2026年真题02

Listen to a talk in a physics class. We've been talking about the law of inertia. An object moving in a straight line will continue to move in a straight line unless it is acted upon by another force. So what does this mean in the real world? Let's look at something many people do all the time riding a bicycle. Think about riding along in a straight line. Once the bike is moving, inertia will keep it going in a straight line. But we don't just ride in straight lines, do we? We turn at corners and steer around things that are in our way. So how do you get the bicycle not to go straight? Easy, right? Don't you just need to turn the front wheel in the direction you want to turn? In fact, if you only turn the front wheel, you're likely to end up on the pavement. The wheel will turn, but because of inertia, your body and the rest of the bike will want to keep moving straight ahead. So how does a cyclist avoid this? The key is to lean in. Weight needs to shift in the direction of the turn so that the force of gravity can work against the force of inertia. Professional cyclists who move at high speeds need to hit a sweet spot. They must learn more to keep their bicycles from sliding out of turns, but not too much. At a certain point, gravity will bring both rider and bicycle down to the ground.

Listen to a talk in a history class today. Let's talk about the effects of the Industrial Revolution on urban life in Europe. Last week we talked about how between the 16th and the 19th centuries, industrial capitalism utterly changed the European economy. As manufacturing became the most profitable activity, cities naturally grew larger and took on a new character. By 1850, the physical layout of an industrial city was completely different from that of its predecessors. How do we picture a medieval city? It's surrounded by walls to protect it from invasion from the neighboring city. The emergence of nation states did away with this need for protection from invasion, at least on the city scale. And so over the centuries, the walls were removed and city boundaries pushed out dramatically. Industrial workplaces had been small craft shops, but now they were huge factories located in large factory districts, with separate housing for workers constructed nearby. Medieval St. layouts that had developed haphazardly were built over, replaced by a gridiron St. pattern. Each lot was uniform and predictable, which made it easier to buy and sell property. Many cities kept their central marketplaces, but commercial structures became more prominent in city centres, often more so than cathedrals. Manchester, England is a good example of this. It grew rapidly during the industrial revolution and commercial buildings dominated the city centre. It's layout reflected the new priorities of industrial capitalism.

Listen to a talk in an anthropology class. For most of its history, the scientific field of anthropology, the study of culture, put humans at the center, often in ways that now seem no and limiting. Animals were treated as resources, symbols, or mere background, important only for what they meant to us. Classic anthropology focused on how people hunted, herded, or mythologized animals, reinforcing a sharp divide. Humans belonged to culture, animals to nature. For example, early studies of Arctic hunting rituals examined how seals symbolized spiritual beliefs and social bonds without asking about the seals own behaviors or ecological roles. This approach gave us insight into human meaning making, but it overlooked the complexity of interspecies relationships. Multispecies anthropology flips that perspective. It sees humans and other species, animals, plants, even fungi as co-participants in shared worlds. Instead of reducing non humans to cultural symbols, it highlights their agency, their ability to act, adapt and influence human lives. Take the studies of mushroom foraging in Siberia. Here fungi, trees and humans form interdependent networks. The growth of matsutake mushrooms depends on and reflects forest Health and Human harvesting practices, even as harvesting practices and forest health are influenced by the mushrooms themselves. The point is, life isn't a human story with animals or plants in the background. It's a web of relationships among many kinds of beings. Next, I'll explore how this multispecies perspective reshapes research methods, what it means to study not just human cultures, but the entangled lives of humans and other beings.

Listen to a talk in an architecture class. The Eastgate Center in Harare, Zimbabwe, is a mixed complex combining retail spaces and offices. When the architect Mick Pierce was asked to design the building in the early 1990s, he faced a big challenge. How to keep all its shops and offices cool without traditional air conditioning and do it during an economic crisis. Energy costs were high and importing advanced air conditioners was impossible. To solve this dilemma, Pierce looked to termite mounds. Termites are insects that live in large colonies. They build big mounds on the ground throughout the African Savannah. The mounds are amazing structures. Some rise 3 meters above ground and extend another one to three meters below the ground. The underground chambers connect to the above ground chimneys through a maze of tunnels, and this entire system works like natural climate control. Warm air rises and escapes through the top, while cooler air flows in from below. The thick walls of soil and clay absorb heat during the day and release it at night. Termites fine tune airflow by opening and closing vents, adding or removing soil to enlarge or seal passages. On hot days, they open more vents for cooling. At night, they close them to keep warm. Thin. Pierce borrowed these ideas. The Eastgate Center's walls are made from thick materials like concrete and brick, and there's a system of ducts and adjustable louvers throughout the building to mimic those vents. The result? A building that uses far less energy than its conventional counterparts.