VOA常速英语2018--变形材料面世或将方便日常生活（在线收听）

An assistant at the morphing matter lab drops a few pieces of flat dry pasta into a pot of boiling water. In a few minutes, these rigid flat strips will turn into soft spiral shapes called fusilli that can hold a lot of tasty sauce. Packaging dry pasta in flat form saves a lot of space and packing material.

变形物质实验室的一名助手将几块又扁又干的意大利面倒入一锅沸水中。只需几分钟，这些僵硬的面条就会变成螺旋形状的软糯物体，这就是螺旋粉。螺旋粉可以搭配更多美味的调味汁。扁平的干意面比较好收纳，这样可以节省很多空间和打包材料。

The same goes for other morphing materials. For example, you can have all your furniture pieces flat impact, shipped home, plug it into the wall. With the heat from the electricity, you can trigger to self-assemble into the right table or chair you want.

其他变形材料也是如此。比如，你可以将所有家具的组件以扁平的方式包装，然后运回家，插在墙上通电，然后电能产生的热能就可以让它们进行自我组装，然后变成用户想要的桌子或椅子。

The labs director, assistant professor Lining Yao, says making the material bent into a certain shape requires learning about its physical properties. We are programming some pre-strain within the thermoplastic network on a micro scale. Even more interesting are materials that may be able to change shape back and forth like this morphing paper.

实验室负责人、助理教授姚李宁表示，制作这种可以弯曲成特定形状的材料是需要对材料的物理特性有所了解的。我们正在对热塑性网络中的一些预应变进行小范围编程。更有意思的是可以赖会改变形状的材料，比如这种变形材料。

For example, a garment that can respond to your sweat, and automatically open and close up flaps on the back to keep your body cool or warm. The question is how expensive would it be to manufacture such materials. We try by the end of the project to figure out a very easy recipe, both software and hardware, to make it very available for the users we targeted towards. Yao says researchers are still learning how to control different morphing materials, but shape changing pasta may be the first to find its way to customers.

比如，有的衣服可以对人体的排汗做出反应，自动开关背部的布料来保持身体的凉爽或温暖。问题在于制造这种材料的成本有多高。我们试图在项目结束之际弄清楚一个非常简单的方法，无论是硬件还是软件，这样的话，我们的目标用户就能使用了。姚李宁表示，虽然研究人员还在学习如何控制不同的变形材料，但能改变形状的意面可能是首批面向市场的一种变形材料应用。