94 學年度入學碩士班甄試－複試試題
考試時間：2 小時
Test Problems of Entrance Examination for Graduate Study
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
National Tsing-Hua University
Part One: 30% (Selecting the most appropriate choice, for each question, 2%
for correct answer, 0% for no answer, 0.5% deduction from total score for wrong
answer)
(I)
1.
According to this article, the victims from an accident could benefit from
A. health insurance to cover bone injuries.
B. first aid boxes developed by US Army.
C. on site rough estimate on possible damages.
D. transducers that have fast response time.
2.
In the device described in the article, ultrasound is used to
A. clean the head injury.
B. provide a means to compare between two sides of the head.
C. make real-time high-resolution color image of the injured head.
D. provide vital communication in a battlefield.
3.
This article is about
A. a device to generate high-resolution image.
B. a research team located at Adelphi, MD.
C. a new technology to prevent brain injury.
D. a portable device to assess head injury.
4.
Joel Mobley
A. jointly developed the new technology.
B. has worked for US Army Research Laboratory for 20 years.
C. suffered brain injury at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
D. is a medical doctor specialized in brain surgery.
1
5.
What about the device in this article is NOT true:
A. It is designed to be portable.
B. It produces a simple brain image.
C. It uses ultrasound to probe the inside of human head.
D. It was not developed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
(II) The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996
Presentation Speech by Professor Lennart Eberson of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Translation of the Swedish text
Majesties, Your Royal Highness, Ladies and Gentlemen,
We like to think that everything worth knowing about the chemical elements is already
known, and that carbon - one of our most thoroughly researched elements - could not possibly
yield further important discoveries. Carbon has been known since prehistoric times as soot,
coal and charcoal. By the late 18th century, graphite and diamonds had been shown to be
different forms of the element carbon. We employ carbon in countless ways: the large-scale
burning of coal as a fuel; the use of coke in steel production; the use of graphite in lubricants,
pencils, brake linings, etc. That rare form of carbon known as a diamond has many applications,
aside from its aesthetic function. An ordinary automobile tire contains 3 kilograms of carbon
black, and activated carbon is highly useful in a wide variety of fields. Carbon is the basis of
life processes; it is extremely important to all of us.
It was therefore a first-class scientific sensation when this year's Laureates in Chemistry Robert Curl, Harold Kroto and Richard Smalley - together with graduate students James Heath
and Sean O'Brien, reported in 1985 that they had discovered a new, stable form of carbon in
which sixty carbon atoms are arranged in a closed shell. They named this new carbon molecule
buckminsterfullerene after the American architect R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor of the
"geodesic dome", a building perhaps internationally best known from the United States
pavilion at the 1967 world's fair in Montreal. To understand how the carbon atoms in
buckminsterfullerene are connected to each other, we need only recall the pattern on the
surface of a soccer ball, or European football. This ball is stitched together from 12 black
pentagons and 20 white hexagons, in such a way that no pentagon comes into contact with
another pentagon. The result is a highly symmetrical structure with sixty corners. If we now
imagine that we place a carbon atom at each one of these 60 corners, we know how
buckminsterfullerene looks. Although it is 300 million times smaller than a soccer ball!
The discovery of buckminsterfullerene - or C60 - was made by using an advanced
instrument, in which a laser vaporized a very small quantity of carbon in one five billionth of a
second. When the hot carbon gas condensed, it formed clusters containing different numbers of
carbon atoms. The one with 60 carbon atoms was the most common. Many of these various
carbon molecules were shown to have the same stability as C60 and were therefore also
2
assumed to be closed; the collective name for such clusters was fullerenes It was also possible
to produce fullerenes that enclosed a metal atom inside, for example potassium or cesium.
6. The 1996 Nobel prize in chemistry was given to the discovery of
A. charcoal
B. pentagons and hexagons
C. fullerene
D. laser vaporization
7. How many scientists won the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry?
A. 1
B. 2
C. 3
D. 5
8. Which of the following is not a stable form of carbon?
A. graphite
B. C60
C. diamond
D. amorphous carbon
9. Which of the following statement about C60 molecule is incorrect?
A.
B.
C.
D.
It can enclose K inside.
Its shape is like an American football.
It has 60 corners.
It is named after an American architect who invented the geodesic dome in 1967.
10. Which statement about this speech is incorrect?
A. It is on the Nobel Prize in chemistry.
B. It is about the discovery of fullerene.
C. It tells that different numbers of carbon atoms can form clusters like C60.
D. It is made by Professor Eberson of the Royal family of Sweden.
3
III. Mending Broken Hearts
(– abridged from the article by S. Cohen and J. Leor appeared in Sci. Am. 2004.)
