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IELTS READING – A Chronicle of Timekeeping S41AT1

IELTS Reading A Chronicle of Timekeeping reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Science & Technology subject..

Our conception of time depends on the way we measure it

A. According to archaeological evidence, at least 5, 000 years ago, and long before the advent of the Roman Empire, Q8 the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing calendars to coordinate communal activities, to plan the shipment of goods, and, in particular, to regulate planting and harvesting. They based their calendars on three natural cycles: the solar day, marked by the successive periods of light and darkness as the earth rotates on its axis; the lunar month, following the phases of the moon as it orbits the earth; and the solar year, defined by the changing seasons that accompany our planet’s revolution around the sun.

B. Before the invention of artificial light, the moon had greater social impact. And, for those living near the equator, in particular, its waxing and waning were more conspicuous than the passing of the seasons. Hence, the calendars that were developed at the lower latitudes were influenced more by the lunar cycle than by the solar year. Q2 In more northern climes, however, where seasonal agriculture was practised, the solar year became more crucial. As the Roman Empire expanded northward, it organised its activity chart for the most part around the solar year.

C. Q5 Centuries before the Roman Empire, the Egyptians had formulated a municipal calendar having 12 months of 30 days, with five days added to approximate the solar year. Each period of ten days was marked by the appearance of special groups of stars called decans. At the rise of the star Sirius just before sunrise, which occurred around the all-important annual flooding of the Nile, 12 decans could be seen spanning the heavens. The cosmic significance the Egyptians placed in the 12 decans led them to develop a system in which each interval of darkness (and later, each interval of daylight) was divided into a dozen equal parts. These periods became known as temporal hours because their duration varied according to the changing length of days and nights with the passing of the seasons. Summer hours were long, winter ones short; only at the spring and autumn equinoxes were the hours of daylight and darkness equal. Temporal hours, which were first adopted by the Greeks and then the Romans, who disseminated them through Europe, remained in use for more than 2,500 years.

D. In order to track temporal hours during the day, inventors created sundials, which indicate time by the length or direction of the sun’s shadow. The sundial’s counterpart, the water clock, was designed to measure temporal hours at night. One of the first water clocks was a basin with a small hole near the bottom through which the water dripped out. The falling water level denoted the passing hour as it dipped below hour lines inscribed on the inner surface. Although these devices performed satisfactorily around the Mediterranean, Q1 they could not always be depended on in the cloudy and often freezing weather of northern Europe.

E. The advent of the mechanical clock meant that although it could be adjusted to maintain temporal hours, it was naturally suited to keeping equal ones. With these, however, Q4 arose the question of when to begin counting, and so, in the early 14th century, a number of systems evolved. The schemes that divided the day into 24 equal parts varied according to the start of the count: Italian hours began at sunset, Babylonian hours at sunrise, astronomical hours at midday, and ‘great clock’ hours, used for some large public clocks in Germany, at midnight. Eventually, these were superseded by ‘small clock’, or Q6 French, hours, which split the day into two 12-hour periods commencing at midnight.

F. The earliest recorded weight-driven mechanical clock was built in 1283 in Bedfordshire in England. The revolutionary aspect of this new timekeeper was neither the descending weight that provided its motive force nor the gear wheels (which had been around for at least 1, 300 years) that transferred the power; it was the part called the escapement. In the early 1400s came the invention of the coiled spring or fusee which maintained a constant force to the gear wheels of the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its mainspring. Q3 By the 16th century, a pendulum clock had been devised, but the pendulum swung in a large arc and thus was not very efficient.

G. To address this, a variation on the original escapement was invented in 1670, in England. It was called the anchor escapement, which was a lever-based device shaped like a Q9 ship’s anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each Q11 tooth of the Q10 escape wheel, in turn allowing it to turn a precise amount. Unlike the original form used in early pendulum clocks, the anchor escapement permitted the pendulum to travel in a very small arc. Moreover, Q7 this invention allowed the use of a Q12 long pendulum which could beat once a Q13 second and thus led to the development of a new floor-standing case design, which became known as the grandfather clock.

H. Today, highly accurate timekeeping instruments set the beat for most electronic devices. Nearly all computers contain a quartz-crystal clock to regulate their operation. Moreover, not only do time signals beamed down from Global Positioning System satellites calibrate the functions of precision navigation equipment, they do so as well for mobile phones, instant stock-trading systems, and nationwide power-distribution grids. So integral have these time-based technologies become to day-to-day existence that our dependency on them is recognised only when they fail to work.

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IELTS READING – EFFECTS OF NOISE S40AT3

 IELTS Reading EFFECTS OF NOISE reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Health & Psychology & Environmental Science subject..

