Churchill: The Polar Bear Capital of the World (2)

• What color is a polar bear's hair and skin?
• What do these bears spend most of their time doing?

The amazing polar bear
Polar bears are one of the world’s largest bears and inspire awe. When they stand, they measure 2.2 to 2.5 meters tall. They live in the Arctic, one of Earth’s coldest environments, and roam the ice in search of food. Their excellent sense of smell allows them to detect seals over 1 kilometer away.

The hairs on their snowy-looking coat aren’t actually white; they’re clear and hollow. The hair reflects light and traps heat to keep the polar bear warm.

Their skin is black, which also helps keep them warm. This heating system is very efficient – polar bears actually over heat more often than they suffer from the cold.

These magnificent bears spend most of their time hunting seals, who make breathing holes in the ice. The bears sit by these holes and wait – this can be minutes, hours or days. Then when the seals surface to breathe, the bears catch them. If the hunt is successful, the polar bear will feast. He or she can eat around 45 kilograms of seal blubber in one sitting!

Info Cloud
Teaching Topic: Awful, Morphing Language : Awful 與 Awesome 的轉變
The words awesome and awful both have the same root and both have neutral suffixes, so it should follow that awful and awesome have similar meanings.

But they don’t, centuries ago the word awful did indeed carry with the positive meanings like amazing magnificent and worthy of reverential fear.

But awful’s connotation gradually turned negative. And it’s not difficult to see why. Worthy of fear and causing fear are two far remove from each other, are they?

No they are not. So from causing fear, awful’s meaning morphed into causing dread and then it took on other connotations like dreadful, ugly and unpleasant meanings that awful still has to this day.

Right, interestingly we can still see a trace of awful’s original positive meaning, but only in its adverb form“awfully,”phrases like, “that dinner was awfully good, or she is awfully pretty” are not uncommon.

Okay, years later the word awesome appeared, some say to fill the void created after awful turned bad. Awesome assumed awful’s original role as a good word, meaning amazing and breathtaking.

But it too is changing, awesome is gradually losing its intensity. Today people casually use awesome to describe anything, they think is pretty good, like a delicious meal or an entertaining movie.

Language Lab
awe n.
/ˈɑː/
a strong feeling of fear or respect and also wonder
- We were in awe of the amazing view of the Grand Canyon.
- People around Edward hold him in awe because he's a true genius.
awe v.
to fill (someone) with awe
- The audience was awed by the brilliant performance of the actor.

reflect v.
to show the image of (something) on a surface
- I saw myself reflected in the water.
- The still water of the lake reflects the moon and the stars in the sky.
to show (something) : to make (something) known
- The figures reflected a steady increase in sales.

magnificent adj.
very beautiful or impressive : very great
- Magnificent Jade Mountain is one of Taiwan's symbols.
- The couple got married in a magnificent castle in France.
- Jessica looks magnificent in that dress.

blubber n.
the fat on whales and some other animals that live in the water
- Whale blubber was used by aboriginals as a food source.
- Their thick layer of blubber helps keep seals warm in cold water.


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