Shadowing Practice: Neil’s Most Important Explainer Ever - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Chuck, I probably got one of the most important explainers I'll ever deliver.
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Get out!
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Yeah.
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Oh my! May I?
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We've had a lot of explainers.
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I am thoroughly intrigued.
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Alright, so, coming into the 19th century.
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Okay.
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The 1800s.
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We're discovering the laws of physics.
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Yes.
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And we know that light exists.
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Mm-hmm.
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And you can put it through a prism, and you get colors.
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Then we realize, well, if it's light and it's moving through space, are there any other properties of this light that we can measure?
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Because no science achieves maturity without a system of measurement.
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Ooh, look at that.
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That's not me, that's Logan Clendenning.
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Logan Clendenning.
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By the way, this is one of the forces that prevented psychology from maturing.
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Into an actual science? out of its original state.
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Right, right.
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Because how do you measure someone's thoughts?
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Or even a brain, because every brain is different.
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Freud tried, and he has, you know, the interpretation of dreams.
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Right.
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But if you can't measure it, it just makes it really hard to systematize what you're talking about.
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Mm. And physics...
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Now, do you say that because you have a problem with your mother?
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Tell me how you feel about your parents.
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So what else can we measure about light?
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It's how bright it is.
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We can measure its color, but wait a minute.
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We learn that light is also made of particles, and we gave a name to those particles.
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We call them photons.
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And depending on how you measure the light, it can manifest as a particle or as a wave.
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It's the same thing.
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Our brain just can't handle the truth, that it is simultaneously a particle and a wave.
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I don't blame us.
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Back in the day, we tried to embrace the word wavicle.
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No. I'm just gonna come out and say no to that.
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Apparently so did everybody else.
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Yeah.
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So if it has a wavelength, what happens if I change the wavelength?
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The light changes color.
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Oh my gosh.
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Okay.
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So color and wavelength go together.
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Mm-hmm.
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I don't see color, so I don't see wavelength either.
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It's all just one wave.
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It's just one wave to me.
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I look at it and I'm just like, what a beautiful wave.
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Put a pin in that.
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All right.
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And so now let's talk about something else and we'll bring it all together.
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When we tried to harness electricity, a lot of early work was done by you-know-who.
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Don't say Ben Franklin.
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Ben Franklin.
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Oh, my man.
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Yeah, he published a book.
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Yes.
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Called Experimental Researches into Electricity.
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You do it, you pimp.
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I love you, Ben Franklin.
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It was read all throughout Europe.
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Yes.
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We think of him as just a founding father.
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My boy.
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He was a gentleman scientist, people.
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He was a frontier scientist.
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Yes.
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Frontier scientist.
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Love him.
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So we got this electricity, what is it, how does it work?
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We wouldn't discover the electron for 80 more years.
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Wow.
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Right?
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So what carries it, what causes it, what's it about?
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Then we found magnetism.
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This is what started Albert Einstein on his quest to learn physics.
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Intrigued that a magnet can influence an object at a distance.
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At a distance.
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Without actually touching it.
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Right, something must be there.
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Something that was there, how, where, and why.
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Why am I so attracted to you, girl?
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Michael Faraday, mid-19th century physicist, didn't know much math, but he was highly insightful.
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Wow.
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I didn't know that about him.
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There's no equations in any of his writings.
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Hardly any.
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Oh my god, there's hope for me yet!
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But he had a very deep, intuitive sense of what was going on.
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We credit the invention of the idea of a field to him him.
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Okay, right.
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Magnetic field.
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Magnetic field, yeah.
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And then he saw that you can have an electric field.
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Nice.
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And when you do something with one, it affects the other.
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If I take a wire, pass it through a magnetic field, current shows up in the wire.
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Electrons move through the wire.
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He had to figure out how to measure that.
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Okay, that would be today what we call an ammeter.
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Right.
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How many amps are coming through the wire.
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You take the wire, put it through the magnet, The ammeter does this.
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So I used a magnetic field to create electricity.
