Scientists Create 'Cool' Paint for Buildings

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Materials Daily News

Intermediate

Exercise 1

Vocabulary

reflect

Verb

rɪˈflekt

to send back light, heat, etc. rather than absorb it

Snow reflects a lot of sunlight back into space.

surface

Noun

ˈsərfɪs

the top or outer layer of something

There's a lot of trash floating on the surface of the lake.

The surface of the lake is very calm today.

The surface of the road was bumpy.

The surface of Mars is dusty and rocky, as revealed by pictures from the robotic space probe.

double

Verb

ˈdʌbl

to become twice as much or as many

The city has doubled the budget for the sports festival.

The dough has to double in size before you can make the bread.

The national debt has doubled since the mid 2000s.

A famous hair care company has seen the sale of their products double in the last year.

traditionally

Adverb

trəˈdɪʃənəli

according to ideas or ways of doing things that have existed for a long time

This dish is traditionally served with mashed potatoes.

chalk

Noun

ʧɑk

a soft material that is used for writing on blackboards, walls, concrete, etc.

The children used chalk to draw pictures on the sidewalk in front of their house.

I wrote letters on the blackboard with chalk.

particle

Noun

ˈpɑːrtɪkəl

an extremely small piece of something

Wearing a face mask can protect you from dust particles when working with wood.

Exercise 2

Article

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Scientists Create 'Cool' Paint for Buildings

Scientists at Purdue University in Indiana have created a new paint that may help keep buildings cool.

The scientists found that the paint was able to reflect 95.5% of sunlight. This reduced the temperature of a painted surface by 1.7 degrees Celsius below the temperature of the air around it at noon. At night, it was 10 degrees lower than the temperature around it.

Reflecting sunlight away from the outside of buildings could help reduce temperatures inside without using electricity. According to the International Energy Agency, the energy used to keep buildings cool has doubled since 2000, and if better technology isn't used, it could double again by 2040.

The scientists made the paint using large amounts of calcium carbonate, which has traditionally been used to make chalk for writing.

It was important that the particles of calcium carbonate in the paint were many different sizes. According to Xiulin Ruan, one of the scientists who worked on the paint, each particle size can only reflect one color of light. While light from the sun looks white, it's actually made up of every color, so using different sizes of particles allowed the paint to reflect these different colors.

While this isn't the first sunlight-reflecting paint, other products have not been able to reflect enough light to reduce a building's temperature below the air temperature, according to the BBC.