2019年雅思阅读模拟试题：示意图题(3)

2019年雅思阅读模拟试题：示意图题(3)

A Chronicle of Timekeeping

Our conception of time depends on the way we measure it

A

According to archaeological evidence, at least 5,000

years ago, and long before the advent of the Roman Empire,

the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing calendars

to co-ordinate communal activities, to plan the shipment of goods and, in particular, to regulate planting and harvesting. They based their calendars on three natural cycles： the

solar day, marked by the successive periods of light and darkness as the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar month, following the phases of the moon as it orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by the changing seasons that accompany our planet's revolution around the sun.

B

Before the invention of artificial light, the moon had greater social impact. And, for those living near the equator in particular, its waxing and waning was more conspicuous

than the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes were influenced more by the lunar cycle than by the solar year. In more northern climes, however, where seasonal agriculture was practised,

the solar year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded northward, it organised its activity chart for the most part around the solar year.

C

Centuries before the Roman Empire, the Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having 12 months of 30 days, with five days added to approximate the solar year. Each period of ten days was marked by the appearance of special groups of stars called decans. At the rise of the star Sirius just before sunrise, which occurred around the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, 12 decans could be seen spanning the heavens. The cosmic significance the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to develop a system in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods became known as temporal hours because their duration varied according to the changing length of days and nights with the passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones short; only at the spring and autumn equinoxes were the hours of daylight and darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were first adopted by the Greeks and then the Romans, who disseminated them through Europe, remained in use for more than 2,500 years.

D

In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials, which indicate time by the length or direction of the sun's shadow. The sundial's counterpart, the water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom through which the water dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily around the

Mediterranean, they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather of northern Europe.

E

The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to maintain temporal hours, it was

naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these, however, arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count： Italian hours began at sunset, Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday and 'great clock' hours, used for some large public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually these were superseded by

'small clock', or French, hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods commencing at midnight.

F

The earliest recorded weight-driven mechanical clock was built in 1283 in Bedfordshire in England. The revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the descending

weight that provided its motive force nor the gear wheels (which had been around for at least 1,300 years) that transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement. In the early 1400s came the invention of the coiled spring or fusee which maintained constant force to the gear wheels of

the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its mainspring. By the 16th century, a pendulum clock had been devised, but

the pendulum swung in a large arc and thus was not very efficient.

G

To address this, a variation on the original escapement was invented in 1670, in England. It was called the anchor escapement, which was a lever-based device shaped like a

ship's anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each tooth of the escape wheel, in turn allowing it to turn a precise amount. Unlike the original form used in early pendulum clocks, the anchor escapement permitted the pendulum to travel in a very small arc. Moreover, this invention allowed the use of a long pendulum which could beat once a second and thus led to the development of a new floor- standing case design, which became known as the grandfather clock.

H

Today, highly accurate timekeeping instruments set the beat for most electronic devices. Nearly all computers contain a quartz-crystal clock to regulate their operation. Moreover, not only do time signals beamed down from Global Positioning System satellites calibrate the functions of precision navigation equipment, they do so as well for mobile phones, instant stock-trading systems and nationwide power-distribution grids. So integral have these time-based technologies become to day-to-day existence that our dependency on them is recognised only when they fail to work.

雅思阅读TFNG模拟试题(4)

雅思阅读TFNG模拟试题(4) Practice 4?? Para 1.?玊he need for a satisfactory education is more important than ever before. Nowadays, without a qualification from a reputable school or university, the odds of landing that plum job advertised in the paper are considerably shortened. Moreover, one's present level of education could fall well short of future career requirements.?お? para 2.?獻t is no secret that competition is the driving force behind the need to obtain increasingly higher qualifications. In the majority of cases, the urge to upgrade is no longer the result of an insatiable thirst for knowledge. The pressure is coming from within the workplace to compete with ever more qualified job applicants, and in many occupations one must now battle with colleagues in the reshuffle for the position one already holds.?お? para 3.?玈triving to become better educated is hardly a new concept. Wealthy parents have always been willing to spend the vast amounts of extra money necessary to send their children to schools with a perceived