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Wait a minute.
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Electricity, magnetism.
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These were two separate forces.
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Until we said, wait a minute.
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If one can make the other and vice versa, maybe they're two sides of the same coin.
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And that coin we will call the electromagnetic coin.
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You got magnetism in my electricity.
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You got electricity in my magnetism.
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They're two great texts that go great together!
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They go really...
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They're the Reese's Peanut Butter Cup of Science!
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...of physics!
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So, they go really well together.
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Yeah.
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And so we staple together those two prefixes...
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Right.
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...and we have electromagnetism.
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Nice.
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Okay?
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Right.
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Then it turns out, it's electromagnetism that's responsible for creating light.
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And different wavelengths of light make different kinds of light.
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You now went from electricity and magnetism to electromagnetism to the electromagnetic spectrum.
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Whoa.
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Nice.
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Oh my gosh.
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I love it.
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A triumph of 19th century physics.
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It is.
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The electromagnetic spectrum.
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And so no longer is it just light is what your retina detects.
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Right.
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That's a range of wavelengths that tickle the cones in our eye to sense color.
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Right.
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That's how we distinguish those wavelengths.
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Nice.
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That's how our body can know what is a red object
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and what is blue and what is green and everything in between.
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Except for me, because I don't see color.
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So I got a cool fact to just sort of shoehorn in the middle of all this.
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Okay.
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When you look at an apple, let's say it's a red apple, you say, that apple is red.
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Right.
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That's how we experience it.
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That's how we roll.
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Right.
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Okay.
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It's a red apple.
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Well, it's only red because white light hit it.
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Okay.
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And white light has which colors in it?
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All the colors.
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Roy G.
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Biff?
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Yes.
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It has all those colors in it.
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But to you it's red.
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So how am I seeing red when white light is hitting all the colors?
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The apple is absorbing orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and reflecting red back to you.
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Red is the only color that it isn't.
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It is bouncing that back to you.
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Right.
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We say that apple is red, but it absorbed all the other colors.
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All the other colors.
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So it's our language references our own reference frame.
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We say it is red, when that is the only color that it rejected.
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That it rejected.
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Don't believe your eyes, ever.
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Don't believe your brain, don't believe your eyes.
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It's true for anything that has color.
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That has color.
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Right.
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Right.
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And if the object is white, it reflects all of Roy G.
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Biv back to you.
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Right.
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because white light is a colonizing light.
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It takes all the colors.
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Like, y'all all belong to me now.
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I don't know what you talking about.
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I think you're gonna, I'm not rejecting anything.
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You're all mine.
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You're all gonna work for me.
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What happens if the object absorbs all colors?
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Well, then it's gotta be white. If it, oh no!
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What's up my brother?
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Yo, it's good to see you man.
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If it absorbs all the colors, then nothing comes back and it is black.
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There you go.
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So you can't be black without being white.
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That's not what I said.
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Basically, no matter what, we are all white.
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I hate to say it, but it's true.
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No matter what, Martin Luther King had it wrong.
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He had a dream, but it was the wrong dream.
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I have a dream that one day, black, red, yellow, brown, we'll all be white.
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Sorry.
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William Herschel.
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Yes.
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He asked the question.
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He had Newton's spectrum on the table through a light coming through the curtain.
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And he wanted to know what are the different temperatures of each color.
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So he took his thermometer, put it in the spectrum.
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You need a control thermometer.
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Right.
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Put that to the side.
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Yeah.
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The one that is not touched by any of these colors.
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So he put one right to the side of the red.
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Nothing's touching that.
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And he checks the temperature.
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The red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet.
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And in every case, the thermometer that read the highest temperature was the control thermometer.
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Wow.
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Sounds...
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That's odd.
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That's exactly...
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It's a...
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That's odd.
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So then he took the control thermometer and put it somewhere else.
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It didn't do it.
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It didn't do it.
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Only if it sat next to the red.
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Wow.
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And then he publishes a paper.
