Pratica di Shadowing: NASA tested my chain theory in space - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

You know what would be neat,

Steve, if you could beam yourself up here for a weekend and we could just become the perpetual uber geek.

About 10 years ago, I was playing with some beads in my loft when I accidentally discovered this weird chain fountain phenomenon, also known as the mold effect.

No big deal.

And unbelievably, an astronaut just video called me from space so

that we could figure out together whether this one little detail about my explanation of the chain fountain is correct,

because this one little detail can only be tested in zero G.

And along the way, we discovered that chain behaves a lot more weirdly than either of us had predicted.

More on how all this came about later.

But first, what is this thing that we were testing?

Well, my explanation of the chain fountain is generally considered to be correct following a six video argument with Mehdi from Electroboom.

He was right.

But one part of my explanation had to kind of just be accepted as true without really testing it because, well, it can't be tested properly in gravity.

Now this might make me sound like a sole winner, but I really just wanted to prove this last little bit experimentally.

And anyway, assuming it is right, I just knew that it would look insanely cool in space.

But what is this crucial part of the explanation that we're all just accepting?

Well, in the absence of gravity, like on the ISS, if you were to release some chain, it should just float there in whatever random shape it was given.

But what if you were to tug on one end of the chain?

Would it flatten out or would it hold its shape and flow like this?

We need it to hold its shape for my explanation of the chain fountain to be right, but why?

Well look, I can highly recommend a series of videos by me and Mehdi if you want the full explanation, link in the card in the description for that.

But in short, the chain rises above the pot in a fountain because of an extra upward force coming from the pot.

How strong does that force need to be though?

Well it needs to be able to overcome the weight of this arc of chain that would obviously fall under gravity.

And that's it, that's all you need.

But you might look at this system and think, well no, the extra upward force from the part needs to be much greater than that,

because look, the chain is being yanked downwards by this large bit of chain down here.

But that's the crazy thing, according to the maths, that yanking of the chain has no influence on the arc at all.

If gravity wasn't a factor, the arc would be fixed there in space even though it was being yanked downwards at one end.

Or at least that's the theory, that's what we want to test.

We want to test the theory

that a chain moving at constant speed will flow through its own shape

so long as it isn't acted on by an external force like gravity.

What I really wanted to test was this, you've got a chain floating stationary in space and you tug on one end, let's see what happens.

But it turns out it's impossible to get a chain to be stationary in space.

I actually think that setup wouldn't have been fruitful anyway, because the behavior that we're looking for only works in steady state, not while the chain is speeding up.

And the whole chain would have had to speed up from zero movement in this setup anyway.

A side note on how chaotic the movement of the chain is, Don likened it to the movement of molecules.

We tend to model these like slowly moving blobs, but there's a lot of energy down there.

And just like in zero-g, there's nowhere for the energy to go, so the molecules sort of wiggle and writhe about just like the chain here.

Anyway, my other idea to test the theory was to hold the chain in something analogous to a pot.

In other words, just have it all bunched up somewhere

and then pull one end of the chain out of that bunched up mess at a constant speed.

And as you're pulling it, if you give it a shape, then it should hold that shape in space as it's leaving the pot.

It should just add into what you've already created without that shape changing.

The problem with that is it's basically impossible to pull something at a constant speed

and the clumped up beads just get tangled and they start to float apart.

And by the way, we only had 25 minutes for the call because a satellite was gonna go out of view.

Actually, a bit of a tangent about the tech behind the video call.

I put some Skype sounds in at the start of this video because I thought it was funny.

But of course, you can't use Skype to talk to someone in space because...

I mean, you need to think about satellites and how are you going to...

It was Microsoft Teams.

It was a Teams call.

And like, there was basically no lag.

I don't understand how they did it.

But anyway, I had one more idea for how to test the theory.

What if we turn the chain into a loop and then put the loop into a non-circular shape like a rectangle?

My idea was to then grab the opposite sides of the rectangle and then like pull them like that.

So that you're not throwing the chain anywhere, you're just giving the chain motion like around the loop of chain.

Intuitively you would expect it to pop out into a circle, but if my theory is right then it should hold that rectangular shape.

Third hand we're making a triangle and we're gonna release it together.

One, two, three.

Three.

It's really...

It's impossible.

