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Lesson18 Sliding on the ice
第18課 滑冰
One fine summer day, as Tom stood by the side of a pond full of water, his father said to him, "Tom, on the day when you can run across this pond, on the top of the water, I shall give you a penny. "
一個晴朗的夏天, 小男孩湯姆站在池塘邊。爸爸對他說：“湯姆, 等到你能在水面上跑過池塘去的那一天, 我就給你一個便士！”
Now Tom had been born in a hot country called India, and he had just come to live in Britain; so he laughed, and said, "I shall never earn that penny, father, for no one can walk on the water!"
湯姆是在炎熱的印度出生的, 剛剛搬到英國來住。他哈哈大笑, 說：“爸爸, 那個便士, 我永遠也掙不到, 因為沒有人能在水面上走路啊！”
But the winter came, and then the water froze, and the pond was covered with ice. Tom soon found that he could run about on the solid water, and very quickly he ran across the pond and claimed his penny.
可是冬天來了, 水結了冰, 池塘上面蓋了一層冰。湯姆很快發現, 他可以在凝固的水上來回跑了。他飛快地跑過池塘, 掙到了那個便士。
At first he found the ice so smooth and slippery that he often fell; but he soon learned to slide and to skate on it as well as any of you can do.
一開始, 他發現冰特別光, 特別滑, 自己很容易摔倒；但他不久就學會了滑冰, 跟小朋友們滑得一樣好了！
Let us break off a piece of the ice, and put it in a glass by the side of the fire. As the ice grows warm, it melts, and soon we have a glass half full of water. A lump of ice has a shape of its own; it is a solid. But the water has no shape; it is a liquid.
咱們把一塊冰鑿下來, 放在玻璃杯里, 拿到火爐邊。冰慢慢兒地變暖和了, 熔化了, 很快, 我們就得到了半杯水。冰塊兒有自己的形狀, 是“固體”, 可是水沒有形狀, 水是液體。
Ice is transparent, like water; that is to say, we can see through it. Small pieces of ice have no colour, but large blocks of ice have a pale blue colour.
冰也跟水一樣是“透明”的, 也就是說, 我們透過它可以看見東西。小塊的冰沒有顏色, 但是大塊的冰是淺藍色的。
Water in a pond always freezes first on the top. And the ice does not sink to the bottom, but floats on the top. This shows that the ice is lighter than the water.
池塘里的水, 總是頂上的先結冰, 而且冰不沉到水底, 而是浮在水上面。這就說明, 冰的重量比水要輕。
If we freeze a pint of water, we shall get a little more than a pint of ice. Perhaps the water-pipes in your house have burst when the weather has been very cold. It was the change of the water into solid ice that burst them. The liquid water just filled the pipes; but when it turned into ice, it needed more room, and to get that room it burst the pipes. A GLACIER（一道冰河）
要是咱們把一品脫的水凍起來, 就能得到比一品脫多一點兒的冰。要是天氣非常寒冷, 你家里的水管就可能凍裂。這是因為水變成了冰。液體的水剛好填滿管子, 但是變成冰以后, 它需要更多的空間；為了得到這些空間, 它就擠破了管子。
Little lumps of ice sometimes fall from the sky, and are called hail. In some countries the snow is so deep on the hills, that the weight of the snow above squeezes the snow below into ice. This ice slides slowly down the valleys, like a river of ice. Ice-rivers are called glaciers.
有時候, 天上會掉下來很多小冰塊兒, 這些小冰塊兒叫冰雹, 英語是hail。有些地方, 山里的雪堆積得太深, 上面的雪的重量, 就把下面的雪壓成了冰, 這種冰會慢慢地沿著山谷往下滑, 就像一道冰的河流；這種冰的河流就叫“冰河”, 也叫“冰川”（glacier）。
Some glaciers reach right down to the sea; and then great pieces of ice break off from the end of the glacier and float away in the sea. These big pieces of ice are called icebergs. Iceberg means ice-mountain.
有些冰河會一直流到海里, 在冰河盡頭, 巨大的冰塊會從冰河上斷開, 漂到海上去。這些巨大的冰塊（iceberg）, 漢語叫做冰山。