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I have a copy of this paper.
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And it's like I hear angels every time I...
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Oh!
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It is the discovery of light unfit for vision.
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Wow.
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That's what he called it.
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This light is too good for your eyes.
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So that was the discovery of...
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That would be infrared.
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It's below red, infrared.
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Right.
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Below red.
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Below red.
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So then we're off to the races.
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Right.
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What else is there?
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What else is there?
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It would take...
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We would discover other bands of light at very different times because you need special detectors for it.
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The thermometer is a detector of infrared.
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Right.
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But is your thermometer a detector of microwaves?
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Not so much.
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No. Is your thermometer a detector of ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays?
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Not so much.
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So the detector has to be able to absorb the light and somehow record what that is that it just absorbed.
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Thermometers absorb infrared.
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There it was.
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So going forward from there, that was the 1700s into the 1800s and into the 1900s, into the 2000s.
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We are appending windows of the electromagnetic spectrum to what we only ever once knew as visible light.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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That's really...
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That's dope.
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Fascinating.
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Yes, yes.
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So the visible light, let's go in the red side.
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So beyond red, we had infrared.
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Right.
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A sensible name.
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Infrared.
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Beyond infrared, physicists got in there first, and they just called it all radio waves.
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These are bigger wavelengths than visible light.
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In fact, it's so big, you can like draw it on a page.
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Wow.
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Okay?
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So the smaller radio waves are between like a millimeter and a few centimeters.
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Okay.
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You can draw that.
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That's still big.
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Okay? so for the metrically challenged out there, fraction of an inch to about an inch.
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Okay?
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Those are the small radio waves.
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Then the bigger radio waves are the size of like a meter.
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They're feet long.
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The original TVs that had rabbit ear antennas received long wavelength radio waves Mm-hmm
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that were the same length as your antenna
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Which is why it could grab it out of the air
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and go to the reception grab it out of the air if you want it for these
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Radio waves if you want to detect them right you need a receiver
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You need an antenna about the same size as the radio wave that's really cool That it is really cool.
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That's really cool.
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Okay, so that's why they had to be telescopic Telescope.
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And depending on what your frequency was is how that would work.
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And that's why sometimes if you're old enough, like if you're a kid of the 70s, when they still had these and your family didn't have the newer television,
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your dad would make you stand there and hold it.
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And you'd be part of the antenna.
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And you'd be part of the antenna.
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He's like, I don't know what you're doing, boy, but you keep right there until this game is over.
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When this game is over, you can leave.
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Later we would learn is that the shorter radio wavelengths were excellent for communication
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because you can pack more information the smaller the wavelength is.
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As you got to shorter and shorter radio waves, we came up with a new word for them.
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Microwaves.
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Oh, there you go.
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Micro, we think of micro as really small, but they're just small radio waves.
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They're just smaller than the radio waves.
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Right, and so that became a whole band of light that earned its own title.
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Right.
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Microwaves.
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We would later learn by accident in the 20th century, right that microwaves and the water molecule they got a thing going.
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Oh nice.
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Okay, right water molecule loves absorbing microwaves.
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Give it to me.
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Okay in certain frequencies more than others.
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Oh I just used the word frequency.
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If you have a wavelength
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Which I've been describing is right meters long centimeters much much
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smaller in the visible part how fast is all this moving
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it's all radio waves microwaves infrared it's all light yeah we get the speed of light
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so watch I have a wavelength this big going by me at the speed of light right
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and I have a clock I would say how many crests
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go by per second gotcha that's the frequency of the light right because it's still going to be the speed of light,
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but you're going to get more crests and troughs depending on the higher frequencies.
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Nice.
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Yes.
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Okay.
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So the shorter the wavelength, the higher the frequency.
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So the wavelength and the frequency go in opposite...
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Inverse relationship.
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Precisely inverse relation.
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Very cool.
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Okay.
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As one goes up by a factor of two, the other drops by a factor of two.
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Cool.
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Because they're multiplied by each other to give you the speed of light.