A myocardial infarction, popularly known as a heart attack, usually happens because a
major blood vessel supplying the heart’s left ventricles is suddenly blocked by an obstruction,
such as a clot. Part of the cardiac muscle, or myocardium, is deprived of blood and therefore
oxygen, which kills the heart’s contractile muscle cells (called cardiomyocytes) and leaves a
swath of dead tissue. The size of this infarct will depend on the size of the area fed by the
blood vessel that was blocked.
Because myocytes rarely divide, surviving cells cannot repopulate the area by replicating
themselves. Local stem cells, which act as progenitors of new cells in some other tissues, are
proving elusive in the heart and seem unable to heal the wound on their own. Instead,
noncontractile fibrous cells gradually replace an infarct’s dead myocytes. Healthy myocytes
adjacent to the infarct may also die, causing the infarct to expand further. In this process,
known as remodeling, the ventricle wall in the area of the infarct becomes thinner and
eventually distends or even ruptures.
In the past few years, researchers have attempted to regrow tissue in an infarct zone by
transplanting stem cells from other tissues, such as bone marrow or skeletal muscle. The
hope was that these cells would either adapt to their surroundings and begin producing new
cardiomyocytes or at least help to spur any natural regenerative capacity the heart itself might
possess. Unfortunately, trials of this approach have had limited success. Those that do tend
to congregate at the edges of the infarct but fail to make physical contact with adjacent healthy
tissue or to conduct the electrical signals that allow heart cells to synchronize their
contractions.
The implanted cells cannot thrive in the infarct primarily because the damaged area lacks
the vital natural infrastructure that normally supports living cells. In healthy tissue, this
extracellular matrix is composed of structural proteins, such as collagen, and complex sugar
molecules known as polysaccharides, such as heparin sulfate. The extracellular matrix both
generates growth-signaling chemicals and provides physical supports for cells.
Aware of the importance of extracellular matrix, tissue engineers have long sought an
ideal substitute to serve as a platform for growing living tissues. Such a material could form a
scaffold to support cells, allowing them to thrive, divide and organize themselves into a
three-dimensional tissue as they do in nature. The structure would solve the problem of
transplanted cells migrating away from a scarred area. But after the cells have established
themselves and begun secreting their own extracellular matrix, the scaffold should dissolve,
leaving behind only healthy tissue. Perhaps most important, the scaffold should allow – better
still, promote – rapid vascularization within the newt tissue. Blood vessels delivering oxygen
to every cell and carrying away their wastes are essential to the cell’s survival once they are
transplanted into the living host.
4
11. This article is about
A.
B.
C.
D.
bioengineering of heart transplantation.
repairing heart attack.
extracellular matrix functions and analyses.
re-growth of blood vessels in the infarct.
12. The reason why the size of the infarct depends on the size of the area fed by the clogged
vessel
A. clogged vessel cannot deliver oxygen to the local stem cells, the progenitors of tissue
cells.
B. remodeling of the infarct is restricted by the healthy cardiomyocytes.
C. the dead cardiomyocytes cannot be removed in the damaged vascularization system.
D. cardiomyocytes cannot divide, once dead, no new cells can be produced to replace
them.
13. The ideal scaffold for growing tissues should not
A. have a porous structure.
B. support the tissues.
C. be a polymeric device.
D. hydrophobic.
14. The natural infrastructure vital to the survival of the implanted cells to the infarct means
A. load bearing capability.
B. electric conductivity for transporting growth signals.
C. capability of cardiomyocytes regeneration.
D. good stem cell – polysaccharides interactions.
15. Transplanting cells to the infarct zone for healing the swath of dead tissue has failed
because
A. bone marrow does not regenerate.
B. the lacks of chemical generation and mechanical support for the implanted cells.
C. stem cells adhere poorly to the infarct zone such that they congregate at the edges of the
infarct.
D. infarct is not supported by sufficient polysaccharides.
5
Part Two: 40% (Give a concise answer on the following questions)
1. Briefly describe the first law and second law of thermodynamics, respectively. (8 %)
2.(a)Write a formulation to express the combination of first and second law of thermodynamics.
(4%)
(b) Discuss the physical implication of this formulation and its potential application. (4%)
3. A Si photodiode can be used to detect light in the visible range. Explain briefly its operation
principle. (8 %)
4. Explain briefly the phenomenon of electron tunneling between two electrodes. (8 %)
5.(a) General arrangement of an optical transmission measurement is shown below and the
transmission spectrum of an unknown material is also given below. What information can
you obtain from this spectrum? A quantitative value of a specific physical parameter can be
obtained from this spectrum. Please give the value of this parameter and explain why you
can obtain this parameter. (h = 4.14x10-15 eV s) (4 %)
(b) How can you increase the conductivity of this unknown material? (2 %)
(c) How can you get the carrier concentration of this unknown material? (2 %)
6
Part Three: 30% (Answer the following questions in detail, no less than 150
words for each problem)
1. What is semiconductor ? What is a pn diode and how does it work? (15%)
2. How much do you know about Nano-technology ? (15%)
a. Definition
b. Phenomena
c. Potential applications
7