young Oveges went to school.

At age 16, he chose to study mathematics and physics. He had spent his childhood in the natural environment of the countryside, constantly questioning the whys of natural phenomena, so he was by instinct attracted to objective, demonstrable truths.

Later, he taught in the secondary schools. He measured the success of his classes partly by the amount of laughter he was able to elicit. Typical was the way he once began a mathematics class: \by the end of the class, you will know how to square compound numbers in just seconds.\

He was, however, no pushover. He demanded regular study, and he continuously challenged his students. They never knew when he would take out the matchbox in which he kept numbered pieces of paper corresponding to the pupils' seat numbers. The student whose number came up would face an oral exam.

\questions came very quickly: What colors are in a rainbow? How do they form? Can you walk under them? Can you produce the colors yourself? How?

After the 10-15 minute \

Because there were no scientific books Professor Oveges regarded suitable for his students, he wrote his own. His first was Weather Forecasting and Analysis. A publishing company offered to publish the book－on the condition that the author gather 2000 advance orders. When the object was to draw attention, Professor Oveges was never at a loss. He published an advertisement with the following text: \sign up the necessary subscribers. The book was published and quickly sold out.

The professor soon wrote more books. One day the principal of the school wandered into his class. As usual, the class was like a stage play, with the participation of all the students. In the closing scene, Oveges asked, \an ‘A' by taking an oral quiz?\

All raised hands. The principal shook his head in disbelief and commented, \ Impressed by Oveges's ability to inspire learning, the principal heartily recommended him to a publishing company. The professor was startled that a Budapest textbook publisher was coming to him. His classic textbook Little Physics was the result, becoming a standard text.

Oveges's new methods－using different typefaces to add emphasis, including drawings to illustrate experiments and writing analytically－contributed to the unusual popularity of his books. The Physics of Modern Age was published 45 years ago, and is still around today.

After the war, when most school labs were damaged or destroyed, there was a great need for the professor's ingenuity. \me to the smallest village in the country, where there's only grass where the school lab once was,\Public Education publication. \

Using the simplest tools, Professor Oveges performed convincing experiments. This was his guiding principle when, in 1948, he began his highly popular radio programs, and when, ten years later, he launched his hugely successful television series, \Favorite Experiments.\

Once Professor Oveges invited someone from a well-equipped research institute to his TV show to see who could measure more precisely the speed of sound. The researcher brought a digital timer, which started automatically as the sound reached the microphone. The professor brought a tube made of three empty tin cans, a tape measure and a jar filled with water. Shouting into the tube, he moved it up and down in the water until the sound was the most resonant, indicating that the wavelength of his voice corresponded with the resonant wavelength of the column of air in the tube. Next he measured the length of the tube sticking out of the water, and from this calculated the speed of sound.

His answer came closer to the value given in reference books than the number the institution's instrument showed.

The television show made Professor Oveges famous throughout Hungary. One afternoon, as he was sitting beside a lake enjoying the sun, a sheep dog came toward him, stopped at a respectful distance and began to bark. Its owner, a shepherd, walked up, tipped his hat and said to the dog, \ \

\ The professor's sense of humor helped sustain him even in difficult situations. Once, in a store in Budapest, he asked the clerk to wrap his sausage double so as not to make the manuscripts dirty in his briefcase. The clerk ignored his request. Dissatisfied, he asked for the \－the official suggestion box in Hungary. A nervous chill settled over the shop as the frightened store manager handed over the register to the disgruntled customer.

All eyes were on the professor as he seriously opened the book, tore out a couple of blank pages, wrapped his sausage in them and politely wished everyone a good day.

Professor Oveges spent the summers of his retirement in his birthplace. There, at his home, he was demonstrating to friends the experiment of light when he suddenly collapsed on his desk. He suffered a brain hemorrhageand died three days later, on September 4, 1979.

The professor's enthusiasm and energy continue to bear fruit today. George Olah, for example, was a dull student of physics when, as a 16-year-old, he first took a class with Oveges. It would change his outlook forever. \about science, it was him,\experiments, Olah adds, \－things we knew－made us feel comfortable.\

Olah went on to get a Ph.D. from the University of Budapest and become associate director of the Central Chemical Research Institute at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences before moving to the United States. There he eventually was named director of the Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute at the University of Southern California. It was for his research in chemistry that Olah's crowning achievement came in 1994, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry.

Professor Oveges's picture still hangs in my room. But more than just his photo stays with me. In my job as a teacher, I feel his presence. In the enthusiasm of my pupils, I see his spell-binding personality and faith in the beauty of knowledge and nature. And I can almost hear his delighted exclamation, \

(1,993 words) (From Reader's Digest,June 1996) Exercises

A. Determining the main idea.

Choose the best answer. Do not refer to the text. The main idea of the story is that ______ . ( )

(a) the author, when a little girl, became a good friend of Professor Oveges's

(b) Professor Oveges could demonstrate his scientific theories with ordinary objects (c) some of the professor's students became famous scientists later

(d) Professor Oveges, a man with a charming personality, made science an interesting subject for his students and his viewers B. Comprehending the text. Choose the best answer.

1. The professor invited the little girl to his house because he wanted _______ . ( ) (a) to give her the solutions to some problems (b) to make her understand picture drawing (c) to show his laboratory equipment to her

(d) to encourage her to explore the wonders of science 2. ________, the author decided to become a physicist. ( ) (a) After answering the professor's questions in class

(b) After reading the professor's book Let's Experiment and Think (c) After observing the professor's experiment on TV (d) After attending the professor's mathematics class

3. His book _______ was written and published several decades ago , and is still used at present. ( ) (a) Little Physics

(b) Weather Forecasting and Analysis (c) The Physics of Modern Age (d) Let's Experiment and Think

4. All the students in Professor Oveges's class thought that his class was ______. ( ) (a) boring and dull

(b) well-prepared and excellent (c) interesting and challenging (d) exciting but too difficult

5. The principal recommended the professor to a publishing house ______ . ( ) (a) because he didn't like the professor's method used in his class

(b) because he thought the latter was more suitable to work in a publishing company

(c) because the professor's method to encourage students to learn gave him a deep impression (d) because the publishing company needed the professor to write textbooks 6. _________ made Professor Oveges well-known throughout the country . ( ) (a) His teaching skills (b) His radio program (c) His humor

(d) His television show

7. Which of the following would best describe Professor Oveges? ( ) (a) Humorous (b) Enthusiastic

(c) Easy to approach (d) All of the above

8. The author has hung Professor Oveges's picture in her room ______ . ( ) (a) because it will remind her of her school days (b) because it will make her remember him forever (c) because it will educate her children

(d) because it will encourage her to work better as a teacher

9. The author's primary purpose in telling this story is to ________. ( ) (a) make the reader understand some important scientific phenomena (b) encourage the reader to learn some useful skills in doing experiments (c) describe Prof. Oveges's extraordinary talent in teaching and his won (d) discuss some effective teaching methods used by Professor Oveges