But obviously we couldn't actually get the chain to form that shape and hold that shape without anyone touching it,

because chain just doesn't do what you want it to do in zero gravity.

On Earth it's so easy to get something to stop moving, you just put it down.

And when you took your hand away from the bead chain there was just so much energy in there already, it just kind of spreads out.

But we just needed to get some non-circular shape and we needed to get the chain flowing.

Yes.

Hey, look at that.

It's almost a circle now.

That's very cool, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Which is actually interestingly not what I expected because I was expecting it not to pop out into a circle.

Look at that.

It started, it's still rotating and I think the radial acceleration is going to straighten this thing out.

Let's just keep it going.

You've done stuff with like a drop of water and a bubble and things like that haven't you?

Where you've got this you've got this surface tension that's turning into a sphere or a circle.

You don't have that here.

So I don't think it ever will turn into a circle.

That's the thing that is hopefully going to demonstrate this weird thing about chains.

How cool is that though?

It does seem to be holding its shape.

Look, even from this angle, you can see part of the chain was actually bent out towards Don

and that part of the chain shape is holding too.

But Don has a point actually, the chain does seem to be very slowly turning into a circle, or at least it's becoming more rounded.

So does that mean I'm wrong?

Well, the mathematical analysis assumes that there is no friction between the joints of the chain.

And I had a suspicion that that might be why the real chain is slowly becoming circular.

So I asked my friend Martin to simulate different scenarios for me.

Here, there's no friction between the joints.

But look what happens when we turn friction on.

Over time, the chain becomes more and more circular.

So I think it's fair to say that the chain is behaving how we would expect.

Actually we discovered a few other really interesting things on the call.

100

You are so right this behaves totally different than a string

101

because of the lack of friction at every joint

102

and thread for sewing it sticks out fairly straight It's inherent stiffness shows up.

103

But here with these low friction joints between every segment, it's amazing what this thing does.

104

It's so interesting, isn't it?

105

How many things behave completely differently when you remove gravity.

106

I had no idea that rope and string would just straighten out because of the elasticity in it.

107

So you've got an intuition for how string and rope behaves on the ISS.

108

And then the chain doesn't behave like that.

109

You see, I could actually steer the string around by torquing on the yoya,

110

but a beaded chain has the mind of its own.

111

It responds to air current.

112

Yeah.

113

It responds to gravity gradient.

114

If you don't have air currents, it'll end up stretching out in the direction of the gravity gradient if you leave it alone.

115

No. It's really quite amazing.

116

It doesn't work the way we thought it was going to work, but then that's what it's like when you're doing a discovery.

117

So this is around the world, and then this is the tether of cyst.

118

So when you are in weightlessness, you get to make up your own yo-yo trick names.

119

And then let's see if I can make it come better.

120

There we go.

121

Prior to the call, Don was experimenting with static charge, which meant we could loosely hold one end of the chain in place.

122

Whoa!

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Whoa!

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See?

125

It's...

126

Oh, that's crazy.

127

Yeah.

128

And I have video of this with a nice black background.

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Circular wave.

130

Hold off again.

131

And notice now with one free end,

132

it's really tough to control it, send a wave down.

133

Each bead here is about three millimeters.

134

I put a string of French clips together, and these are 50 millimeter links.

135

And I just want to show you that this behaves just like the beaded chain,

136

but the leg scale is 3 millimeters to 50 millimeters.

137

You might be wondering how all this came about, by the way.

138

Well, after I made that video in my loft, I've been milking it ever since.

139

In fact, you could argue that my entire career is built on a flailing chain of beads.

140

Like, at one point, I held the world record for the tallest chain fountain, but eventually it was taken by a TV show in China, until I took it back.

141

Three, two, one.

142

What the hell happened there?

143

And I guess at some point a three-story high sculpture was erected in Guatemala.

144

And of course I got into a real public feud with that scoundrel electro-boom about it.

145

And it was during that video argument that I mentioned the behaviour that we've been looking for here.

146

So in that video I asked if anyone knows how to get the attention of someone on the International Space Station,

147

let me know know well stefan ennis from the european space agency got in touch thanks stefan

148

and eventually samantha christopheretti climbed aboard a rocket with four meters

149

of bead chain in her pocket unfortunately she was quite busy what with being the commander of

150

that mission so she didn't really have an awful lot of time to be fiddling about with beads.

151

But she got the chain up there, and that's an important first step.

