Passage Three
Considered as a continuous body of fluid, the atmosphere is another kind of ocean. Yet, in view of the total amount of rain and snow on land areas in the course of a year, one of the most amazing water facts is the very small amount of water in the atmosphere at any given time. The volume of the lower seven miles of the atmosphere--the realm of weather events- is roughly four times the volume of the world’s oceans. But the atmosphere contains very little water. It is chiefly in the form of invisible vapor, some of which is carried over land by air currents. If all vapor suddenly fell from the air onto the earth’s surface, it would form a layer only about one inch thick. A heavy rainstorm on a given area may use up only a small percentage of the water from the air mass that passes over. How, then, can some land areas receive more than 400 inches of rain per year How can several inches of rain fall during a single storm in a few minutes or h
A. Humorous.
B. Light-hearted.
C. Factual and informative.
D. Informal and careless.
Passage Three
Considered as a continuous body of fluid, the atmosphere is another kind of ocean. Yet, in view of the total amount of rain and snow on land areas in the course of a year, one of the most amazing water facts is the very small amount of water in the atmosphere at any given time. The volume of the lower seven miles of the atmosphere--the realm of weather events- is roughly four times the volume of the world’s oceans. But the atmosphere contains very little water. It is chiefly in the form of invisible vapor, some of which is carried over land by air currents. If all vapor suddenly fell from the air onto the earth’s surface, it would form a layer only about one inch thick. A heavy rainstorm on a given area may use up only a small percentage of the water from the air mass that passes over. How, then, can some land areas receive more than 400 inches of rain per year How can several inches of rain fall during a single storm in a few minutes or h
A. the atmosphere has a lot of water in it when it circulates
B. the water in the atmosphere is purer than that in the world's oceans
C. the amount of water in the atmosphere is greater than that in the oceans in the world
D. the small amount of water in the atmosphere plays an important role in the yearly rainfall
Passage Three
Most English people have three names: a first name, a middle name and the family name. Their family name comes last. For example, my full name is Jim Allan Green. Green is my family name. My parents gave me both of my other names.
People don’t use their middle names very much, So "John Henry Brown" is usually called "John Brown". People never use Mr. , Mrs. or Miss before their first names. So you can say John Brown, or Mr. Brown; but you should never say Mr. John. They use Mr. , Mrs. or Miss with the family name but never with the first name.
Sometimes people ask me about nay name. "When were you born, why did your parents call you Jim" they ask. "Why did they choose that name" The answer is they didn’t call me Jim. They called me James. James was the name of nay grandfather. In England, people usually call me Jim for short. That’s because it is shorter and easier than James.
A. it's the name of his grandfather
B. it's easier for people to call him
C. it's the name that his parents chose for him
D. it's more difficult than James
Passage Three
The traditional American Thanksgiving Day celebration goes back to 1621. In that year a special feast was prepared in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The colonists who had settled there had left England because they were denied of religious freedom. They came to the new land and faced difficulties in coming across the ocean.
The ship that carried them was called the Mayflower. The North Atlantic was difficult to travel. There were bad storms. They were assisted in learning to live in the land by the Indians who lived in the region. The Puritans, as they were called, had much to be thankful for. Their religious practices were no longer a source of criticism by the government. They learned to adjust their farming habits to the climate and soil.
When they selected the fourth Thursday of November for their Thanksgiving Celebration, they invited their neighbors, the Indians, to join them in dinner and a prayer of gratitude for the new life. They r
A. similar to that of England
B. different from that of England
C. similar to that of Plymouth
D. different from that of Plymouth
Passage Three
The railroad industry could not have grown as large as it did without steel. The first rails were made of iron. But iron rails were not strong enough to support heavy trains running at high speeds. Railroad executives wanted to replace them with steel rails because steel was ten or fifteen times stronger and lasted twenty times longer. Before the 1870’s, however, steel was too expensive to be widely used. It was made by a slow and expensive process of heating, stirring and reheating iron ore.
Then the inventor Henry Bessemer discovered that directing a blast of air at melted iron in a furnace would burn out the impurities that made the iron brittle. As the air shot through the furnace, the bubbling metal would erupt in showers of sparks. When the fire cooled, the metal had been changed, or converted to steel. The Bessemer converter made possible the mass production of steel. Now three to five tons of iron could be changed into steel in a
A. In Pittsburgh.
B. In the Mesabi Range.
C. Near Lake Michigan.
D. Near Lake Erie.
Passage Three
The intelligence test used most often today are based on the work of a Frenchman, Alfred Bi net. In 1905, Binet was asked by the French Ministry of Education to develop a way to identify those children in French schools who were too "mentally deficient (不足的)" to benefit from ordinary schooling and who needed special education. The tests had to distinguish those who were merely be hind in school from those who were actually mentally deficient.
The items that Binet and his colleague Theophile Simon included on the test were chosen on the basis of their ideas about intelligence. Binet and Simon believed intelligence includes such abilities as understanding the meaning of words; solving problems, and making commonsense judgements. Two other important assumptions also shaped Binet’ s and Simon’ s work. (1) that children with more intelligence will do better in school and (2) that older children have a greater ability than youn
A. To select, top students.
B. To know who had received ordinary schooling.
C. To put students in a right order.
D. To make sure who required particular treatment.
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