2015年雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析三

Time to cool it 1 REFRIGERATORS are the epitome of clunky technology： solid， reliable and just a little bit dull. They have not changed much over the past century， but then they have not needed to. They are based on a robust and effective idea--draw heat from the thing you want to cool by evaporating a liquid next to it， and then dump that heat by pumping the vapour elsewhere and condensing it. This method of pumping heat from one place to another served mankind well when refrigerators' main jobs were preserving food and， as air conditioners， cooling buildings. Today's high-tech world， however， demands high-tech refrigeration. Heat pumps are no longer up to the job. The search is on for something to replace them. 2 One set of candidates are known as paraelectric materials. These act like batteries when they undergo a temperature change： attach electrodes to them and they generate a current. This effect is used in infra-red cameras. An array of tiny pieces of paraelectric material can sense the heat radiated by， for example， a person， and the pattern of the array's electrical outputs can then be used to construct an image. But until recently no one had bothered much with the inverse of this process. That inverse exists， however. Apply an appropriate current to a paraelectric material and it will cool down. 3 Someone who is looking at this inverse effect is Alex Mischenko， of Cambridge University. Using commercially available paraelectric film， he and his colleagues have generated temperature drops five times bigger than any previously recorded. That may be enough to change the phenomenon from a laboratory curiosity to something with commercial applications. 4 As to what those applications might be， Dr Mischenko is still a little hazy. He has， nevertheless， set up a company to pursue them. He foresees putting his discovery to use in more efficient domestic fridges and air conditioners. The real money， though， may be in cooling computers. 5 Gadgets containing microprocessors have been getting hotter for a long time. One consequence of Moore's Law， which describes the doubling of the number of transistors on a chip every 18 months， is that the amount of heat produced doubles as well. In fact， it more than doubles， because besides increasing in number，the components are getting faster. Heat is released every time a logical operation is performed inside a microprocessor， so the faster the processor is， the more heat it generates. Doubling the frequency quadruples the heat output. And the frequency has doubled a lot. The first Pentium chips sold by Dr Moore's company，Intel， in 1993， ran at 60m cycles a second. The Pentium 4--the last "single-core" desktop processor--clocked up 3.2 billion cycles a second. 6 Disposing of this heat is a big obstruction to further miniaturisation and higher speeds. The innards of a desktop computer commonly hit 80℃. At 85℃， they

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1. A European spacecraft took off today to spearhead the search for another "Earth" among the stars. 2. The Corot space telescope blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan shortly after 2.20pm. 3. Corot， short for convection rotation and planetary transits， is the first instrument capable of finding small rocky planets beyond the solar system. Any such planet situated in the right orbit stands a good chance of having liquid water on its surface， and quite possibly life， although a leading scientist involved in the project said it was unlikely to find "any little green men". 4. Developed by the French space agency， CNES， and partnered by the European Space Agency (ESA)， Austria， Belgium， Germany， Brazil and Spain， Corot will monitor around 120，000 stars with its 27cm telescope from a polar orbit 514 miles above the Earth. Over two and a half years， it will focus on five to six different areas of the sky， measuring the brightness of about 10，000 stars every 512 seconds. 5. "At the present moment we are hoping to find out more about the nature of planets around stars which are potential habitats. We are looking at habitable planets， not inhabited planets. We are not going to find any little green men，" Professor Ian Roxburgh， an ESA scientist who has been involved with Corot since its inception， told the BBC Radio 4 Today programme. 6. Prof Roxburgh said it was hoped Corot would find "rocky planets that could develop an atmosphere and， if they are the right distance from their parent star，they could have water". 7. To search for planets， the telescope will look for the dimming of starlight caused when an object passes in front of a star， known as a "transit". Although it will take more sophisticated space telescopes planned in the next 10 years to confirm the presence of an Earth-like planet with oxygen and liquid water， Corot will let scientists know where to point their lenses.