152

And brilliantly, she put me in touch with another astronaut, Don Pettit.

153

Now, the great thing about Don is you can nerd snipe him.

154

Oh, look at that.

155

Look at that.

156

I mean, there's a lot of great things about Don.

157

But anyway, I explained about the bead chain currently languishing on the International Space Station.

158

And he really got into it.

159

And he said he'd look for the beads next time he was up there.

160

And then at some point we were emailing about the experiments.

161

And he said, you know, look, it's hard to really communicate over email.

162

Let's have a video call.

163

I was like, yes, that would be amazing.

164

Just on a personal note, this was obviously a once in a lifetime experience.

165

Just unbelievable.

166

There was a period as a kid where I wanted to be an astronaut.

167

But the job that I ended up having, which is making science videos on YouTube, somehow means that I ended up having a video call with one.

168

And like we were doing science together.

169

science that had never been done before you know it just I almost can't believe it happened

170

but yeah beads in space I think I peaked literally a huge thank you to Issa

171

and Samantha and Don

172

and NASA for making it happen an extra big thank you

173

to John Stevens the person on the ground at NASA who put the video call together, made sure that all worked because honestly,

174

like I was pretty nervous about it because we only had one shot.

175

It was 25 minutes and my internet at home was terrible.

176

So I had to, you know, set up somewhere else that had good internet.

177

And John just made it all really smooth, put my mind at ease.

178

The full conversation unedited plus Don's extra footage that he filmed for me outside of the video call,

179

unedited, is available over on my Patreon.

180

Link in the description for that.

181

Oh, also thank you to Rohan Francis from Medlife Crisis because he was all over this, even before I got in touch with Esaf.

182

Look at him go.

183

So there you go, that's the evidence that we have from space.

184

What do you think?

185

Does it prove that a chain will flow through a fixed shape in the absence of gravity?

186

Does it change your opinion of my explanation of the chain fountain?

187

It was a great demonstration seeing it pass through the same path through the loop

188

and your explanation about why it would eventually turn into a full circle due to friction was pretty adequate.

189

So I guess I agree with everything you said in your video and don't have to embarrass myself making another debunk video.

190

Although you didn't quite demonstrate if the path will remain the same if the chain wasn't in a loop.

191

Another stimulation might be nice,

192

but what would be better is to take 100 meters of chain into space and drag it behind you in a spacewalk. Do it!

193

We just got the rug pulled out from under us, Steve.

194

It's been so interesting, so interesting to see it.

195

yeah it is and and it was been really good actually talking to you so i could understand

196

you know what we want to look for it looks like

197

we're just gonna walk off the end of our keu band

198

and then i'm gonna have to vacate because i think that's it okay wow oh

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Vocabolario e note di pronuncia per questa lezione

Questa lezione di conversazione di livello B2 si basa sul video “NASA tested my chain theory in space”. Le parole che ritornano più spesso: chain, shape, space, bead, gravity. Questo video contiene 198 frasi e 2564 parole da ripetere con lo shadowing. Il parlato dura 15:02. Chi parla ha un ritmo naturale di circa 171 parole al minuto, vicino a una conversazione quotidiana. Il 84% delle parole rientra nelle 3.000 più comuni dell’inglese; conviene studiare le altre prima di iniziare.

Vocaboli chiave di questo video

Le 15 parole più avanzate del video, con pronuncia e significato:

Parola	Pronuncia	Significato
bead sostantivo	/ˈbiːd/	grano
fountain sostantivo	/ˈfaʊn.tɪn/	fontana
behave verbo	/bɪˈheɪv/	comportarsi, agire
friction sostantivo	/ˈfɹɪkʃən/	attrito, frizione
circular aggettivo	/ˈsɜɹ.kjə.ləɹ/	circolare
yank verbo	/ˈjæŋk/	strappar via
astronaut sostantivo	/ˈæstɹəˌnɔt/	astronauta
float verbo	/fləʊt/	galleggiare
rectangle sostantivo	/ˈrɛktæŋɡl̩/	rettangolo
loft sostantivo	/lɔft/	attico, soffitta
molecule sostantivo	/ˈmɑ.lɪ.kjul/	molecola
rope sostantivo	/ɹoʊp/	corda, cavo
meter sostantivo	/ˈmitəɹ/	metro, contatore
demonstrate verbo	/ˈdɛm.ənˌstɹeɪt/	dimostrare
analogous aggettivo	/əˈnæl.ə.ɡəs/	analogo