In general, it is plausible to suppose that we should prefer peace and quiet to noise. Q27 And yet most of us have had the experience of having to adjust to sleeping in the mountains or the countryside because it was initially ‘too quiet’, an experience that suggests that humans are capable of adapting to a wide range of noise levels. Research supports this view. Q28&35 For example, Glass and Singer (1972) exposed people to short bursts of very loud noise and then measured their ability to work out problems and their physiological reactions to the noise. The noise was quite disruptive at first, but after about four minutes the subjects were doing just as well on their tasks as control subjects who were not exposed to noise. Their physiological arousal also declined quickly to the same levels as those of the control subjects.

But there are limits to adaptation and loud noise becomes more troublesome if the person is required to concentrate on more than one task. Q39 For example, high noise levels interfered with the performance of subjects who were required to monitor three dials at a time, a task not unlike that of an aeroplane pilot or an air-traffic controller (Broadbent, 1957). Q29 Similarly, noise did not affect a subject’s ability to track a moving line with a steering wheel, Q40 but it did interfere with the subject’s ability to repeat numbers while tracking (Finkelman and Glass, 1970).

Probably the most significant finding from research on noise is that its predictability is more important than how loud it is. We are much more able to ‘tune out’ chronic background noise, even if it is quite loud, than to work under circumstances with unexpected intrusions of noise. In the Glass and Singer study, in which subjects were exposed to bursts of noise as they worked on a task, some subjects heard loud bursts and others heard soft bursts. For some subjects, the bursts were spaced exactly one minute apart (predictable noise); Q31 others heard the same amount of noise overall, but the bursts occurred at random intervals (unpredictable noise). Q32 Subjects reported finding the predictable and unpredictable noise equally annoying, and all subjects performed at about the same level during the noise portion of the experiment. But the different noise conditions had quite different after-effects when the subjects were required to proofread written material under conditions of no noise. Q33 As shown in Table 1 the unpredictable noise produced more errors in the later proofreading task than predictable noise; and Q30 soft, unpredictable noise actually produced slightly more errors on this task than the loud, predictable noise.

  Unpredictable Noise Predictable Noise Average
Loud noise 40.1 31.8 35.9
Soft noise 36.7 21.4 32.1
Average 38.4 29.6  

Table 1: Proofreading Errors and Noise

Q34 Apparently, unpredictable noise produces more fatigue than predictable noise, but it takes a while for this fatigue to take its toll on performance.

Predictability is not the only variable that reduces or eliminates the negative effects of noise. Another is control. If the individual knows that he or she can control the noise, this seems to eliminate both its negative effects at the time and its after-effects. This is true even if the individual never actually exercises his or her option to turn the noise off Q37 (Glass and Singer, 1972). Just the knowledge that one has control is sufficient.

The studies discussed so far exposed people to noise for only short periods and only transient effects were studied. But the major worry about noisy environments is that living day after day with chronic noise may produce serious, lasting effects. One study, suggesting that this worry is a realistic one, compared elementary school pupils who attended schools near Los Angeles’s busiest airport with students who attended schools in quiet neighbourhoods (Cohen et al., 1980). It was found that children from the noisy schools had higher blood pressure and were more easily distracted than those who attended the quiet schools. Moreover, there was no evidence of adaptability to the noise. In fact, the longer the children had attended the noisy schools, the more distractible they became. The effects also seem to be long lasting. Q36 A follow-up study showed that children who were moved to less noisy classrooms still showed greater distractibility one year later than students who had always been in the quiet schools (Cohen et al, 1981). It should be noted that the two groups of children had been carefully matched by the investigators so that they were comparable in age, ethnicity, race, and social class.

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IELTS READING – Endless Harvest S40AT2

 IELTS Reading Endless Harvest reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to 🐟 Environmental Science & Marine Biology  subject..

More than two hundred years ago, Russian explorers and fur hunters landed on the Aleutian Islands, a volcanic archipelago in the North Pacific, and learned of a land mass that lay farther to the north. Q14 The islands’ native inhabitants called this land mass Aleyska – the ‘Great Land’; today, we know it as Alaska.

The forty-ninth state to join the United States of America (in 1959), Alaska is fully one-fifth the size of the mainland 48 – states combined. It shares, with Canada, the second, longest river system in North America and has over half the coastline of the United States. The rivers feed into the Bering Sea and Gulf of Alaska – cold, nutrient-rich waters which support tens of millions of seabirds, and over 400 species of fish, shellfish, crustaceans, and mollusks. Taking advantage of this rich bounty, Alaska’s commercial fisheries have developed into some of the largest in the world.

