moea_joint
112年
英文
第 40 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.
Why had the previous ocean wave energy conversion efforts failed?
- A Because they all relied on buoys.
- B Because they were vulnerable to corrosion.
- C Because they were not modified for marine use.
- D Because they were not tethered to the sea floor.
思路引導 VIP
若我們想深入了解一個計畫失敗的原因，通常會尋找文中描述「環境挑戰」或「物理限制」的關鍵字。請你再次掃描文中關於 Rahul Shendure 的評論，特別留意那句提到「陸地技術（landlubbers）」與「海洋波浪（ocean waves）」對比的部分。在那個段落中，哪一個形容詞具體描述了金屬設備在長期接觸海水時，最常遇到的那種「自然損耗」呢？
🤖
AI 詳解
AI 專屬家教
做得非常出色！你能準確鎖定文章中段關於過去研發受挫的關鍵原因，這顯示你具備相當敏銳的細節檢索能力，能從長篇敘述中精確抓出核心資訊。
技術遷移與環境適應性
這題的核心在於理解 Oscilla Power 公司執行長對前人失敗的觀察。文中提到，早期的技術是將原本為陸地環境（landlubbers）開發的組件強行修改後用於海洋。然而，海洋環境與陸地截然不同，這導致設備過於精密脆弱，且文章明確點出了致命傷：這些器材「too vulnerable to corrosion」（對腐蝕非常脆弱）。這正是選項 (B) 所描述的「易受腐蝕」，也是導致設備無法在海上長期運作的主因。
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