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雅思阅读模拟试题:音乐 Background music may seem harmless, but it can have a powerful effect on those who hear it. Recorded background music first found its way into factories, shop and restaurants in the US. But it soon spread to other arts of the world. Now it is becoming increasingly difficult to go shopping or eat a meal without listening to music. To begin with, “ muzak ” (音乐广播网) was intended simply to create a soothing (安慰) atmosphere. Recently, however, it’s become big business –thanks in part to recent research. Dr. Ronald Milliman, an American marketing expert, has shown that music can boost sales or increase factory production by as much as a third. But, it has to be light music. A fast one has no effect at all on sales. Slow music can increase receipts by 38%. This is probably because shoppers slow down and have more opportunity to spot items they like to buy. Yet, slow music isn’t always answered. https://www.sodocs.net/doc/5f17820647.html,liman found, for example, that in restaurants slow music meant customers took longer to eat their meals, which reduced overall sales. So restaurants owners might be well advised to play up-tempo music to keep the customers moving – unless of course, the resulting indigestion leads to complaints! ( )1. The reason why background music is so popular is that ______. A. it can have a powerful effect on those who hear it B. it can help to create a soothing atmosphere C. it can boost sales or increase factory production everywhere D. it can make customers eat their meals quickly ( )2. Background music means ________. A. light music that customers enjoy most B. fast music that makes people move fast C. slow music that can make customers enjoy their meals D. the music you are listening to while you are doing something ( )3. Restaurant owners complain about background music because ______. A. it results in indigestion B. it increases their sales C. it keeps customers moving D. it decreases their sales ( )4. The word “ up-tempo music” probably means_____. A.slow music B.fast music C.light music D.classical music

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雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析（2）

Next Year Marks the EU's 50th Anniversary of the Treaty A. After a period of introversion and stunned self-disbelief，continental European governments will recover their enthusiasm for pan-European institution-building in . Whether the European public will welcome a return to what voters in two countries had rejected so short a time before is another matter. B. There are several reasons for Europe’s recovering self-confidence. For years European economies had been lagging dismally behind America (to say nothing of Asia)， but in the large continental economies had one of their best years for a decade， briefly outstripping America in terms of growth. Since politics often reacts to economic change with a lag，’s improvement in economic growth will have its impact in ， though the recovery may be ebbing by then. C. The coming year also marks a particular point in a political cycle so regular that it almost seems to amount to a natural law. Every four or five years， European countries take a large stride towards further integration by signing a new treaty： the Maastricht treaty in 1992， the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997， the Treaty of Nice in . And in they were supposed to ratify a European constitution， laying the ground for yet more integration—until the calm rhythm was rudely shattered by French and Dutch voters. But the political impetus to sign something every four or five years has only been interrupted，not immobilised， by this setback. D. In the European Union marks the 50th anniversary of another treaty—the Treaty of Rome， its founding charter. Government leaders have already agreed to celebrate it ceremoniously， restating their commitment to “ever closer union” and the basic ideals of European unity. By itself， and in normal circumstances， the EU’s 50th-birthday greeting to itself would be fairly meaningless， a routine expression of European good fellowship. But it does not take a Machiavelli to spot that once governments have signed the declaration (and it seems unlikely anyone would be so uncollegiate as to veto

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2019年雅思阅读模拟试题：流程图题(1) BAKELITE The birth of modern plastics In 1907, Leo Hendrick Baekeland, a Belgian scientist working in New York, discovered and patented a revolutionary new synthetic material. His invention, which he named 'Bakelite,’was of enormous technological importance, and effectively launched the modern plastics industry. The term 'plastic' comes from the Greek plassein, meaning 'to mould'. Some plastics are derived from natural sources, some are semi-synthetic (the result of chemical action on a natural substance), and some are entirely synthetic, that is, chemically engineered from the constituents of coal or oil. Some are 'thermoplastic', which means that, like candlewax, they melt when heated and can then be reshaped. Others are 'thermosetting'： like eggs, they cannot revert to their original viscous state, and their shape is thus fixed for ever. Bakelite had the distinction of being the first totally synthetic thermosetting plastic. The history of today's plastics begins with the discovery of a series of semi-synthetic thermoplastic materials in the mid-nineteenth century. The impetus behind the development of these early plastics was generated by a number of factors—immense technological progress in the domain of chemistry, coupled with wider cultural changes, and the pragmatic need to find acceptable substitutes for dwindling supplies of 'luxury' materials such as tortoiseshell and ivory.