According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADF&G), Alaska’s commercial fisheries landed hundreds of thousands of tonnes of shellfish and herring, and well over a million tones of ground fish (cod, sole, perch, and pollock) in 2000. The true cultural heart and soul of Alaska’s fisheries, “however, is salmon. Q16 ‘Salmon,’ notes writer Susan Ewing in The Great Alaska Nature Factbook, pump through Alaska like blood through a heart, bringing rhythmic, circulating nourishment to land, animals and people.’ The ‘predictable abundance of salmon allowed some native cultures to flourish,’ and ‘dying spawners” feed bears, eagles, other animals, and ultimately the soil itself’ All five species of Pacific salmon – chinook, or king; chum, or dog; Coho, or silver; sockeye, or red; and pink, or humpback – spawn in Alaskan waters, and 90% of all Pacific salmon commercially caught in North America arc produced there. Indeed, if Alaska was an independent nation, it would be the largest producer of wild salmon in the world. Q18 During 2000, commercial catches of Pacific salmon in Alaska exceeded 320,000 tonnes, with an ex-vessel value of over $US260 million.

Catches have not always been so healthy. Q19 Between 1940 and 1959, over-fishing led to crashes in salmon populations so severe that in 1953 Alaska was declared a federal disaster area. With the onset of statehood, however, the State of Alaska took over management of its own fisheries, guided by a state constitution which mandates that Alaska’s natural resources be managed on a sustainable basis. At that time, statewide harvests totaled around 25 million salmon. Over the next few- decades average catches steadily increased as a result of this policy of sustainable management, until, Q20 during the 1990s, annual harvests were well in excess of 100 million, and on several occasions over 200 million fish.

Q21&23 The primary reason for such increases is what is known as In-Season Abundance-Based Management’. There are biologists throughout the state constantly monitoring adult fish as they show up to spawn. The biologists sir. in streamside counting towers, study sonar, watch from aeroplanes, and talk to fishermen. The salmon season in Alaska is not pre-set. The fishermen know die approximate time of year when they will be allowed to fish, Q22 but on any given day, one or more field biologists in a particular area can put a halt to fishing. Even sport filing can be brought to a halt It is this management mechanism that has allowed Alaska salmon stocks – and, accordingly, Alaska salmon fisheries – to prosper, even as salmon populations in the rest of the United States arc increasingly considered threatened or even endangered.

Q25 In 1999, the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)*** commissioned a review of the Alaska salmon fishery. Q24 The Council, which was founded in 19%, certifies fisheries that meet high environmental standards, enabling them to use a label that recognises their environmental responsibility. The MSC has established a set of criteria by which commercial fisheries can be judged. Recognising the potential benefits of being identified as environmentally responsible, fisheries approach the Council requesting to undergo the certification process. The MSC then appoints a certification committee, composed of a panel of fisheries experts, which gathers information and opinions from fishermen, biologists, government officials, industry representatives, non-governmental organisations and others.

Some observers thought the Alaska salmon fisheries would not have any chance of certification when, in the months leading up to MSC’s final decision, salmon runs throughout western Alaska – completely collapsed. In the Yukon and Kuskokwim rivers, chinook and chum runs were probably the poorest since statehood; subsistence communities throughout the region, who normally have priority over commercial fishing, were devastated.

The crisis was completely unexpected, but researchers believe it had nothing to do with impacts of fisheries. Rather, they contend, it was almost certainly the result of climatic shifts, prompted in part by cumulative effects of the el nino/la nina phenomenon on Pacific Ocean temperatures, culminating in a harsh winter in which huge numbers of salmon eggs were frozen. It could have meant the end as far as the certification process was concerned. Q25 However, the state reacted quickly, closing down all fisheries, even those necessary for subsistence purposes.

Q26 In September 2000, MSC announced that the Alaska salmon fisheries qualified fop certification. Seven companies producing Alaska salmon were immediately granted permission to display the MSC logo on their products. Certification is for an initial period of five years, with an annual review to ensure dial the fishery is continuing to meet the required standards.

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IELTS READING – Pulling strings to build pyramids S40AT1

IELTS Reading Pulling strings to build pyramids reading practice test has 10 questions belongs to Archaeology & Ancient Technology subject..

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. Q1 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. Q2 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 kina 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.

Q4 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 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. Q5 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. Q7 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 Q10 accomplished sailors like the Egyptians. And they are known to have used Q8 wooden pulleys, which could have been made strong enough to bear the weight of massive blocks of Q9 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 Q11 modern glider. Although it dates from several hundred years after the building of the pyramids, its sophistication suggests that the Egyptians might nave been developing ideas of Q12 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 Q13 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 can’t reach. His idea is to build the arcnes 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 21st century AD.

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