专四阅读理解训练题

TEXT A

The meridians of longitude are imaginary great circles drawn from pole to pole around the earth. By international agreement, the meridian of longitude passing through Greenwich, England, is numbered zero. The earth is divided into 360 degrees, and the meridians are numbered east and west from Greenwich. There are 180 degrees of longitude east of Greenwich and 180 degrees in the westerly direction. New York has a longitude of 74 degrees west (74ºW) which means that it lies on the 74th meridian west of Greenwich.

Since the sun appears to travel around the earth in 24 hours, it will move 360/24 or 15 degrees in one hour. This reasoning can be used by navigators to determine their longitude. Imagine that we have set sail from Greenwich, England, after having set a very accurate clock, or chronometer, to the local Greenwich time. As we travel westward toward New York, we notice that the sun is going “slower” than our chronometer. At the time that our timepiece reads 12 o’clock, the sun has not quite reached the zenith. As a matter of fact, when our clock reads noon, what it really means is that it’s noon in Greenwich, England. Our clock continues to tell us the time, not at our present location, but at Greenwich. Let us wait until the sun is directly overhead (noon at our location) and then read the time on our clock. Suppose it reads 1 o’clock. This means that there is one hour’s difference in time between our longitude and that of Greenwich. As we mentioned earlier, this corresponds to exactly 15 degrees of longitude, so our longitude must be 15ºW. The world is divided into 24 time zones, and each zone corresponds to 15 degrees of longitude. New York is approximately 5 time zones west of Greenwich, so the time difference must be about 5 hours. By maintaining chronometers on Greenwich time, ships can determine their longitude on any sunny day by merely noting the difference in hours between Greenwich time and local sun time and multiplying this difference by 15 degrees.

Of course, longitude gives only half of the information needed to determine our precise location. We must also know our latitude, which tells us how far we are north or south of the Equator. The Equator is the zero line for the measurement of latitude. Circles are drawn parallel to the Equator to indicate other values of latitude. There are 90 degrees of south latitude.

In the Northern Hemisphere, there is a star called Polaris almost directly over the North Pole. This makes it possible to determine the latitude of a given point by setting our sextant to measure the angle between Polaris, the North Star, and the horizon. Mathematicians tell us that this angle is equal to the latitude at the point in question.

To get an idea of our location, therefore, we need to know local time, Greenwich time, and the angle between Polaris and the horizon.

1. The passage is mainly about ____

a. the latitude

b. the longitude

c. how to know one’s location on the earth surface

d. how to determine local time

2. suppose it is 18:00 in Greenwich, England , then the local time in New York is ____

a. 18:00

b. around 13:00

c. around 23:00

d.17:00

3. “Chronometer” in para 2. Refers to______

a. length measurement tool b weight measurement tool c. time measurement tool d. chronology

4. to get the precise location of a ship on the sea, the shipman must know____

a. the longitude of his place only

b. the latitude of his position only

c. the number degrees he lies east or west of Greenwich

d. both his latitude and longitud

e.

5.from the last paragraph, we know that _____

a. to know local time and Greenwich time is to compute the number of latitude of the place

b. to know the angle between Polaris and the horizon is to compute the number of the longitude of the place

c. we need to know local time, Greenwich time and the angle between Polaris and the horizon in order to compute the longitude and latitude of the place

d.we need to know local time,Greenwich time and the angle between Polaris and the horizon if we want to be a mathematician

TEXT B

In a recent book entitled The Psychic Life of Insects, Professor Bouvier says that we must be careful not to credit the little winged fellows with intelligence when they behave in what seems like an intelligent manner. They may be only reacting. I would like to confront the Professor with and instance of reasoning power on the part of an insect which cannot be explained away in any other manner.

During the summer of 1899, while I was at work on my doctoral thesis, we kept a female wasp at our cottage. It was more like a child of our own. That was one of the ways we told the difference.

It was still a young wasp when we got it (thirteen or fourteen years old) and for some time we could not get it to eat or drink, it was so shy. Since it was a female we decided to call it Miriam, but soon the children’s nickname for