雅思阅读模拟试卷

ACADEMIC READING 60 minutes READING PASSAGE 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Striking Back at Lightning With Lasers Seldom is the weather more dramatic than when thunderstorms strike. Their electrical fury inflicts death or serious injury on around 500 people each year in the United States alone. As the clouds roll in, a leisurely round of golf can become a terrifying dice with death - out in the open, a lone golfer may be a lightning bolt's most inviting target. And there is damage to property too. Lightning damage costs American power companies more than $100 million a year. But researchers in the United States and Japan are planning to hit back. Already in laboratory trials they have tested strategies for neutralising the power of thunderstorms, and this winter they will brave real storms, equipped with an armoury of lasers that they will be pointing towards the heavens to discharge thunderclouds before lightning can strike. The idea of forcing storm clouds to discharge their lightning on command is not new. In the early 1960s, researchers tried firing rockets trailing wires into thunderclouds to set up an easy discharge path for the huge electric charges that these clouds generate. The technique survives to this day at a test site in Florida run by the University of Florida, with support from the Electrical Power Research Institute (EPRI), based in California. EPRI, which is funded by power companies, is looking at ways to protect the United States' power grid from lightning strikes. 'We can cause the lightning to strike where we want it to using rockets,' says Ralph Bernstein, manager of lightning projects at EPR!. The rocket site is providing precise measurements of lightning voltages and allowing engineers to check how electrical equipment bears up. Bad behaviour But while rockets are fine for research, they cannot provide the protection from lightning strikes that everyone is looking for. The rockets cost around $1,200 each, can only be fired at a limited frequency and their failure rate is about 40 per cent. And even when they do trigger lightning, things still do not always go according to plan. 'Lightning is not perfectly well behaved,' says Bernstein. 'Occasionally, it will take a branch and go someplace it wasn't supposed to go.' And anyway, who would want to fire streams of rockets in a populated area? 'What goes up must come down,' points out Jean-Claude Diels of the University of New Mexico. Diels is leading a project, which is backed by EPRI, to try to use lasers to discharge lightning safely and safety is a basic requirement since no one wants to put themselves or their expensive equipment at risk. With around $500,000 invested so far, a promising system is just emerging from the laboratory. The idea began some 20 years ago, when high-powered lasers were revealing. their ability to extract electrons out of atoms and create ions. If a laser could generate a line of ionization in the air all the way up to a storm cloud, this conducting path could be used to guide lightning to Earth, before the electric field becomes strong enough to break down the air in an uncontrollable surge. To stop the laser itself being struck, it would not be pointed straight at the clouds. Instead it would be directed at a mirror, and from

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雅思阅读模拟试题精选

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雅思阅读模拟试题及答案解析（4）

Selling Digital Music without Copy-protection Makes Sense A. It was uncharacteristically low-key for the industry’s greatest showman. But the essay published this week by Steve Jobs， the boss of Apple，on his firm’s website under the unassuming title “Thoughts on Music” has nonetheless provoked a vigorous debate about the future of digital music，which Apple dominates with its iPod music-player and iTunes music-store. At issue is “digital rights management” (DRM)—the technology guarding downloaded music against theft. Since there is no common standard for DRM， it also has the side-effect that songs purchased for one type of music-player may not work on another. Apple’s DRM system， called FairPlay， is the most widespread. So it came as a surprise when Mr. Jobs called for DRM for digital music to be abolished. B. This is a change of tack for Apple. It has come under fire from European regulators who claim that its refusal to license FairPlay to other firms has “locked in” customers. Since music from the iTunes store cannot be played on non-iPod music-players (at least not without a lot of fiddling)， any iTunes buyer will be deterred from switching to a device made by a rival firm， such as Sony or Microsoft. When French lawmakers drafted a bill last year compelling Apple to open up FairPlay to rivals， the company warned of “state-sponsored piracy”. Only DRM， it implied， could keep the pirates at bay. C. This week Mr. Jobs gave another explanation for his former defence of DRM： the record companies made him do it. They would make their music available to the iTunes store only if Apple agreed to protect it using DRM. They can still withdraw their catalogues if the DRM system is compromised. Apple cannot license FairPlay to others， says Mr Jobs， because it would depend on them to produce security fixes promptly. All DRM does is restrict consumer choice and provide a barrier to entry， says Mr Jobs； without it there would be far more stores and players， and far more innovation. So， he suggests， why not do away with DRM and sell music unprotected？“This is

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