《毕金献阅读理解》电子书节选之三

　　Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

　　Text 1

　　Violence over civil rights in the 1960s, demands, marches, new sexual freedom, drugs, campus takeovers these phenomena of the recent past represent drastic social changes. They signify a massive protest, mostly on the part of the young, against a society that fails to cope with its most critical problems. Young people, especially, lay much of the blame on the business system. It s unresponsive and uncaring, they say.

　　Naturally, businessmen deny this charge. They are proud of what the free enterprise system has done. They suspect that many protesters don t grasp economic realities.

　　Students and businessmen from all over the country jammed together in the lobby of a Washington hotel, waiting to register for Business Tomorrow , a three-day conference in which they would talk informally, get to know one another, and learn something about the difference in life-style and philosophy that so sharply divide them.

　　The idea for the conference had originated with a group of students at Princeton University, who had formed an organization called the Foundation for Student Communication. The Foundation s aim was to foster better relations between students and businessmen. These young people think that business should take more initiative and make better use of its resources in order to achieve a closer balance between profit and poverty in this country. The Foundation s magazine, Business Today, is a professional-looking quarterly that goes to over 200,000 students.

　　These Foundation members and other politically moderate students like them are the ones most likely to enter the business world when they graduate, and they are concerned about what their roles might be. They recognize, as business does, a need for the two groups to communicate and to understand each other.

　　Students from over 160 universities were chosen by fellow students and university presidents to attend the meeting. Some were from schools of business, many from liberal arts colleges. This was to make a definite difference in the tone of the conference because, generally, students of humanities tend to emphasize the value of the individual, making them especially critical of conformity in the corporation.

　　1. The severe social disturbance mentioned in the text stemmed from

　　[A] the youths resentment at the irresponsibility of the business system.

　　[B] the people s anger at the gross violation of civil rights in the business world.

　　[C] the masses strong objection to the evils caused by the business system.

　　[D] the citizens disapproval of the society unable to tackle its vital problems.

　　2. According to the text, young people hold that

　　[A] the world is full of injustice, poverty and war.

　　[B] people in power ignore the important social problems.

　　[C] decision-makers are ill-informed about the economic realities.

　　[D] businessmen are mostly responsible for the great social unrest.

　　3. As is stated by the author, the businessmen

　　[A] feel doubt about the truth of the young people?s criticism.

　　[B] reluctantly admit the evils of the free enterprise system.

　　[C] refuse to make any change in the grounds they hold.

　　[D] laugh off young people s blame and condemnation.

　　4. The conference Business Tomorrow aimed at

　　[A] exchanging views about economic realities.

　　[B] promoting mutual understanding.

　　[C] taking measures to solve critical problems.

　　[D] carrying on an open debate.

　　5. The presence of students at the conference would make a difference in its tone because

　　[A] their views are revolutionary with respect to the economic realities.

　　[B] they stress the importance of the individual and disapprove conformity.

　　[C] they are familiar with the problems caused by the free enterprise system.

　　[D] their insight into the balance between profit and poverty is remarkable.

　　Part B

　　Directions:

　　The following paragraphs are given in a wrong order. For Questions 21 25, you are required to reorganize these paragraphs into a coherent article by choosing from the list A G to fill in each numbered box. The first and last paragraphs have been placed for you in Boxes. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

　　[A] Spacecraft have to follow a curved path made up of various orbits usually governed by the Sun s gravity. And they need to aim at where their target will be, not where it is when they set off, a task requiring precise navigation to ensure that the vehicle doesn t zoom past its goal and fly for ever into space.

　　[B] Journeys to the stars would be more formidable, because a new speed limit would come into force the speed of light. As Einstein demonstrated, nothing can travel faster than 300,000 km a second. Even if our spaceship could accelerate at 1g until it reached 99 percent of the speed of light, then decelerated at 1g in the final stretch, a trip to our nearest star would take five years and four months.

　　[C] Without air resistance, an object falling from height accelerates at a rate of 9.8m per second every second. Physicists express that acceleration as 1g one times the force of gravity. Space scientists say that a journey in which the craft accelerates at 1g is possibly the limit of human endurance. To guarantee a landing on Mars, the brakes would have to be applied, and the spaceship would need to decelerate at 1g for the second half of the trip. At that rate, the journey would take only forty?nine and a half hours.

　　[D] Chemical rockets have limits practical and economic. Take speed: Voyager 2, the fastest space probe yet launched, is traveling at 18.5km a second. That sounds impressively fast. But for space travel it s a snail s pace. Mars, which at times is the planet closest to us, is on average about 78 million km distant. Even if a spaceship could travel to Mars at 18km a second in a straight line, the journey would take seventy?nine days. American and Russian draft plans for manned missions to Mars estimate that crews will spend two years on a return journey.

　　[E] It s reasonable to expect that propulsion systems will improve. But even if we take everything at its best boundless energy, a spaceship with ultimate powers of acceleration and the ability to fly in a straight line nobody knows the limits of human endurance in space. To travel faster requires a faster breakout from the constraints of Earth s gravity. A spacecraft s rapid lift-off creates within the vehicle an artificial gravity that presses its occupants fiercely downwards. High speed over a long journey would make limbs feel useless, and possibly damage the heart.

　　[F] Five years-plus is how we on Earth would time the journey. But, strangely, the astronauts would find the trip much faster. As Einstein predicted in his theory of relativity, the spaceship s clocks would slow down compared with those on Earth. A voyage across our whole galaxy one that takes light 100,000 years to make might happen while the astronauts had their morning coffee. Those left on Earth would age at the normal rate. When the astronauts returned from the stars after a five-year trip, by their reckoning, they would land in a world that had aged by several million years.

　　[G] Without the magical propellants of sci-fi?space travel, we have to rely on chemical rockets to power our spacecraft. Whether their fuel is solid or liquid, the principle is the same: the space vehicle goes off like a firework rocket. Hot exhaust gases thrusting downwards blast the spacecraft beyond the pull of Earth s gravity and towards its target.

　　Orders:

　　G 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. F

　　参考答案

　　Part A

　　Text 1: 1. D 2. D 3. C 4. B 5. B

　　Part B

　　21. D 22. A 23. E 24. C 25. B