SSS 2011-02-16
时间：2019-01-08 作者：英语课 分类：Scientific American(二)月
This is Scientific American's 60-Second Science. I'm Karen Hopkin. This will just take a minute.
Stand at the bottom of a big hill and you can exhaust yourself just thinking about climbing it. But a new study suggests it's not as bad as it looks. Because people tend to overestimate 1 the steepness of slopes, and not because we're lazy.
Psychologists have long assumed that our misperception of slope was biased 2 by fatigue 3 or even fear of falling. If we see going up or down a hill as difficult, our perception could be influenced by our point of view.
But researchers at Ohio State University have found it isn't so. The scientists asked 200 passersby 4 to estimate the angle of a set of stairs, and another 200 to do the same for an escalator—which, of course, requires no effort to ascend 5. In each case, half the subjects looked from the bottom and half from the top.
The results: viewers consistently overestimated 6 the slant 7 of each slope by about 20 degrees. The work appears in the journal Psychological Science.
The researchers are not sure what drives this angular disparity. Perhaps it's because our visual system evolved to be overly sensitive to even slight departures from the horizontal, to help keep us upright. Because 'not falling down' is the first step to making it up that hill.
Thanks for the minute. For Scientific American's 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkin.
- Don't overestimate seriousness of the problem.别把问题看重了。
- We overestimate our influence and our nuisance value.我们过高地估计了自己的影响力和破坏作用。
- a school biased towards music and art 一所偏重音乐和艺术的学校
- The Methods: They employed were heavily biased in the gentry's favour. 他们采用的方法严重偏袒中上阶级。
- The old lady can't bear the fatigue of a long journey.这位老妇人不能忍受长途旅行的疲劳。
- I have got over my weakness and fatigue.我已从虚弱和疲劳中恢复过来了。
- He had terrorized Oxford Street,where passersby had seen only his footprints. 他曾使牛津街笼罩了一片恐怖气氛，因为那儿的行人只能看到他的脚印，看不到他的人。 来自英汉 - 翻译样例 - 文学
- A person is marceling on a street, watching passersby passing. 街边烫发者打量着匆匆行人。
- We watched the airplane ascend higher and higher.我们看着飞机逐渐升高。
- We ascend in the order of time and of development.我们按时间和发展顺序向上溯。
- They overestimated his ability when they promoted him. 他们提拔他的时候高估了他的能力。
- The Ministry of Finance consistently overestimated its budget deficits. 财政部一贯高估预算赤字。