I was picking up physical copies of レンタルおにいちゃん for the next book club and decided to get なぜ?どうして?科学のお話3年生 as well. I also picked up a 2年生 book of biographies so hopefully that’ll help with withdrawal from this book. I need some weird science stories.
184:
そこでーー ノーベルはお父さんにアイデアを出しました。
Then… Nobel showed his father an idea.
「爆薬をもっといいことに使えないかな。
I wonder if even more good opportunities couldn’t use explosives…
道路や鉄道を作るとき、トンネルを掘ったり、大きな石を砕くのに、爆薬が使えるんじゃない?」
When building roads and railways, in order to smash big rocks, why not use explosives?
Explosives at that time, made from the dregs of a liquid called “nitroglycerin”, there was a fear that just by being shaken a little it could cause an explosion.
Again here I wasn’t sure of the おり at the end of the clause, so kind of guessed!
I read this うち as the meaning: while (e.g. one is young); during; within (e.g. a day); in the course of. I think @2000kanji’s translation is about right for this sentence.
I also puzzled about the おり. My best guess was that it is the stem form of おる, which can be used like いる after the て form of a verb to mean - to be …-ing.
What I didn’t get is why they used おる rather than いる. It can be used in this way in certain dialects but I can’t see that is relevant in this type of prose. It can be used as a humbler form of いる but I didn’t really see that as being the reason in context. Maybe it’s because it’s being used in stem form - if いる has a stem form I guess it would be い which maybe doesn’t sound right in natural Japanese?
I had to look this up myself, not so long back. From what I was able to find out, verb stems are often used instead of て-forms for joining sequential actions in written form. So in this case, います would just become い, so おり(ます) is used instead. The use of おる in this case has nothing to do with humble language.
I found this reference from Tae Kim that confirms what you’ve said about おり being used rather than い when using いる as a verb stem for continuation. It also gives a couple of examples. Last two to three paragraphs of the article.
A -te form verb plus みせる ( miseru ) has at least two possible meanings. One directly draws on the literal meaning of 見せる ( miseru , to show), and refers to performing an action so that it will be seen, or putting it on display, sometimes purely for appearances.
「大げさに驚いてみせた。」
(Oogesa ni odoroite miseta.)
“He put on an exaggerated show of being surprised.”
The other meaning uses perhaps a looser usage of “show” and indicates a determination to carry out an action. It has something of a sense of “I’ll show you!” This meaning is less likely to use the kanji.
(from Final Fantasy 6 )
「守る!俺が守ってみせる!」
(Mamoru! Ore ga mamotte miseru!)
“I’ll protect you! I swear I’ll protect you!”
That’s it! If you take nitroglycerine’s liquid part and soak it into something solid like earth, you should be able to carry it safely. This can work! (?)
『ダイナマイト』の たんじょうでした。
Dynamite was created.
ダイナマイトは、今までの 爆薬に 比べ、パワーも 強く、 もちはこびも 安全でした。
Dynamite, compared to other explosives until then, was stronger in power and safer to carry.
そのため 世界中の 国や 会所に 喜ばれ、 大人気となりました。
Because of that it became popular with counties and companies worldwide.
In 1888, Alfred’s brother, Ludvig, died while visiting Cannes, and a French newspaper mistakenly published Alfred’s obituary.[4] It condemned him for his invention of military explosives (not, as is commonly quoted, dynamite, which was mainly used for civilian applications) and is said to have brought about his decision to leave a better legacy after his death.[4][16] The obituary stated, Le marchand de la mort est mort (“The merchant of death is dead”)[4] and went on to say, “Dr. Alfred Nobel, who became rich by finding ways to kill more people faster than ever before, died yesterday.”[17] Alfred (who never had a wife or children) was disappointed with what he read and concerned with how he would be remembered.[18]