Explanation text atau teks explanation ditulis untuk menjawab pertanyaan "bagaimana" atau "mengapa" sebuah fenomena terjadi.
Kata "explanation" diterjemahkan menjadi "penjelasan" dalam bahasa Indonesia, yang terbentuk dari kata kerja "explain" (menjelaskan).
Fenomena yang dibahas dalam sebuah teks explanation bisa berupa sebuah fenomena alam (seperti "bagaimana gempa bumi terjadi?"), fenomena buatan manusia (seperti "bagaimana pesawat dapat terbang?"), maupun fenomena sosial/budaya (seperti "mengapa banyak orang memilih Youtube daripada televisi?").
Sebuah explanation text ditulis berdasarkan data ilmiah. Dengan kata lain, diperlukan data dari hasil pengamatan atau penelitian untuk menjelaskan fenomena yang menjadi pembahasan.
Satu hal lagi yang perlu diperhatikan adalah bahwa explanation text ditulis untuk menjelaskan proses bagaimana atau mengapa sebuah fenomena terjadi.
Pembahasan lebih rinci terkait explanation text (seperti fungsi, struktur dan unsur kebahasaan) bisa dibaca di sini.
Di postingan kali ini, anda akan ditunjukkan beberapa contoh explanation text terkait fenomena buatan manusia (teks 1), fenomena alam (teks 2), dan fenomena sosial (teks 3).
Berikut contoh-contoh teks explanation dalam bahasa Inggris:
Text 1
How Do Planes Fly?
There are over 100,000 flights a day – every single day. However, have you ever considered how it is that something so heavy can fly? It’s about how air moves around objects. In other words, it’s all about aerodynamics.
Aerodynamics 101 – Thrust and Lift
A British inventor and scientist, Sir George Cayley (1773 – 1857), known as the “father of modern aerodynamics” identified the four forces of the aerodynamic flight: weight, lift, drag and thrust. Recognizing the basic forces acting on a wing, Cayley proceeded to build a glider with a wing and tail – the glider’s flight was successful.
Though the four forces act independently, they ensure balance and control of the aircraft. That being said, let’s dive right in.
Thrust
Thrust is when an object is pushed forward with force. Airplanes typically use jet exhaust or a propeller to generate thrust.
Thrust acts against drag. Drag is the force exerted on an object as it blocks the flow of air, slowing it down. A plane that is going forward has a certain amount of drag slowing it down. For an airplane to remain in unaccelerated flight, thrust must be equal to drag. For an airplane to accelerate, thrust must be greater than drag.
Lift
While thrust fights against drag, lift is in direct competition with weight. Lift is an aerodynamic force that is created by an airfoil we call the wing. Wings are designed for specific airflow, based on the airplane’s purpose.
Most airplanes have an asymmetrical design. This design allows Bernoulli’s Principle – the movement of a fluid through a pressure difference – to take effect and produce lift by creating a relatively low pressure above the wing and a relatively higher pressure below the wing.
Image Credit: flyaeroguard.com
Pilots can control the amount of lift a wing produces by altering the airspeed over the wing and the angle of attack. The angle of attack is the angle between the chord line and relative wind, which is the air flowing equal and opposite of your flightpath. Sir George Cayley, the knowledgeable Baronet we talked about earlier, understood the importance of the wing angle of attack, realizing that curved surfaces create more lift force than flat surfaces.
Together, thrust and lift make planes fly – with the inclusion of talented pilots, of course. Pilots control thrust and lift by altering airspeed and attitude. This should help to answer that basic question: “how do planes fly?”
(Taken from: https://www.flyaeroguard.com/learning-center/how-do-planes-fly/)
Text 2
What Causes Lunar and Solar Eclipses?
By Erik GregersenAn eclipse happens when one astronomical body blocks light from or to another. In a lunar eclipse, the Moon moves into the shadow of Earth cast by the Sun. When the Moon passes through the outer part of Earth’s shadow—the penumbra, where the light of the Sun is only partly extinguished—the Moon dims only slightly in what is called a penumbral eclipse. When the Moon passes through the central part of Earth’s shadow—the umbra, where the direct light of the Sun is totally blocked—the lunar eclipse is considered partial if the Moon is partly within the umbra or total if the Moon is completely within it.
In a solar eclipse, the Moon passes between Earth and the Sun and stops some or all of the Sun’s light from reaching Earth. There are three kinds of solar eclipses. In a partial solar eclipse, the Sun is partly covered when the Moon passes in front of it. In a total solar eclipse, the Moon completely covers the Sun. In an annular solar eclipse, the Moon does not completely cover the Sun but leaves the edge of the Sun showing. This last type of eclipse happens when the Moon is farthest in its orbit from Earth and Earth is closest in its orbit to the Sun, which makes the Moon's disk too small to cover the Sun's disk completely.
