nearly every one of your science classes starts off with a scientific（科学(上)的） method. You recognize this, ask a question, form a hypothesis（假设）, perform an experiment, collect data（资料）, draw conclusions（结论）, and then memorize a bunch（束） of facts. This is really boring. Science is not a simple recipe in a cookbook and learning is not memorizing facts for tests. Yet（但是） that's exactly what we do. We have to change this.

  We have to look at how curiosity（好奇） can ultimately（最后） benefit（有益于） society by looking towards tomorrow, by going through a path（道路） from involvement（牵连） to imagination（想象） to invention to innovation. And I'd like to illustrate（(用图等)说明） this by telling you the real story about how we discovered how geckos stick（刺）. First, you need to get involved. You need to do curiosity-driven research yourself. We know that learning by being an active researcher is the best way to learn. Imagine being in my lab and trying to discover how geckos stick.

  Here's one of our subjects. This is a crested gecko. We're going to put the gecko on glass. We're going to use the high-speed camera that can capture（捕获） up to 1,000 pictures in one second. There he goes. Okay（好）, recorded.

  There's the animal's toes（脚趾）. So how did their feet stick and unstick so quickly? How do they do this? We wondered（想知道）. It's kind of crazy, right? It's hard to believe.

  Well, it turns out it was already known that the geckos have hairy（多毛的） toes（脚趾）. And those hairs are really small compared to your hair. And the little tips at the end are even smaller. Well, my student, Tanya, who was not much older than some of you when she did this, a sophomore（大学二年级生） undergraduate（大学在校生）, tried to figure（ 认为） this out. And we told her that in order to do this, you'd have to measure（量） the force（力量） of a single hair. Now, we kind of only did this jokingly because these hairs were so small, we didn't think it was possible.

  But Tanya didn't know that. And she went on to build the simplest, most beautiful measurement（测量） device ever. Here it is. She took one of those tiny（微小的） little hairs and put it onto a probe（探针）. And then she began pushing it into the metal beam（梁）. Now, she was very frustrated（失意的）.

  For months, it didn't stick. But she figured out she had it oriented（ 确定方向） just like the gecko grabs（攫取） on. And then it worked（使工作）. And there's the little split（劈开） ends grabbing（攫取） the beam（梁） in that little window. And then she did something magical（魔术的）. For the first time ever, she measured the force of a single gecko hair that allowed her to discover a completely new way to stick to something.

  Something no human has ever known before.