单选题
Fermi Problem

On a Monday morning in July, the world's first atom bomb exploded in the New Mexico desert. Forty seconds later, the shook waves reached the base camp where the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fezmi and his team stood. After a mental calculation, Fermi announced to his team that the bomb's energy had equated 10,000 tons of TNT. The bomb team was impressed, but not surprised. Fermi's genius was known throughout the scientific world. In 1938 he had won a Nobel Prize. Four years later he produced the first nuclear chain reaction, leading us into the nuclear age. Since Fermi's death in 1954, no physicist has been at once a master experimentalist and a leading theoretician.
Like all virtuosos (大师), Fermi had a distinctive style. He preferred the most direct route to an answer. He was very good at dividing difficult problems into small, manageable bits talent we all can use in our daily lives.
To develop this talent in his students, Fermi would suggest a type of question now known as a Fermi problem. Upon first hearing one of these, you haven't the remotest notion of the answer, and you feel certain that too little information had been given to solve it. Yet when the problem is broken into sub-problems, each answerable without the help of experts or books, you can come close to the exact solution.
Suppose you want to determine Earth's circumference without looking it up. Everyone knows that New York and Los Angeles are about 3,000 miles apart and that the time difference between them is three hours. Three hours is one-eighth of a day, and a day is the time it takes the planet to complete one rotation, so its circumference must be eight times 3000 or 24000 miles. This answer differs from the true value, 24,902.45 miles, by less than four percent.
Ultimately the value of dealing with everyday problems the way Fermi did lies in the rewards of making independent discoveries and inventions. It doesn't matter whether the discovery is as important as determining the power of an atom or as small as measuring the distance between New York and Los Angeles. Looking up the answer, or letting someone else find it deprives you of the pleasure and pride that accompany creativity, and deprives you of an experience that builds up self-confide. Thus, approaching personal dilemmas as Fermi problems can become a habit that enriches your life.

单选题 Fermi's team was impressed by Fermi's announcement in the base camp because he could even work out the power of the atom bomb in his mind.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】答案的依据是第1段第3句话:在作了一番心算以后,得出了该原子弹具有相当于10,000吨TNT的爆炸力的结论。
单选题 Fermi, an experimentalist as well as a theoretician, won a Nobel Prize for producing the first nuclear chain reaction in the world.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】文章第1段中提到。Fermi在1938年获诺贝尔奖,四年以后才成功地实现了核连锁反应,所以题干的说法是错误的。
单选题 Dividing a big problem into small problems is a talent Fermi had and a talent that has practical value in life.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】答案的依据是第2段的第3句,题干只不过是换了一种表达方式。
单选题 Fermi problem is to develop the talent of breaking a seemingly unanswerable problem into sub-problems and finding the solution to it, which is a typical Fermi problem.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】答案的依据是第3段的内容。第1句中的this talent指第2段提到的将难以解决的问题分解成几个容易处理的小问题。第3段对这种解决问题的方法又进一步作了描写。
单选题 Then the fourth paragraph tells us how Fermi solved the problem of earth's circumference without looking up.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】第4段是为第2段和第3段的内容提供实际例子,即Fermi problem的实际运用,并不是Fermi本人运用Fermi解决问题的方法约略推算出地球的周长。由此可见,题干的说法是错误的。
单选题 The last paragraph concludes the whole writing by stressing the value of important inventions and small discoveries.
【正确答案】 B
【答案解析】最后一段是全篇的结论,强调了。Fermi问题的价值:Ultimately the value of dealing with everyday problems the way Fermi did lies in the rewards of making independent discoveries and inventions。
单选题 Fermi was famous for inventing a device to calculate bomb's energy accurately.
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】文章根本没有提到他发明了一台能精确计量炸弹能量的仪器。