雅思真题：剑7Test4阅读Passage1真题解析

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雅思真题：剑

7Test4

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 Clemmons's 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

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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 scaffold's 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 Clemmons's 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 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.

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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 can't reach. His idea is to build the arches

horizontally, then lift them into place using kites. 'We've given him some design

hints,' says Gharib. 'We're 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

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

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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

真题解析

篇章结构

体裁：说明文

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

关于金字塔修建的新观点。

第二段：该观点引起另一位科学家

Morteza