I phrasal verb che sentirai

Parola	Pronuncia	Significato
end up verbo		andare a finire, finire
figure out verbo		scoprire, rendersi conto
hold off verbo		ritardare
make up verbo	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	comporsi
pass through verbo		trapassare
set up verbo	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	preparare, installare
speed up verbo	/spiːdˈʌp/	stringere i tempi
stick out verbo		sporgere

Frasi da ripetere

Frasi brevi e complete del video che puoi riutilizzare nella conversazione di tutti i giorni:

I don't understand how they did it.
That's very cool, isn't it?
Let's just keep it going.
You don't have that here.
So does that mean I'm wrong?

La grammatica di questo video

Le strutture che chi parla usa di più, con le parole esatte del video:

Struttura	Nel video
Frasi condizionali if + frase, will/would + verbo — una condizione e il suo risultato	If you don't have air currents, it'll end · if the path will remain
Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — un’azione iniziata prima e ancora in corso	I've been milking · we've been looking
Forma passiva be + participio passato — conta ciò che accade, non chi lo fa	be tested · be accepted · was given
Present perfect have/has + participio passato — un’azione passata che conta ancora adesso	you've already created · You've done

Pronuncia a cui fare attenzione

Chi parla usa 46 contrazioni e forme ridotte, come you've, don't, we're. Pronunciale nella forma breve, così come le senti.

I suoni “th”: tether /ˈtɛðəɹ/, writhe /ɹaɪð/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/, mathematics /mæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪks/
I suoni “sh” e “zh”: friction /ˈfɹɪkʃən/, stationary /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛɹi/, languish /ˈlæŋ.ɡwɪʃ/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, stimulation /stɪm.jʊˈleɪ.ʃən/
Parole lunghe — attenzione all’accento: stationary /ˈsteɪʃəˌnɛɹi/, analogous /əˈnæl.ə.ɡəs/, elasticity /ɪ.læsˈtɪs.ɪ.ti/, intuition /ˌɪn.tjuːˈɪʃ.ən/, rectangular /ɹɛkˈtæŋɡjəlɚ/

I suoni difficili per chi parla italiano:

/h/ — va soffiata, non è muta: behave /bɪˈheɪv/, inherent /ɪnˈhɪəɹənt/
Consonante finale — senza aggiungere una vocale dopo: bead /ˈbiːd/, behave /bɪˈheɪv/, yank /ˈjæŋk/, astronaut /ˈæstɹəˌnɔt/, float /fləʊt/
/æ/ — più aperta della “e”: yank /ˈjæŋk/, astronaut /ˈæstɹəˌnɔt/, rectangle /ˈrɛktæŋɡl̩/, analogous /əˈnæl.ə.ɡəs/, elasticity /ɪ.læsˈtɪs.ɪ.ti/

Come esercitarsi con questo video

Ascolta tutto il video una volta senza parlare e annota le parole che non conosci.
Inizia a velocità 0,75×, fai shadowing frase per frase e torna alla velocità normale quando diventa facile.
Registrati e confronta con l’originale, facendo attenzione a parole come bead, fountain, behave.

Cos'è la tecnica dello Shadowing?

Shadowing è una tecnica di apprendimento delle lingue supportata da studi scientifici, originariamente sviluppata per la formazione dei traduttori professionisti e resa popolare dal poliglotta Dr. Alexander Arguelles. Il metodo è semplice ma potente: ascolti un audio in inglese di madrelingua e lo ripeti immediatamente ad alta voce — come un'ombra che segue il parlante con un ritardo di solo 1–2 secondi. A differenza dell'ascolto passivo o degli esercizi di grammatica, lo shadowing costringe il tuo cervello e i muscoli della bocca a elaborare e riprodurre simultaneamente i modelli di discorso reale. La ricerca dimostra che migliora significativamente la precisione della pronuncia, l'intonazione, il ritmo, il discorso connesso, la comprensione dell'ascolto e la fluidità del parlato — rendendolo uno dei metodi più efficaci per la preparazione alla prova di speaking dell'IELTS e per la comunicazione reale in inglese.

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Pratica di Shadowing: NASA tested my chain theory in space - Impara a parlare inglese con i video

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