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Oh!
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I love it!
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Oh, that is dope!
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Speed of light equals frequency times wavelength.
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And it's going to always...
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If one dropped, the other goes up.
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So they're always in perfect balance to bring you the speed of light.
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Oh man, that's really cool!
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That's how that works.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so now we learned that microwaves are absorbed by water.
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Okay.
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Water is a major food additive. Of course. about it.
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I don't know that there's much of anything you eat that doesn't have water in it.
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At some level.
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Other food molecules will absorb microwaves, but water does it best.
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And I'm told, I didn't verify this, but it's kind of fun.
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They were working with microwaves in a lab.
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Was it at MIT somewhere?
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And somebody walked in front of a microwave beam, and he checked his pocket, and the chocolate bar was melted.
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And he said, how'd that happen?
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Then they did experiments, And they're like absorbed it very efficiently now you don't want to really be in the beam of microwaves No, because it'll get in your skin.
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Yeah, we're you got a lot of watering your body and your body.
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Okay?
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It'll start heating you up.
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Yeah, okay You want to look in the vituous humor of your body.
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Oh my God I can't even imagine and by the way
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Microwaves pass through glass right glass don't absorb microwave exactly so how else do we have microwave ovens with glass doors?
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Mmm Well, because they're not there is science oven.
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That's why they cook with science.
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Okay The glass door the microwave oven isn't just glass door.
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No, right.
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There is a screen there always with holes And those holes it's a metal screen.
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Yeah, and those holes are each
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Smaller than the wavelength of the microwave that's cooking the food
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So they block the microwave walk them I coming out of the passing through the glass
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And yet you can still see through it.
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Yes.
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I don't know who thought of that, but that was a brilliant...
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Thank you, sir, or ma'am, whoever you were.
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It's called science.
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Science!
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That is really cool.
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Yes.
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So people who are afraid of microwave leakage, not through the door, it's not.
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I'm sterile.
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I think it was my microwave oven that was the big thing.
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And there's still people to this day who say, let's nuke it in the microwave.
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It's got nothing to do with nuclear forces.
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It's microwave light and the water molecule.
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Look at that.
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Pure and simple.
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resonates with it.
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So it vibrates and you vibrate them like this and it's friction.
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Friction is ultimately what's heating the food.
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Look at that.
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Not like nukes.
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Instead you could just rub your chicken wings together very quickly.
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They would heat up.
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And they would heat up.
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Yeah.
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So each of these bands of light has different utilities.
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Yeah.
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Different value to us in civilization.
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Beyond violet, ultraviolet.
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Hostile to biology.
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They have those eyeglass sterilizers.
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You know if you you know you put them in a thing close the door and it turn on the switch Yeah, bay is them in ultraviolet light.
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Yeah, they do that now with them your utensils that they
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Reuse like in dentistry energy of the ultraviolet light gets absorbed by molecules
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That then breaks the part the molecules of life look at
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that hostile to life hostile to hostile to fight We keep going beyond ultraviolet we get to x-rays Mmm, and then gamma rays.
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Yes, and that is the entire that's it the spectrum named
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Electromagnetic spectrum is it possible that there could be something above gamma rays sure, but we would still pause just call them gamma rays Oh, yes gamma rays all the way down the way down.
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Yeah Unless we have a really specific use for it That's really helpful then we can divide it up
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and say let's call it something new
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if it does exist We have nothing to do with it exactly the visible part of the spectrum.
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Yes We are practically blind on this spectrum.
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It would be like listening to Beethoven's 9th Symphony in one octave getting played.
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That's not very attractive.
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That doesn't sound very good.
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I don't want to hear that on the radio.
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Right, exactly.
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It's not like a toy piano.
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Right, the toy piano.
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Right, right.
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So the richness of the electromagnetic spectrum delivered to us by objects and phenomena in the universe is modern astrophysics.
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Modern astrophysics.
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Yes.
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Which, by the way, when I first saw Star Trek Next Generation and I saw Geordi LaForge, I was like, now, of course, they're going to mess up the black man.
