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Lesson 73 A Pane Of Glass
第73課 玻璃窗
If you had lived in Britain a thousand years ago, you might have seen panes of glass in the churches, but you would have found very few glass windows in the houses of the people. The windows in those days were generally narrow open slits in the wall, though sometimes they were filled up with thin pieces of horn, or with thin skin.
穿越時空, 回到一千年前的英國, 就會發現, 只有教堂可能會使用窗格玻璃, 而平常人家幾乎很少有人使用玻璃窗戶。那時候的窗戶實際上就是墻面上的一個狹窄開口而已, 有時候裝上牛羊角的薄層或者輕薄的獸皮。
What a difference glass windows have made in the brightness and comfort of our homes! The glass is so transparent that it lets the light from the sun pass through it, and yet it keeps out both the rain and the wind.
玻璃窗改變了我們的家庭生活, 帶來了不同凡響的明亮與舒適感受！玻璃的透明度極高, 可以允許陽光輕松穿過, 將風雨阻隔在外。
Glass is so hard that you cannot cut it or even scratch it with a common steel knife. The beautiful gem called the diamond is, however, even harder than glass; and glaziersuse small diamonds set in a handle to cut glass to the size that they want. Little wheels of extremely hard steel are also used for cutting glass, and this they do fairly well, though not nearly so well as diamonds.
玻璃的硬度很高, 普通的鋼制刀具無法對它進行切割, 甚至都不能在它的表面留下劃痕。然而, 那種被稱作金剛石的美麗寶石比玻璃更加堅硬；玻璃工人使用一把帶有手柄的金剛石切割工具將玻璃切割為需要的大小。人們還使用極為堅硬的鋼輪對玻璃進行切割, 這種方法雖然比不上使用金剛石那樣理想, 但效果還算不錯。
If you hold a pane of thin glass under water, you will find that you can cut it with a pair of scissors. But you must cut near the edge of the glass, and take off only a little bit at a time. Like many other hard substances, glass is very brittle—that is, it will snap easily if we try to bend it, or if we let it fall.
如果你將很薄的一片玻璃放在水中, 就可以用剪刀來進行切割。不過你只能從玻璃的邊緣入手, 而且一次只能剪下一點點。與其他堅硬的物質一樣, 玻璃非常脆弱——也就是說, 如果你想要彎折它, 或者將它從高處丟下, 它就會破裂為碎片。
