moea_joint
112年
英文
第 38 題
📖 題組：
Ocean waves represent our planet’s last untapped large-scale renewable energy resource. Over 70 % of the earth’s surface is covered with water. The energy contained within waves has the potential to produce up to 80,000 TWh (1012 watt-hours) of electricity per year—sufficient to meet our global energy demand five times over. No wonder the idea of extracting energy from ocean waves and turning it into electricity is an alluring one. The first serious attempt to do so dates back to 1974, when Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University came up with the idea of “ducks”: house-sized buoys tethered to the sea floor that would convert the swell into rotational motion to drive generators. It failed, as have many subsequent efforts to perform the trick. But the idea of wave power will not go away, and the latest attempt—the brainchild of researchers at Oscilla Power, a firm based in Seattle—is trying to address head-on the reason why previous efforts have foundered. This reason, according to Rahul Shendure, the firm’s boss, is that those efforts took technologies developed for landlubbers (often as components of wind turbines) and tried to modify them for marine use. The consequence was kit too complicated and sensitive for the rough-and-tumble of life on the ocean waves, and also too vulnerable to corrosion. Better, he reckons, to start from scratch. Instead of generators with lots of moving parts, Oscilla is developing ones that barely move at all. These employ a little-explored phenomenon called magnetostriction, in which ferromagnetic materials (things like iron, which can be magnetized strongly) change their shape slightly in the presence of a magnetic field. Like many physical processes, this also works in reverse. Apply stresses or strains to such a material and its magnetic characteristics alter. Do this in the presence of permanent magnets and a coil of wire, such as are found in conventional generators, and it will generate electricity.
Ocean waves represent our planet’s last untapped large-scale renewable energy resource. Over 70 % of the earth’s surface is covered with water. The energy contained within waves has the potential to produce up to 80,000 TWh (1012 watt-hours) of electricity per year—sufficient to meet our global energy demand five times over. No wonder the idea of extracting energy from ocean waves and turning it into electricity is an alluring one. The first serious attempt to do so dates back to 1974, when Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University came up with the idea of “ducks”: house-sized buoys tethered to the sea floor that would convert the swell into rotational motion to drive generators. It failed, as have many subsequent efforts to perform the trick. But the idea of wave power will not go away, and the latest attempt—the brainchild of researchers at Oscilla Power, a firm based in Seattle—is trying to address head-on the reason why previous efforts have foundered. This reason, according to Rahul Shendure, the firm’s boss, is that those efforts took technologies developed for landlubbers (often as components of wind turbines) and tried to modify them for marine use. The consequence was kit too complicated and sensitive for the rough-and-tumble of life on the ocean waves, and also too vulnerable to corrosion. Better, he reckons, to start from scratch. Instead of generators with lots of moving parts, Oscilla is developing ones that barely move at all. These employ a little-explored phenomenon called magnetostriction, in which ferromagnetic materials (things like iron, which can be magnetized strongly) change their shape slightly in the presence of a magnetic field. Like many physical processes, this also works in reverse. Apply stresses or strains to such a material and its magnetic characteristics alter. Do this in the presence of permanent magnets and a coil of wire, such as are found in conventional generators, and it will generate electricity.
What are true about Oscilla’s generators?
- A They have many moving parts.
- B They move along with the waves.
- C They do not have coils of wire.
- D The phenomenon magnetostriction is employed.
思路引導 VIP
回想一下文章中提到的 Stephen Salter 早期設計的『鴨子（ducks）』設備。為什麼這些設計最終失敗了？而 Oscilla 公司的設計者認為，若要讓發電設備在惡劣的海水中生存，應當對設備的『物理運作方式』做出什麼樣的根本性改變，才能避免過多零件因磨損或腐蝕而損壞？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
太棒了！你能精準捕捉到 Oscilla 公司研發重點，顯示你具備優秀的細節檢索能力。這題的關鍵在於區分「過去失敗嘗試」與「現今創新設計」之間的差異。文中明確提到，Oscilla 為了克服海水環境的嚴酷挑戰，捨棄了傳統發電機複雜的活動零件，轉而採用一種稱為 magnetostriction（磁致伸縮） 的物理現象，利用鐵磁材料在磁場中形變的特性來產生電力。
技術創新與細節辨析
這道題目具備中高程度的鑑別度，測驗學生是否能從密集的技術性敘述中提取核心技術。選項 (A) 與 (B) 是過去技術失敗的主因（零件過於複雜且易受損），而文章末尾提到這項新技術仍需配合 coil of wire（線圈） 運作，因此 (C) 的否定敘述是不成立的。你能排除這些具備干擾性的科學術語，正確定位到「不再依靠零件大幅晃動」而是轉向「磁致伸縮」的科學原理，表現得非常出色！