Shadowing Practice: How Long Can You Balance a Pencil? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Balancing a pencil or any other top -heavy object on its tip is quite a precarious task.

It's easy to see why top -heavy objects are unstable.

They just want to fall down.

Any little nudge will put it off balance, with gravity happy to pull its center of mass even more off balance.

And the more off balance it is, the more gravity pulls until...

Physicists call this kind of tipping an inverted pendulum, because it's kind of like an upside -down pendulum.

And, careful mathematical analysis of inverted pendulums will tell you the obvious.

They're really unstable.

In fact, these equations predict that

if a perfectly balanced pencil with a perfectly sharp tip were

to get nudged off -balance by just one ten -thousandth the width of an atom, it would take only three seconds to fall over.

There are indeed acrobats who can balance poles with other acrobats on top, and robots that can balance and catch and throw upright sticks,

and people who make seemingly impossible artistic rock stacks.

But in all these cases, keeping the objects balanced either requires an active stabilization effort, or else carefully taking advantage of the fact that the balancing point isn't actually a point.

So the question is this, can you balance a pencil sharpened to a perfect single atom -wide tip on its tip without active stabilization?

Well, to start, you'd better get rid of all the air bumping off the sides of the pencil, since the kinetic energy of a typical oxygen molecule is enough to destabilize the pencil.

Remember, if the pencil gets off -center by even one ten -thousandth the width of an atom, it'll fall down in under three seconds.

And you'd better cool the pencil and table down as close to absolute zero as you can, since the thermal jiggling of their atoms when they're hotter will similarly jiggle the pencil off -balance.

But even then, matter at very small scales has a spread -out, wave -like nature, which means you can't have both the pencil perfectly upright and not moving at the same time.

And while this quantum effect is never a real -life inhibitor of precarious pencil balancing, it means you never even could succeed.

However, it's still fun to see how long you can keep a pencil balanced on your fingertip.

The shorter the pencil, the harder it is.

My best time for a standard 19cm pencil was 1 .3 seconds.

Think you can beat it?

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “How Long Can You Balance a Pencil?”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: pencil, balance, atom, tip, pendulum. This video has 24 sentences and 413 words to shadow. The speech runs for 2:01. The speaker talks fast, about 204 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
pencil noun	/ˈpɛnsəl/	A writing utensil with a graphite (commonly referred to as lead) shaft, usually blended with clay, clad in wood, and sharpened to a taper.
atom noun	/ˈætəm/	The smallest possible amount of matter which still retains its identity as a chemical element, now known to consist of a nucleus surrounded by electrons.
pendulum noun	/ˈpɛnd͡ʒələm/	A body suspended from a fixed support so that it swings freely back and forth under the influence of gravity, commonly used to regulate various devices such as…
acrobat noun	/ˈæk.ɹə.bæt/	An athlete who performs acts requiring skill, agility and coordination, often as part of a circus performance.
invert verb	/ɪnˈvɜɹt/	To turn (something) upside down or inside out; to place in a contrary order or direction; to make (something) the opposite of it.
jiggle verb	/ˈd͡ʒɪɡəl/	To shake something gently; to rattle or wiggle.
nudge verb	/nʌd͡ʒ/	To push against gently, especially in order to gain attention or give a signal.
precarious adjective	/pɹɪˈkɛəɹi.əs/	Dangerously insecure or unstable; perilous.
stabilization noun	/ˌsteɪ.bəl.ɪzˈeɪ.ʃən/	The process of stabilizing.
thousandth adjective	/ˈθaʊzən(d)θ/	The ordinal numeral form of one thousand; last in order of a series of a thousand; next after the nine hundred and ninety-ninth.
upright adjective	/ˈʌpɹaɪt/	Vertical; erect.
unstable adjective	/ʌnˈsteɪ.bəl/	Not stable.
width noun	/ˈwɪtθ/	The state of being wide.
destabilize verb	/diːˈsteɪbɪlaɪz/	To make something unstable.
fingertip noun	/ˈfɪŋɡɚˌtɪp/	The tip of the human finger.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
bump off verb		To kill, especially to murder.
fall down verb	/fɔl ˈdaʊn/	To fall to the ground. To collapse.
fall over verb		To fall from an upright or standing position to a horizontal or prone position.
get off verb		To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it.
spread out verb		Become further apart.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 7 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, you'd, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: thousandth /ˈθaʊzən(d)θ/, width /ˈwɪtθ/, thermal /ˈθɜːməl/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: stabilization /ˌsteɪ.bəl.ɪzˈeɪ.ʃən/, sharpen /ˈʃɑɹpən/, equation /ɪˈkweɪ.ʒən/
Long words — get the stress right: precarious /pɹɪˈkɛəɹi.əs/, stabilization /ˌsteɪ.bəl.ɪzˈeɪ.ʃən/, destabilize /diːˈsteɪbɪlaɪz/, inhibitor /ɪnˈhɪbɪtɚ/, mathematical /ˌmæθ(.ə)ˈmæt.ɪ.kəl/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like pencil, atom, pendulum.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: How Long Can You Balance a Pencil? - Learn English Speaking with Video

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