Radar Guides Harbour Traffic

(1) A number of world’s larges ports have already installed radar systems in their harbours. Radars survey ship traffic in fog and bad weather. They are designed not only to assist ships entering and leaving the harbour during poor visibility, but also to provide continuous observation of shipping and give immediate information on the location of the ships in the harbour.

(2) From a radio control room having the necessary transmitting appliance of ship-to-shore communication, with a radar unit set at a certain range, the operator can observe the harbour and give necessary orders immediately to ships.

Exercise 2 Answer the following questions.

1. What is the text about? 2. What can be determined by the use of radar equipment? 3. What are the essential components of a radar set? 4. How does radar detect an object? 5. What gives a simple means of measuring range? 6. What location of an object can we get with the help of radar? 7. How is radar used in peace time? 8. Where can radars be set? 9. How can radars help ships and airplanes? 10. In which way does radar guide harbour traffic?

Exercise 3 Translate and memorize the following expressions from the text.

Radio determination and ranging, determining by radio echoes, several types of radar sets, detect objects, short powerful pulses, ultra-high frequency radio wave energy, directional antenna, transmitted energy, returning echo, visual readable signals, fluorescent screen, field of view of radar, electron beam, predetermined interval of time, timed pulses, constant velocity of light, determination of azimuth, three-dimensional location of an object, prevent collisions, ground controlled radar, straight-line wave length.

Exercise 4 Find synonyms among the following words.

Transmit (v), ensure (v), frequently (adv), beam (n), elevation (n), portion (n), change (n), be false (v), dimension (n), install (v), recognize (v), effect (v), aid (v), through (conj), regardless of (adv), harbour (n), provide (v), port (n), not paying attention (adv), across (conj), help (v), influence (v), acknowledge (v), mount (v), measuring (n), be unfaithful (v), modification (n), helping (n), lifting (n), ray (n), often (adv), broadcast (v).

Exercise 5 Write a summary of the text, presenting the content of each paragraph in 2-3 sentences. Use the expressions:

The main idea of the text is … The text deals with the one of the most important (urgent) issues … Much attention (consideration) is given to (classification, description) … It focuses on the matter of … The text gives an overview of … The text is mainly concerned with … The aim of the survey is to show (demonstrate, find) … Particular emphasis is given to the analysis of… The text gives a detailed analysis of (reports on) … To sum up … In conclusion …

Индивидуальное задание для студентов заочного отделения к курсу

«Английский язык»

Вариант № 17/3c

Exercise 1 Read the text and translate it in written form.

The Words of Science

(1) There are many words of long standing which the scientist has been accustomed to use with a meaning that might or might not be the same as its customary one.

(2) Sometimes he restricts the meaning of the word. The physicist adopted the word ‘current’ when he described the changed properties of a wire connected to a voltaic battery as an electric current. In 1827, G. S. Ohm discovered the constancy of the relation between electromotive force and current and gave the ratio the name of ‘resistance’.

(3) Sometimes, a scientist will take an ordinary word and expand or widen its meaning, so that a single thing gives its name to a group or category.

(4) ‘Salt’, for example, is a material that is essential for human beings and animals, and has a long association with social history. Its name appears in the English language in such a word – as ‘salary’ meaning that the money one earns is meant, in the first turn, for buying what is most necessary for human existence.

(5) The chemist, however, uses the word to denote a class of compounds, which he defines as the products of replacing the hydrogen of an acid, wholly or in part, by a metal or metallic radical. Common salt is a compound which comes only to a limited extent within the terms of this definition and only to this limited extent do these two salts mean the same thing.

(6) Sometimes, a scientist will seize a word and force it to do work for which it has no qualifications. Such is the case of a family of related words – ‘force’, ‘work’, ‘power’ and ‘weight’.

(7) In mechanics, force does not mean strength. It seems to say no more than that a force is a push or a pull, and since in physics all things must be measured it acquires, from Newton’s Law of Motion, a quantative sense which makes it the products of mass and acceleration. This, of course, is quite different from anything that the word ‘force’ implies in everyday use.

(8) A weight, one is surprised to learn, is not only the familiar block of metal with a ring on top, but a force. This is logical, because things fall under their own weight with acceleration (due to gravity), so that the weight of a thing has to be the force with which the earth attracts it.

(9) As to ‘work’, the physicist has decided that a force works, or does work, only when it moves something. I may push and pull in vain at some immovable obstacle, and find that, nevertheless, mathematically I have done no work.

(10) After this it is quite easy to accept the idea that power has come to mean the rate at which work is done; or that metals suffer from ‘fatigue’ or that oils can be made ‘to crack’.’

(11) Scientific words do not change their basic meaning in the course of centuries, as many ordinary words do. This singleness of meaning, this constancy in form and function, give to scientific words a character which distinguishes them from other words, but relates them to the symbols of mathematics.

(12) The advance of science has for a hundred years or more been so rapid that neither English nor all the languages of Europe could supply sufficient words for its needs. In this task of word creation the scientist has always turned to the languages of Greece, or Rome, and still does so. It is hard to give an example of a modern scientific word derived from any language other than Latin or Greek.

(13) It is well known that after M. Faraday had finished his basic researches on the phenomena of electrolysis, he asked a professor at Cambridge to look for suitable words with which to describe his results, and in 1883 the now familiar terms ‘anode’ and ‘cathode’ came into existence in this way (these terms come from the Greek words ‘anoin’ and ‘cation’ meaning ‘up’ and ‘down’).