60秒科学:Rice for Nice, Low-Price Ice

The fridge is one of your home’s biggest energy hogs¹. Better insulation² can make refrigerators much more efficient. And a panel encasing a vacuum is one of the best insulators³ known. But vacuum-insulated panels are too pricy for widespread use.

Enter some University of Michigan students. They took something called rice husk ash: the leftover⁴ husks from processing rice is burned for energy, and the ash remains⁵. It’s high in silica and carbon. So they tinkered with the ash and developed a new core material for vacuum insulated panels. It’s about 50 percent cheaper than what’s currently available. And the resulting panels are such good insulators that swapping⁶ them into refrigerators could lead to about a 50 percent energy savings⁷. They’re space efficient too: a one-inch-thick ash panel equals today’s four-inch-thick polystyrene panels.

Then Michigan business students partnered with the scientists to create a company called Husk Insulation. They entered the invention in the M.I.T. Clean Energy Prize competition. And on May 13th, Husk Insulation won the competition’s first prize—a cool $200,000. Which will be invested in further research and development.

—Cynthia Graber

1 hogs   

n.（尤指喂肥供食用的）猪( hog的名词复数 )；（供食用的）阉公猪；彻底地做某事；自私的或贪婪的人

参考例句：

• 'sounds like -- like hogs grunting. “像——像是猪发出的声音。 来自英汉文学 - 汤姆历险
• I hate the way he hogs down his food. 我讨厌他那副狼吞虎咽的吃相。 来自辞典例句

2 insulation   

n.隔离；绝缘；隔热

参考例句：

• Please examine the insulation of the electric wires in my house.请检查一下我屋子里电线的绝缘情况。
• It is always difficult to assure good insulation between the electric leads.要保证两个电触头之间有良好的绝缘总是很困难的。

3 insulators   

绝缘、隔热或隔音等的物质或装置( insulator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There is no sharp line separating conductors from insulators. 实际上并没有一个明显的界限将半导体和绝缘体分开。
• To reduce heat losses the pipes are covered by thermal insulators. 为了减少热散失，管子外包保温层。

4 leftover   

n.剩货，残留物，剩饭；adj.残余的

参考例句：

• These narrow roads are a leftover from the days of horse-drawn carriages.这些小道是从马车时代沿用下来的。
• Wonder if that bakery lets us take leftover home.不知道那家糕饼店会不会让我们把卖剩的带回家。

5 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

6 swapping   

交换，交换技术

参考例句：

• The slow swapping and buying of horses went on. 马匹的买卖和交换就是这样慢慢地进行着。
• He was quite keen on swapping books with friends. 他非常热衷于和朋友们交换书籍。

7 savings   

n.存款，储蓄

参考例句：

• I can't afford the vacation,for it would eat up my savings.我度不起假，那样会把我的积蓄用光的。
• By this time he had used up all his savings.到这时，他的存款已全部用完。