(Taken from: https://www.britannica.com/story/what-causes-lunar-and-solar-eclipses)
Text 3
Why People are So Obsessed with Bitcoin: The Psychology of Crypto Explained
Bitcoin fever is back.
Bitcoin hit a new high in early January, reaching a price of nearly $42,000. On Friday morning, the price of the notoriously volatile cryptocurrency was about 32,500, according to CoinDesk.
Even mainstream financial institutions are warming up: JP Morgan said, in the long-term, if the market cap gets high enough that it competes with gold, the price of bitcoin could reach $146,000, in a note published in January. (Bitcoin currently has a market value of over $600 billion.)
But more than just a cryptocurrency, bitcoin has become an obsession for many. Here are some of the behavioral and psychological reasons why.
Bitcoin becomes part of your identity
Bitcoin is "more religion than solution to any problem," billionaire Mark Cuban told Forbes in December.
In fact, bitcoin aficionados have their own jargon full of acronyms and phrases from "HODL" to "whale," and (pre-Covid) bitcoin conferences would attract thousands of attendees. The crypto crow even has a preferred car to buy with their bitcoin: the Lambo (aka Lamborghini).
"The culture around bitcoin is part of the appeal," says Finn Breton, professor of science and technology at the University of California Davis and author of "Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency."
"When you buy bitcoin, you're actually buying into a whole scene," Breton says. "And it's a scene that can be a part of your identity."
Though bitcoin is getting more attention from some serious investors and mainstream financial institutions, it's still a somewhat subversive concept, so people who invest in it can view themselves as radical or participating in counterculture, Breton says.
Social media plays into it
From celebrities who invest in bitcoin, to a highly-engaged bitcoin community on Twitter, TikTok and Reddit, social media feeds into bitcoin's popularity.
"Suddenly, there's like a new way to see, finance and to have an identity of yourself as an actor in like the financial space," says Lana Swartz, assistant professor of media studies at the University of Virginia and author of "New Money: How Payment Became Social Media," tells CNBC Make It.
These social platforms can also drive behaviors, according to Utpal Dholakia professor of marketing at Rice University, who studies consumer financial decision-making. Research has shown that when people talk about their investments in online social environments, they tend to become more risk-seeking in the types of investments they make, he tells CNBC Make It.
"The same dynamic applies to a lot of investment decisions which are being made right now," Dholakia says.
The volatility can be exciting
Many smart investors, from Kevin O'Leary to CNBC's Jim Cramer, have likened buying bitcoin to going to Vegas. Berkshire Hathaway CEO and chairman Warren Buffett has been a longtime critic of bitcoin, saying that "cryptocurrencies basically have no value" and are a "gambling device."
And as with gambling, "some people certainly enjoy that thrill," Dholakia says.
Checking the price of stocks regularly is an activity that could get boring, says Tom Meyvis, professor of marketing at New York University's Leonard N. Stern School of Business. "With something like bitcoin, it's exciting because there's constantly something happening," he says. "You can check it 10 times a day and the price can vary wildly."
Also, many young people especially, who have grown up with video games and social media, are conditioned to want instant gratification and fast-paced cycles, Swartz says. Being drawn to high-risk high-reward investments like bitcoin "makes perfect sense," she says.
FOMO
People get excited by the prospect of bringing a new, potentially life-changing, technology into the world. And with bitcoin bulls predicting the crypto's price could go as high $200,000 over the next decade, and with mainstream financial businesses from Paypal to Square getting into bitcoin, it's hard not to fear missing out.
Add to that the viral stories about people who have had success with bitcoin: There are enviable windfalls, from instant bitcoin millionaires to stories like the "Bitcoin Family," a Dutch family of five who liquidated their assets in 2017 in exchange for bitcoin (when bitcoin was priced at $900), moved into a van and traveled the world.
"People focus more on the upside than the downside," says Meyvis. So it's easy to get swept up in the possibilities that could come from bitcoin.
It provides hope
"Money is a technology that allows us to imagine futures," Swartz says.
The bitcoin excitement, particularly among young people, illustrates that people feel "locked out of the ability to have the kind of assets that would let them generate any form of wealth," Breton says. Millennials, those born between 1981 and 1996, controlled just 4.6% of U.S. wealth through the first half of 2020, according to data from the Federal Reserve.
"When we look at the fever around bitcoin, we really need to see it like in part as a demonstration of the fact that this is happening because there are not reliable, non-speculative mechanisms whereby people who don't already have access to a chunk of wealth could produce wealth over time," he says. "And that's a real indictment of the way things are currently set up for younger people."
(Taken from: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/23/why-people-invest-in-bitcoin.html)