英国学生科学读本 第18期:滑冰

 　　Lesson18 Sliding on the ice

　　第18课 滑冰
　　One fine summer day, as Tom stood by the side of a pond full of water, his father said to him, "Tom, on the day when you can run across this pond, on the top of the water, I shall give you a penny. "
　　一个晴朗的夏天, 小男孩汤姆站在池塘边。爸爸对他说：“汤姆, 等到你能在水面上跑过池塘去的那一天, 我就给你一个便士！”
　　Now Tom had been born in a hot country called India, and he had just come to live in Britain; so he laughed, and said, "I shall never earn that penny, father, for no one can walk on the water!"
　　汤姆是在炎热的印度出生的, 刚刚搬到英国来住。他哈哈大笑, 说：“爸爸, 那个便士, 我永远也挣不到, 因为没有人能在水面上走路啊！”
　　But the winter came, and then the water froze, and the pond was covered with ice. Tom soon found that he could run about on the solid water, and very quickly he ran across the pond and claimed his penny.
　　可是冬天来了, 水结了冰, 池塘上面盖了一层冰。汤姆很快发现, 他可以在凝固的水上来回跑了。他飞快地跑过池塘, 挣到了那个便士。
　　At first he found the ice so smooth and slippery that he often fell; but he soon learned to slide and to skate on it as well as any of you can do.
　　一开始, 他发现冰特别光, 特别滑, 自己很容易摔倒；但他不久就学会了滑冰, 跟小朋友们滑得一样好了！
　　Let us break off a piece of the ice, and put it in a glass by the side of the fire. As the ice grows warm, it melts, and soon we have a glass half full of water. A lump of ice has a shape of its own; it is a solid. But the water has no shape; it is a liquid.
　　咱们把一块冰凿下来, 放在玻璃杯里, 拿到火炉边。冰慢慢儿地变暖和了, 熔化了, 很快, 我们就得到了半杯水。冰块儿有自己的形状, 是“固体”, 可是水没有形状, 水是液体。
　　Ice is transparent 1, like water; that is to say, we can see through it. Small pieces of ice have no colour, but large blocks of ice have a pale blue colour.
　　冰也跟水一样是“透明”的, 也就是说, 我们透过它可以看见东西。小块的冰没有颜色, 但是大块的冰是浅蓝色的。
　　Water in a pond always freezes first on the top. And the ice does not sink to the bottom, but floats on the top. This shows that the ice is lighter 2 than the water.
　　池塘里的水, 总是顶上的先结冰, 而且冰不沉到水底, 而是浮在水上面。这就说明, 冰的重量比水要轻。
　　If we freeze a pint 3 of water, we shall get a little more than a pint of ice. Perhaps the water-pipes in your house have burst when the weather has been very cold. It was the change of the water into solid ice that burst them. The liquid water just filled the pipes; but when it turned into ice, it needed more room, and to get that room it burst the pipes. A GLACIER 4（一道冰河）
　　要是咱们把一品脱的水冻起来, 就能得到比一品脱多一点儿的冰。要是天气非常寒冷, 你家里的水管就可能冻裂。这是因为水变成了冰。液体的水刚好填满管子, 但是变成冰以后, 它需要更多的空间；为了得到这些空间, 它就挤破了管子。
　　Little lumps of ice sometimes fall from the sky, and are called hail. In some countries the snow is so deep on the hills, that the weight of the snow above squeezes the snow below into ice. This ice slides slowly down the valleys, like a river of ice. Ice-rivers are called glaciers 5.
　　有时候, 天上会掉下来很多小冰块儿, 这些小冰块儿叫冰雹, 英语是hail。有些地方, 山里的雪堆积得太深, 上面的雪的重量, 就把下面的雪压成了冰, 这种冰会慢慢地沿着山谷往下滑, 就像一道冰的河流；这种冰的河流就叫“冰河”, 也叫“冰川”（glacier）。
　　Some glaciers reach right down to the sea; and then great pieces of ice break off from the end of the glacier and float away in the sea. These big pieces of ice are called icebergs 7. Iceberg 6 means ice-mountain.
　　有些冰河会一直流到海里, 在冰河尽头, 巨大的冰块会从冰河上断开, 漂到海上去。这些巨大的冰块（iceberg）, 汉语叫做冰山。