剑桥雅思7 Test4阅读Passage1真题解析

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剑桥雅思

7 Test4< /p>

阅读

Passage1

真题解析

剑桥雅思

7

，第四套 试题，阅读部分

Passage 1

，阅读真题原文部分：

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on

Reading Passage 1below.

Pulling stings to build pyramids

No one knows exactly how the pyramids were built. Marcus Chown reckons the

answer could be hanging in the air.

The pyramids of Egypt were built more than three thousand years ago, and no

one knows how. The conventional picture is that tens of thousands of slaves

dragged stones on sledges. But there is no evidence to back this up. Now a

Californian software consultant called Maureen Clemmons has suggested that

kites might have been involved. While perusing a book on the monuments of

Egypt, she noticed a hieroglyph that showed a row of men standing in odd

postures. They were holding what looked like ropes that led, via some kind of

mechanical system, to a giant bird in the sky. She wondered if perhaps the bird

was actually a giant kite, and the men were using it to lift a heavy object.

Intrigued, Clemmons contacted Morteza Gharib, aeronautics professor at the

California Institute of Technology. He was fascinated by the idea. Coming from

Iran, I have a keen interest in Middle Eastern science, he says. He too was

puzzled by the picture that had sparked Clemmonss interest. The object in the

sky apparently had wings far too short and wide for a bird. The possibility

certainly existed that it was a kite, he says. And since he needed a summer

project for his student Emilio Graff, investigating the possibility of using kites as

heavy lifters seemed like a good idea.

Gharib and Graff set themselves the task of raising a 4.5-metre stone column

from horizontal to vertical, using no source of energy except the wind. Their

initial calculations and scale-model wind-tunnel experiments convinced them

they wouldn’t need a strong wind to lift the 33.5

-tonne column. Even a modest

force, if sustained over a long time, would do. The key was to use a pulley

system that would magnify the applied force. So they rigged up a tent-shaped

scaffold directly above the tip of the horizontal column, with pulleys suspended

from the scaffolds apex. The idea was that as one end of the column rose, the

base would roll across the ground on a trolley. Earlier this year, the team put

Clemmonss unlikely theory to the test, using a 40-square-metre rectangular

nylon sail. The kite lifted the column clean off the ground. We were absolutely

1

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stunned, Gharib says. The instant the sail opened into the wind, a huge force

was generated and the column was raised to the vertical in a mere 40 seconds.

The wind was blowing at a gentle 16 to 20 kilometres an hour, little more than

half what they thought would be needed. What they had failed to reckon with

was what happened when the kite was opened. There was a huge initial force-

five times larger than the steady state force, Gharib says. This jerk meant that

kites could lift huge weights, Gharib realised. Even a 300-tonne column could

have been lifted to the vertical with 40 or so men and four or five sails. So

Clemmons was right: the pyramid builders could have used kites to lift massive

stones into place. Whether they actually did is another matter, Gharib says.

There are no pictures showing the construction of the pyramids, so there is no

way to tell what really happened. The evidence for using kites to move large

stones is no better or worse than the evidence for the brute force method,

Gharib says.

Indeed, the experiments have left many specialists unconvinced. The evidence

for kite- lifting is non-existent, says Willeke Wendrich, an associate professor of

Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Others feel there is more of a case for the theory. Harnessing the wind would

not have been a problem for accomplished sailors like the Egyptians. And they

are known to have used wooden pulleys, which could have been made strong

enough to bear the weight of massive blocks of stone. In addition, there is

some physical evidence that the ancient Egyptians were interested in flight. A

wooden artefact found on the step pyramid at Saqqara looks uncannily like a

modern glider. Although it dates from several hundred years after the building

of the pyramids, its sophistication suggests that the Egyptians might have been

developing ideas of flight for a long time. And other ancient civilisations

certainly knew about kites; as early as 1250 BC, the Chinese were using them

to deliver messages and dump flaming debris on their foes.

The experiments might even have practical uses nowadays. There are plenty of

places around the globe where people have no access to heavy machinery, but

do know how to deal with wind, sailing and basic mechanical principles. Gharib

has already been contacted by a civil engineer in Nicaragua, who wants to put

up buildings with adobe roofs supported by concrete arches on a site that

heavy equipment cant reach. His idea is to build the arches horizontally, then

lift them into place using kites. Weve given him some design hints, says Gharib.

Were just waiting for him to report back. So whether they were actually used to

build the pyramids or not, it seems that kites may make sensible construction

tools in the 21 st century AD.

Questions 1-7

2

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Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading

Passage 1?

In boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet, write

TRUE if the statement agrees with the information

FALSE if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 It is generally believed that large numbers of people were needed to build the

pyramids.

2 Clemmons found a strange hieroglyph on the wall of an Egyptian monument.

3 Gharib had previously done experiments on bird flight.

4 Gharib and Graff tested their theory before applying it.

5 The success of the actual experiment was due to the high speed of the wind.

6 They found that, as the kite flew higher, the wind force got stronger.

7 The team decided that it was possible to use kites to raise very heavy stones.

Questions 8-13

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 on your answer sheet.

Additional evidence for theory of kite- lifting

The Egyptians had 8 ………… which could lift large pieces of 9 ………… , and they

knew how to use the energy of the wind from their skill as 10 …………

. The

discovery on one pyramid of an object which resembled a 11 ………… suggests

they may have experimented with 12 ………… . In addition, over two thousand

years ago kites were used in China as weapons, as well as for sending

13 ………… .

READING PASSAGE 1

篇章结构

体裁

说明文

3

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主题

线牵金字塔

结构

引

言：引出

Marcus Chown

的新观点。

第一段：介绍

Marcus