【英语时差8,16】夜晚所得

Yael is worried about having enough air to breathe, but Don sets her mind at ease.   Y: Oh great! This weekend I have to go to another family reunion, where I'll be sharing a room with my seven-foot-tall body-building cousin Bertha. She's nice enough, but I keep worrying we'll run out of oxygen before morning.

D: Well, Yael, whenever you have these unreasonable¹ fears--Y: --Unreasonable? What's unreasonable about suffocation²?

D: Hang on, and let's work through this! Suppose you actually are stuck in an airtight space with Bertha.

Y: Okay.

D: Well, the rule of thumb is that if there's enough space to stand and stretch out, you're okay. The average body uses about 1100 gallons of air overnight, which is the amount enclosed in a room that's six by five, and about six feet high.

Y: Our hotel room will be bigger than that. But then again, Bertha does do a thousand nightly pushups.

D: Well, a body at rest does use a lot less oxygen than a body in motion. During the day, under normal conditions, you use about 3300 gallons of air, but when you exercise, you can require up to twenty gallons of air per minute.

Y: So I'm right to be concerned!

D: Sorry, Yael, but not when you stop to consider that airtight rooms are expensive and hard to come by. Even hospital isolation³ rooms aren't airtight. Instead, they're set up so the air pressure in them is lower than the air pressure in surrounding rooms, and this is enough to prevent germs from spreading.

Y: So basically, Bertha could do all the pushups she wanted to and I still wouldn't run out of air.

D: Yep. Breathe easy, you'll be fine.   

1 unreasonable   

adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的

参考例句：

• I know that they made the most unreasonable demands on you.我知道他们对你提出了最不合理的要求。
• They spend an unreasonable amount of money on clothes.他们花在衣服上的钱太多了。

2 suffocation   

n.窒息

参考例句：

• The greatest dangers of pyroclastic avalanches are probably heat and suffocation. 火成碎屑崩落的最大危害可能是炽热和窒息作用。 来自辞典例句
• The room was hot to suffocation. 房间热得闷人。 来自辞典例句

3 isolation   

n.隔离，孤立，分解，分离

参考例句：

• The millionaire lived in complete isolation from the outside world.这位富翁过着与世隔绝的生活。
• He retired and lived in relative isolation.他退休后，生活比较孤寂。