Английский язык для инженеров-физиков. English for Students of Physics

Министерство науки и высшего образования Российской Федерации 

НОВОСИБИРСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ ТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ 

 
 
 
С.В. НИКРОШКИНА, Е.В. КРИВЕНКО, 
Е.Б. СКВОРЦОВА 
 
 
 
 
АНГЛИЙСКИЙ ЯЗЫК  
ДЛЯ ИНЖЕНЕРОВ-ФИЗИКОВ 
 
ENGLISH FOR STUDENTS  
OF PHYSICS 
 
 
Утверждено 
Редакционно-издательским советом университета 
в качестве учебного пособия 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
НОВОСИБИРСК 
2020

ББК 81.432.1-77-923 
  Н 647 
 
 
 
Рецензенты: 
канд. филол. наук С.С. Жданов 
канд. филол. наук А.А. Хвостенко 
 
Никрошкина С.В. 
Н 647  
Английский язык для инженеров-физиков. English for 
Students of Physics: учебное пособие / С.В. Никрошкина,  
Е.В. Кривенко, Е.Б. Скворцова. – Новосибирск : Изд-во НГТУ,  
2020. – 64 с. 

 
 
ISBN 978-5-7782-4201-2 

Настоящее учебное пособие предназначено для студентов III курса, 
изучающих английский язык и обучающихся по направлениям: «Лазерная техника и лазерные технологии», «Оптотехника», «Техническая 
физика», «Физика», «Фотоника и оптоинформатика». Учебное пособие 
включает в себя тексты физико-технической направленности, лексический и грамматический материал, упражнения на развитие навыков и 
умений работы с профессионально ориентированными текстами, формирование, развитие и закрепление лексических навыков английского 
языка. Пособие может быть использовано как для практических 
занятий, так и самостоятельной работы студентов-бакалавров, студентов-специалистов всех форм обучения.  
 
 
 
ББК 81.432.1-77-923 
 
 
 
ISBN 978-5-7782-4201-2 
 Никрошкина С.В., Кривенко Е.В.,  
 
    Скворцова Е.Б., 2020 
 
 Новосибирский государственный  
 
    технический университет, 2020 

 
 
 
 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 

TEXT 1. PARTICLE PHYSICS ................................................................................ 4 

TEXT 2. A PARTICLE ACCELERATOR ............................................................. 10 

TEXT 3. STRUCTURE OF THE NUCLEUS ......................................................... 15 

TEXT 4. NUCLEONS ............................................................................................. 19 

TEXT 5. SIBERIAN BRANCH OF THE RUSSIAN ACADEMY  
OF SCIENCES ......................................................................................... 23 

TEXT 6. BUDKER INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS ................................. 29 

TEXT 7. THE DISCOVERY OF RADIOACTIVITY ............................................ 34 

TEXT 9. RADIOACTIVE DECAY ........................................................................ 39 

TEXT 10. SUBATOMIC PARTICLES ................................................................... 44 

TEXT 11. PROTONS, ELECTRONS AND NEUTRONS ..................................... 49 

TEXT 12. MESONS AND HYPERONS................................................................. 57 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

TEXT 1. PARTICLE PHYSICS 

TASK 1. BEFORE YOU READ: 

1. When did particle physics start? 
2. What does particle physics investigate? 
3. What is modern particle physics focused on? 

TASK 2. READ THE TEXT: 

Particle physics (also known as high energy physics) is a branch of 
physics that studies the nature of the particles that constitute matter and 
radiation. Although the word particle can refer to various types of very 
small objects (e.g. protons, gas particles, or even household dust), particle 
physics usually investigates the irreducibly smallest detectable particles and 
the fundamental interactions necessary to explain their behavior. By our 
current understanding, these elementary particles are excitations of the 
quantum fields that also govern their interactions. The currently dominant 
theory explaining these fundamental particles and fields, along with their 
dynamics, is called the Standard Model. Thus, modern particle physics 
generally investigates the Standard Model and its various possible 
extensions, e.g. to the newest “known” particle, the Higgs boson, or even to 
the oldest known force field, gravity.  

Subatomic particles 

Modern particle physics research is focused on subatomic particles, 
including atomic constituents such as electrons, protons, and neutrons 
(protons and neutrons are composite particles called baryons, made of 
quarks), produced by radioactive and scattering processes, such as photons, 
neutrinos, and muons, as well as a wide range of exotic particles. Dynamics 

of particles is also governed by quantum mechanics; they exhibit wave–
particle duality, displaying particle-like behavior under certain experimental 
conditions and wave-like behavior in others. In more technical terms, they 
are described by quantum state vectors in a Hilbert space, which is also 
treated in quantum field theory. Following the convention of particle 
physicists, the term elementary particles is applied to those particles that 
are, according to current understanding, presumed to be indivisible and not 
composed of other particles.  
All particles and their interactions observed to date can be described 
almost entirely by a quantum field theory called the Standard Model. The 
Standard Model, as currently formulated, has 61 elementary particles. Those 
elementary particles can combine to form composite particles, accounting 
for the hundreds of other species of particles that have been discovered 
since the 1960s.  
The Standard Model has been found to agree with almost all the 
experimental tests conducted to date. However, most particle physicists 
believe that it is an incomplete description of nature and that a more 
fundamental theory awaits discovery. In recent years, measurements of 
neutrino mass have provided the first experimental deviations from the 
Standard Model, since neutrinos are massless in the Standard Model.  

