XV. Translate the following international words:

maximum, minimum, micron, accelerator, meteorology, navigation, characteristic, concentration, argument, robot, physical processes.

Text 17 b laser technology

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Last century may be called the century of lasers. This miracle-making beam is the symbol of the 20^th century technology. There is no doubt that the use of lasers will be very widespread in the nearest future. Quite possibly, it will be as widely used as electronic devices are today. What is laser? It is a device for making and concentrating light waves into a very intense beam. The letters LASER stand for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation. The light made by a laser is much more intense than ordinary light. With ordinary light all the light waves are of different lengths. With lasers all the light waves are of the same length, and this increases the intensity.

The laws of quantum mechanics govern the functioning of lasers. The laser is a device in which energy (thermal, chemical or electric) is transformed into electromagnetic radiation energy, a laser beam with maximally low entropy.

The quality of laser energy is determined by the possibility of its high concentration both in space and in time. The laser beam is first compressed in time, i. e. transformed into a short pulse. Then it may be compressed in space focusing it in a fine point with a diameter of the order of a light wave length, thus obtaining energy density which, to date, evens that of a nuclear explosion. Laser energy can also be concentrated within a very narrow spectrum interval. This makes the laser a very fine instrument.

The world’s first ruby laser had a dark-red beam. Other lasers were then produced, whose beam oscillated in crystals of a different composition, in semiconductors, gases, and liquids. And the beams were blue, green or invisible-infrared. What they have in common is that the beam is always space-bound and carries a highly pointed and powerful flux of energy.

Laser energy may be transformed practically without loss into many familiar forms of energy.

As each of new kinds of energy was mastered, mankind gained new possibilities for its development. But discovery of the laser signifies something greater than simply mastering a new kind of energy. Wide laser application in production signifies a revolution in the implements of labour - the most flexible and mobile element of the productive forces.

Text 17 c laser in the clothes-making industry

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Clothes-making factories have the following procedure for mass sewing of clothes. Thick stacks of cloth are put on a large layout table, and then each stack is cut out with knives which look like jig-saws to fit a pattern. This leads to a considerable waste of cloth. In the process of bringing parts of clothes to fitness rather wide strips of material are thrown out as refuse.

Now a practically waste-free technology seems to have been found for this operation. An installation for laser layout of cloth designed at a Special Design and Development Bureau of the Clothes Manufacturing Industry has been built by the Shipyard in St. Petersburg.

In keeping with a set programme, a laser beam burns through a thick stack of cloth without shifting the layers (as it happens in cutting with a knife) and it does not require making allowances “just in case”.