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He can't even see.
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He's walking around with a visor.
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Like, look like a grill of a Cadillac on his face.
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How messed up is that?
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Until I found out that his visor could see in every part of the spectrum.
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Correct.
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My boy could see everything.
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He could see everything.
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Everything.
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Yeah, now you want to see it all at once you
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want to be able to tune it otherwise would just be it's noise
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If you tune to for example to microwaves right then everyone's
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cell phone would be lit up all the cell phone towers
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would be lit up Right you'd be talking to someone conversations in the air But yeah, well you have to be where they are where it hits you right where it's right
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and you'd see conversation coming at coming at you Yeah, yeah, yeah, that'd be cool.
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Yeah, no actually no you wouldn't see it coming at you Okay, because that means you'd be able to see it before the speed of light got it to you Oh, snap!
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Look at that!
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That's right, you can only see it on the visor.
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On the visor.
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Oh, man, that's so cool.
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Yep.
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Love it.
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There it is.
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That's wavelengths and photons.
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And all of these are photons, by the way.
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Yes, exactly.
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And depending on how you measure it, it'll be a wave or a particle.
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That's the duality.
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Right.
460
I can be whatever I want, Dad.
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Last point.
462
Radio telescopes?
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Yes.
464
If your wavelength is this big?
465
Mm-hmm.
466
The shape of your dish doesn't have to be all...
467
You could have, like, segments.
468
You could...
469
Because the wave doesn't know anything smaller than it.
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Exactly.
471
Oh, another one.
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Electrons.
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Yes.
474
You can warm up electrons so that they have a wavelength equal to x-rays.
475
Okay?
476
Wave-particle duality.
477
Okay?
478
Okay.
479
In fact, that's how x-rays are generated in x-ray machines.
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In x-ray machines.
481
In the hospital.
482
Okay?
483
There's an electron source.
484
Okay, no, wait, but that's not what...
485
Hey, stop!
486
Go ahead.
487
All right, go ahead.
488
If I want to see detail in a microscope, okay?
489
Right.
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And I can see, oh, there's the paramecium or the thing.
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And the reason why I can see it is I'm using visible light, which is a wavelength much smaller than the thing I'm looking at.
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Much smaller.
493
So many wavelengths of light span the thing I'm looking at, So I can get detail,
494
commensurate with the wavelength of light I'm using.
495
But now suppose I want to look at, suppose it has hairs on the side that are this thin.
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I'm not going to see it.
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No, you can't.
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If my waves in the microscope are bigger than the hair.
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Are bigger than the thing that I'm observing.
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But do you know what has smaller wavelength than visible light?
501
Oh, x-rays.
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X-rays.
503
That's right. Of course.
504
So I make a scanning electron microscope that uses x-rays to image the object
505
and x-rays are way smaller wavelengths enabling you to see detail Unimagined at the regular microscope scale because it's only hitting
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One part of the thing that you're observing and then you can then multiple wavelengths can can flesh that out right?
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And you can see things put it all together and make a picture and make a picture Damn.
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So the highest resolution pictures use the smallest wavelengths.
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We are badass on this electromagnetic spectrum and it is fundamentally with us in modern civilization.
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Amazing.
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Amazing.
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And I- We cannot imagine civilization without it.
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That's not- What?
514
How could you not like science?
515
Okay.
516
What is wrong with you?
517
Chuck blew a gasket.
518
Like, do you not see how awesome this stuff is, man?
519
We need to end this right now.
520
It's amazing!
521
Like there are people devoting their lives to just finding out!
522
Tune back in next time when Chuck has calmed down to pick up the next explainer on StarTalk.
523
Keep looking up.