History 

The idea that all matter is fundamentally composed of elementary 
particles dates from at least the 6th century BC. In the 19th century, John 
Dalton, through his work on stoichiometry, concluded that each element of 
nature was composed of a single, unique type of particle. The word atom, 
after the Greek word atomos meaning “indivisible”, has since then denoted 
the smallest particle of a chemical element, but physicists soon discovered 
that atoms are not, in fact, the fundamental particles of nature, but are 
conglomerates of even smaller particles, such as the electron. The early 20th 
century explorations of nuclear physics and quantum physics led to proofs 
of nuclear fission in 1939 by Lise Meitner (based on experiments by Otto 
Hahn), and nuclear fusion by Hans Bethe in that same year; both discoveries 
also led to the development of nuclear weapons. Throughout the 1950s and 
1960s, a bewildering variety of particles were found in collisions of 
particles from increasingly high-energy beams. It was referred to informally 

as the “particle zoo”. That term was deprecatedafter the formulation of the 
Standard Model during the 1970s, in which the large number of particles 
was explained as combinations of a (relatively) small number of more 
fundamental particles. 
 
DEVELOPING ACADEMIC VOCABULARY 
WORKING OUT THE MEANING OF UNKNOWN WORDS 

TASK 3.THE FOLLOWING WORDS ARE ALL FROM THE TEXT 
ABOVE. FIND THEM IN THE TEXT:  

deviation     await     conduct     entirely  observe 

TASK 4. FOR EACH WORD, READ THE SENTENCE IT OCCURS 
IN AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS: 

a) Is the word positive, negative or neutral? 
b) Is it a noun, adjective, adverb or verb? 
c) Can you think of a word with a similar meaning (synonym) and one 
with an opposite meaning (antonym)? 
 
READING COMPREHENTION 

TASK 5. ANSWER THE QUESTIONS: 

1. What does particle physics investigate? 
2. When did particle physics start? 
3. What can the word “particle” refer to? 
4. How is the currently dominant theory explaining fundamental 
particles and fields called? 
5. What is dynamics of particles governed by and what do they 
exhibit? 
6. What is the term “elementary particles” applied to? 
7. What is the “Standard Model”? 
8. What does the word “atom” mean and what does it denote? 
9. What branches of physics led to proofs of nuclear fission? 
10. What is modern particle physics focused on? 

TASK 6. COMPLETE THE SENTENCES: 

1. Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies… 
2. Particle physics is also known as… 
3. The word particle can refer to various types of very small objects, 
such as… 
4. Modern particle physics investigates… 
5. Dynamics of particles is governed by… 
6. Particles exhibit wave-particle duality, displaying… 
7. The term elementary particles is applied to… 

TASK 7. MATCH THE WORDS TO THEIR DEFINITIONS: 

1) particle 
a) any substance that has mass and takes up space by 
having volume 

2) proton 
b) a subatomic particle with a positive electric charge 

3) matter 
c) a small localized object to which several physical or 
chemical properties, such as volume, density or mass, 
can be ascribed 

4) elementary particle 
d) particles that somehow deviate from normal ones 

5) radiation 
e) the state of an isolated quantum system 

6) gravity 
f) a fundamental theory in physics describing the 
properties of nature 

7) neutron 
g) a subatomic particle with no electric charge and the 
mass slightly greater than that of a proton 

8) quantum mechanics 
h) a natural phenomenon by which all things with mass 
or energy are brought towards one another 

9) exotic particles 
i) the emission or transmission of energy in the form of 
waves and particles through space or through a material 
medium 

10) quantum state 
j) a subatomic particle with no sub structure, thus not 
composed of other particles 

 

TASK 8. TRANSLATE THE DEFINITIONS FROM EXERCISE 7 
INTO RUSSIAN. 

SPEAKING 

TASK 9. SPEAK ABOUT PARTICLE PHYSICS. USE THE 
QUESTIONS IN TASK 5 AS A PLAN. 

GRAMMAR FOCUS 
The passive. Revision 
 
Academic texts typically contain a mixture of active and passive verb 
forms. You can decide to use the passive for a number of reasons, including: 
1. To keep the focus on the action, idea, object or event being described 
rather than who or what carries it out: 
The mixture is inoculated with a starter culture… 
2. To avoid saying who did the action because it is unnecessary, 
obvious, or unimportant: 
The mixture is filtered or racked to extract the sauce… 
The Present and the Past Simple are often used in academic writing: 
Present Simple 
active: clean(s)/see(s)   Somebody cleans the room every day. 
passive: am/is/are cleaned/seen  The room is cleaned every day. 
Past Simple 
active: cleaned/saw  Somebody cleaned the room yesterday. 
passive: was/were  cleaned/seen   The room was cleaned yesterday. 

