Les sciences et le progrès

Vocabulaire des inventions, des découvertes et du progrès & comment en parler en anglais

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Cette activité de compréhension sur « Les sciences et le progrès » en troisième entraîne à lire, analyser et répondre à des questions en anglais. Elle suit le programme officiel de troisième. Au programme : Science and technology : le vocabulaire de base, Inventions and discoveries : inventer ou découvrir ?, Great British and American inventors : repères, Talking about progress : progrès, amélioration, avancées. Lis le document, réponds puis vérifie immédiatement tes réponses pour progresser. Un bon moyen de travailler la méthode, d'enrichir son vocabulaire et de préparer les contrôles. Ressource gratuite proposée par un professeur particulier à Marseille pour réussir en anglais en troisième.

1Lis ce texte sur la découverte de la pénicilline, puis réponds aux questions en anglais.

« The dirty dish that changed medicine » — science magazine for teenagers.

In September 1928, Alexander Fleming, a Scottish scientist, came back to his laboratory at St Mary's Hospital in London after a two-week holiday. Fleming was brilliant, but he was not very tidy: before leaving, he had left several dishes of bacteria on his bench. When he looked at them, he noticed something strange. On one dish, a blue-green mould was growing, and around the mould, the bacteria had disappeared.

Fleming understood that the mould produced a substance which killed bacteria. He called it penicillin. He published his discovery in 1929, but he could not produce enough penicillin to treat patients, and most doctors ignored his work for ten years.

In 1940, two researchers at Oxford, Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, found a way to purify and mass-produce the drug. During the Second World War, penicillin saved thousands of wounded soldiers. In 1945, the three men shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine.

Today, antibiotics save millions of lives every year. Fleming often said that he had not planned to revolutionise medicine: « One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. »

2Questions

Q1 Where did Fleming work, and what did he do before his holiday?

Q2 What did Fleming notice on one of the dishes?

Q3 Why didn't penicillin help patients immediately? Give two reasons.

Q4 Who were Florey and Chain, and what did they achieve in 1940?

Q5 What happened in 1945, and why was it fair? Answer with a full sentence.

Q6 Explain in your own words Fleming's sentence: « One sometimes finds what one is not looking for. »

Voir le corrigé

at St Mary's Hospital in London; he had left several dishes of bacteria on his bench
a blue-green mould was growing and the bacteria around it had disappeared
he could not produce enough penicillin, and most doctors ignored his work for ten years
two researchers at Oxford who found a way to purify and mass-produce penicillin
Réponse libre — exemple : In 1945, Fleming, Florey and Chain shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine; it was fair because Fleming discovered penicillin but Florey and Chain turned it into a real drug.
Réponse libre — exemple : He means that great discoveries can happen by accident: he was not looking for an antibiotic, but he paid attention to a strange detail and understood its importance.

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