524
Thank you.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Neil’s Most Important Explainer Ever”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: wavelength, microwave, color, wave, ray. This video has 524 sentences and 3757 words to shadow. The speech runs for 22:42. The speaker talks at a natural 166 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 82% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| wavelength noun | /ˈweɪvˌlɛŋ(k)θ/ | The length of a single cycle of a wave, as measured by the distance between one peak or trough of a wave and the next; it is often designated in physics as λ… |
| microwave noun | /ˈmaɪkɹoʊˌweɪv/ | An electromagnetic wave with wavelength between that of infrared light and radio waves. |
| absorb verb | /æbˈsɔɹb/ | To include so that it no longer has separate existence; to overwhelm; to cause to disappear as if by swallowing up; to incorporate; to assimilate; to take in… |
| thermometer noun | /θɚˈmɑ.mɪ.tɚ/ | An apparatus used to measure temperature. |
| infrared adjective | /ˌɪnfɹəˈɹɛd/ | Having a wavelength in the infrared spectrum. |
| electromagnetic adjective | /ɪˌlɛk.tɹoʊ.mæɡˈnɛ.tɪk/ | Relating to electromagnetism. |
| molecule noun | /ˈmɑ.lɪ.kjul/ | The smallest particle of a specific element or compound that retains the chemical properties of that element or compound; two or more atoms held together by… |
| particle noun | /ˈpɑɹtək(ə)l/ | A very small piece of matter, a fragment; especially, the smallest possible part of something. |
| magnetism noun | /ˈmæɡ.nəˌtɪz.əm/ | The property of being magnetic. |
| ultraviolet adjective | /ˌʌltɹəˈvaɪələt/ | Of electromagnetic radiation beyond (higher in frequency than) light visible to the human eye; radiation with wavelengths from 380 to 10 nanometres. |
| gamma noun | /ˈɡæ.mə/ | The third letter of the Greek alphabet (Γ, γ), preceded by beta (Β, β) and followed by delta, (Δ, δ). |
| detector noun | /dɪˈtɛktə(ɹ)/ | A device capable of registering a specific substance or physical phenomenon, and that optionally sounds an alarm or triggers a warning. |
| antenna noun | /ænˈtɛn.ə/ | An appendage used for sensing on the head of an insect, crab, or other animal. |
| visor noun | /ˈvaɪzɚ/ | A part of a helmet, arranged so as to lift or open, and so show the face. The openings for seeing and breathing are generally in it. |
| microscope noun | /ˈmaɪ.kɹəˌskoʊp/ | An optical instrument used for observing small objects. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| come through verb | To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway. | |
| find out verb | To discover, as by asking or investigating. | |
| go ahead verb | /ˌɡoʊ əˈhɛd/ | To proceed with; to begin. |
| go up verb | To move upwards. | |
| heat up verb | To heat, to cause to become hotter. | |
| mess up verb | To make a mess of; to untidy, disorder, soil, or muss. | |
| pass through verb | To go through, to travel through, to transit or lie across a place or from one place to another. | |
| come back verb | To return to a place. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Because how do you measure someone's thoughts?
- Why am I so attracted to you, girl?
- What's up my brother?
- If your wavelength is this big?
- How could you not like science?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is also made · was done · was read |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | people who are · light, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 88 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, I'm, they're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: wavelength /ˈweɪvˌlɛŋ(k)θ/, thermometer /θɚˈmɑ.mɪ.tɚ/, thoroughly /ˈθʌɹ.ə.li/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: civilization /ˌsɪv.ɪ.laɪˈzeɪ.ʃən/, friction /ˈfɹɪkʃən/, gosh /ɡɑːʃ/, distinguish /dɪˈstɪŋ.ɡwɪʃ/, fraction /ˈfɹæk.ʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: thermometer /θɚˈmɑ.mɪ.tɚ/, electromagnetic /ɪˌlɛk.tɹoʊ.mæɡˈnɛ.tɪk/, magnetism /ˈmæɡ.nəˌtɪz.əm/, ultraviolet /ˌʌltɹəˈvaɪələt/, electromagnetism /ɪˌlɛk.tɹəʊˈmæɡ.nəˌtɪzm̩/
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 wavelength, microwave, absorb.
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.