TASK 10. REWRITE THE SENTENCES USING THE VERB 
PHRASES IN ITALICS IN THE PASSIVE: 

1) Somebody carries out experiments regularly. 
2) Somebody uses the laboratory every day. 
3) We often refer to poorer countries as "developing countries". 
4) They illustrated these ideas. 
5) People thought of power as a dangerous concept. 
6) This essay made clear some distinctions in the research. 
7)  Researchers can describe any particle by its behavior. 
8) We refer to the properties of materials as structure-sensitive or 
structure-insensitive. 

WATCHING 

TASK 11. WATCH THE VIDEO ANDCOMPLETE THE SENTENCES 
WITH THE NOUNS FROM THE BOX. WATCH AGAIN TO CHECK. 

In this video, Fermilab scientist Don Lincoln describes the Standard 
Model of particle physics, covering both the particles that make up the 
subatomic realm and the forces that govern them. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYcw8nV_GTs 
 
quarks (2)   particles (2)   properties   electron   proton   neutron   
matter the Standard Model nuclei 
1. They seem to have the same … . 
2. To understand what goes into … we need to recall some ideas we 
learn at school. 
3. We discovered that the nucleus of the atom was made of varying 
numbers of two …, called protons and neutrons. 
4. These smaller objects are called … having kind of silly names. 
5. Up and down quarks are found inside the proton and … .  
6. The most familiar lepton is … . 
7. These … and leptons include every particle that we know of. 
8. Without the forces these … would wander around the cosmos, not 
interacting with each other. 
9. Electromagnetism is the force that binds the electrons to atomic … 
and makes atoms. 
10. Gravity and electromagnetism have a very long range like the 
gravity from the Sun affecting the path of distant Pluto in contrast, and the 
weak and the strong nuclear forces have an appreciable effect over distances 
smaller than the size of a  … .  
11. Twelve particles of … , governed by three forces that are caused by 
exchange of four particles. 
 
Do you remember the questions asked at the end of the video? 
Which can interest you? Why/Why not? 
 
 
 
 

TEXT 2. A PARTICLE ACCELERATOR 

TASK 1. BEFORE YOU READ: 

1.What is a particle accelerator? 
2. What classes of accelerators exist nowadays? 
3. Which applications are particle accelerators used in? 

TASK 2. READ THE TEXT: 

A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to 
propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain 
them in well-defined beams. 
Large accelerators are used for basic research in particle physics. The 
largest accelerator currently operating is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) 
near Geneva, Switzerland, operated by the CERN. It is a collider 
accelerator, which can accelerate two beams of protons to an energy of 
6.5 TeV and cause them to collide head-on, creating center-of-mass energies 
of 13 TeV. Other powerful accelerators are SuperKEKB at KEK in Japan, 
RHIC at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and, formerly, the 
Tevatron at Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois. Accelerators can also be used as 
synchrotron light sources for the study of condensed matter physics. Smaller 
particle accelerators are used in a wide variety of applications, including 
particle therapy for oncological purposes, radioisotope production for 
medical diagnostics, ion implanters for manufacture of semiconductors, and 
accelerator mass spectrometers for measurements of rare isotopes such as 
radiocarbon. There are currently more than 30,000 accelerators in operation 
around the world. 

There are two basic classes of accelerators: electrostatic and 
electrodynamic (or electromagnetic) accelerators. Electrostatic accelerators 
use static electric fields to accelerate particles. The most common types are 
the Cockcroft–Walton generator and the Van de Graaff generator. A smallscale example of this class is the cathode ray tube in an ordinary old 
television set. The achievable kinetic energy for particles in these devices is 
determined by the accelerating voltage, which is limited by electrical 
breakdown. Electrodynamic or electromagnetic accelerators, on the other 
hand, use changing electromagnetic fields (either magnetic induction or 
oscillating radio frequency fields) to accelerate particles. Since in these 
types the particles can pass through the same accelerating field multiple 
times, the output energy is not limited by the strength of the accelerating 
field. This class, which was first developed in the 1920s, is the basis for 
most modern large-scale accelerators. 
Rolf Widerøe, Gustav Ising, Leó Szilárd, Max Steenbeck, and Ernest 
Lawrence are considered pioneers of this field, conceiving and building the 
first operational linear particle accelerator, the betatron, and the cyclotron. 
Because the target of the particle beams of early accelerators was 
usually the atoms of a piece of matter, with the goal being to create 
collisions with their nuclei in order to investigate nuclear structure, 
accelerators were commonly referred to as atom smashers in the 20th 
century. The term persists despite the fact that many modern accelerators 
create collisions between two subatomic particles, rather than a particle and 
an atomic nucleus. 
 
DEVELOPING ACADEMIC VOCABULARY  
WORKING OUT THE MEANING OF UNKNOWN WORDS 

TASK 3. THE FOLLOWING WORDS ARE ALL FROM THE TEXT 
ABOVE. FIND THEM IN THE TEXT:  

propel            achievable        breakdown       currently         condensed 

TASK 4. FOR EACH WORD, READ THE SENTENCE IT OCCURS 
IN AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS: 

a)  Is the word positive, negative or neutral? 
b) Is it a noun, adjective, adverb or verb?