A risky place to live in 5. United but varied2. In the past 6. An important food producer3. Night guards 7. A dream state4. The miracle of water 8. Attractive to IT specialists
A. The United States is so big that there are six time zones. If you want to phone from Washington to Hawaii or central Alaska, there is a six-hour time difference. The geography and climate of the United States are extremely diverse. While people go to the beach in Florida, California and Hawaii, others, in Alaska and the Midwest, are wearing thick coats and trying to keep warm.
B. California seems to have everything – a beautiful coastline on the Pacific with beaches and a warm climate, rocky national parks and amazing skiing and snowboarding opportunities. Its largest cities, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the state capital, Sacramento, offer cultural variety and excitement. Southern California is home to such popular attractions as Disneyland and Hollywood.
C. There are many reasons for Americans to move to California, but there are also reasons to stay away. Some people say it’s a great place to visit, but they wouldn’t want to live there. In recent years, there has been drought followed by flooding and thousands of people have become homeless, and the crops were ruined. Frequent forest fires have burnt the land and destroyed people’s homes.
D. California produces more farming products than any other American state. All kinds of fruit and vegetables grow well in the moderate climate. It is especially known for its avocados and grapes. California is not technically a "breadbasket" and it is not a top five American producer of any grain product, but it is, surprisingly, the nation's largest dairy provider.
E. The most famous children’s attraction in the world is in California. Disneyland occupies 85 acres, and lots of people are busy keeping it in order. Аnd not only people. After the park closes, an army of four-legged “workers” go out to do their job. It’s not common knowledge that Disneyland “employs” 200 wild cats that roam the grounds after sunset. Their job is to keep rats and mice away from the park. And during daylight hours the cats have a rest, hiding on the territory.
F. It is the hottest place on Earth. Yet here you can find dry lands and snowcovered peaks, beautiful sand dunes and rocky canyons. For five months of the year there is severe heat in Death Valley, and for the next seven the temperature goes down slightly. Rain rarely gets past the mountains that guard the valley. However, even this small amount of rain turns the desert into a vast colourful garden. Despite the high temperature, more than 1000 kinds of plants live within the valley.
G. South of San Francisco is Santa Clara Valley. It is famous because it has so many companies that specialize in computer technology. In fact the valley is better known as Silicon Valley, named after the material that computer chips are made of. There are also many research centers for computer hardware and software. Thousands of people from the US and abroad have moved to California to work in the computer industry.
| Текст | A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
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Alfred Nobel
The name of the most well-known Swede of all time - Alfred Nobel - is famous all over the world due to the prize he established. Despite hundreds of publications about the Nobel Prize, most people know very little about the man behind it.
Alfred Nobel was born in 1833, in Stockholm, Sweden. When he was four, the family moved to St. Petersburg, Russia. Alfred studied at home with the best private tutors and quickly mastered chemistry and became fluent in English, French, German and Russian as well as his native language, Swedish. In Russia, Alfred attended neither school nor university.
Alfred left Russia at the age of 18 to take a two-year trip around Europe and to the USA. When he returned to Russia, he began working at his father's arms factory where he experimented with chemistry and explosives.
Later, Alfred Nobel expanded the business to Europe and America. He had homes in six countries complete with laboratories as he was also a workaholic. He said himself that “my home is where I work and I work everywhere”. Alfred Nobel had 93 profitable factories around the world when he died. Many of the leading industries in the chemical field today like ICI (Imperial Chemical Industries) came from companies established by Nobel. His 355 registered patents[2] showed that Alfred Nobel had a wide range of interests in many fields of technology. There were experiments with imitation leather, artificial rubber and synthetic silk. Nobel tried to improve the electrical battery, the light bulb and the phonograph. He also took photographs from the air, using rockets and parachutes.
Alfred Nobel was also a big letter writer, sometimes writing as many as 30 letters a day. It was not only letters that Alfred Nobel wrote. A year before his death, he published his sad novel “Nemesis” that was performed as a play in Stockholm. Nobel was full of paradoxes. He was successful yet felt hopeless. He made a fortune out of war but fought for peace. He was a faithful patriot, yet spent little time in Sweden. He was an outstanding scientist and inventor, yet had only one year of formal schooling and no university degree. He loved family life but had none of his own. His dream of a wife and children never came true.
In 1864, a deadly explosion killed his younger brother. Deeply affected, Nobel developed a safer explosive: dynamite. Soon the newspapers accused Alfred Nobel of being the “salesman of death”, even though 90 % of dynamite use was for non-violent purposes. However, Alfred Nobel himself knew that “there was nothing that could not be abused”. He never tried to defend his revolutionary invention. But Nobel was disappointed with how he might be remembered and decided to establish the Nobel Prizes to honour men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and for working towards peace. A prize in economics “in memory of Alfred Nobel” was added in 1969.
Alfred Nobel spoke several foreign languages.
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Alfred Nobel graduated from St. Petersburg University.
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Alfred Nobel was awarded a special prize for creating artificial materials.
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Alfred Nobel’s dynamite was used only for military needs.
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All the categories of the modern Nobel Prize were established by Alfred Nobel himself.
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Popular snack invention 5. Events in honour of the vegetable2. Getting round the world 6. Vegetable language 3. A new favourite in the East 7. Recipes to cook the vegetable 4.Travelling outside the Earth 8. New and frightening
A. From Spain, potatoes spread to all parts of Europe. Spanish ships carried the vegetable to Italy in around 1560, making that country the first after Spain to eat potatoes. A bit later, the potato reached Austria and France, England and Germany, Portugal and Ireland. The potato was introduced to India, possibly as early as 1615, and then reached the most remote parts of China. In 1792 Captain William Bligh planted the first potatoes in Australia.
B. It is not unusual for new foods to be met with skepticism and fear, especially those arriving from a faraway continent. The potato, however, had a harder battle for acceptance than many other vegetables from the Americas. People didn’t like its unusual, ugly appearance and originally bitter taste. Besides, the potato was not mentioned in the Bible and it was often associated with the devil.
C. In the United States, the potato has found its way into pop culture and has been used in lots of idiomatic phrases. A couch potato, for example, means an inactive person; hot potato indicates a dangerous topic; small potatoes refers to something that is not a big deal; meat and potatoes means simple food. Calling someone a potato head is not a compliment because it means someone who is not very clever.
D. In 1853, that typically American product, the potato chip, was invented by pure accident. Annoyed when the guest of the restaurant sent back his fried potatoes because they were too thick, George Crum, the chef, thought he would teach him a lesson. He sliced some potatoes paper thin, deep-fried, and salted them. The guest loved them. However, potato chips began to be commercially manufactured only in 1915.
E. Potatoes are still making history. In October 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. NASA created the technology with the goal of feeding astronauts on long space voyages and, eventually, feeding future space colonies. The environmentally friendly potato was chosen due to its ability to grow under different conditions.
F. Potato festivals are very popular in the United States. They are held in autumn to celebrate farmers and the potato. During the festivals adults and children take part in fun parades and carnivals, taste new potato dishes, learn about growing potatoes, and join in some fun potato competitions. There are usually huge firework displays in the evening.
G. According to the United Nations report the annual diet of an average citizen inthe beginning of the 21st century included about 33 kg of potatoes. However, the local importance of the potato is extremely variable. It remains an essential vegetable in Europe, but the most rapid increase has occurred in southern and eastern Asia. Nearly a third of the world's potatoes are harvested in China and India nowadays.
| Текст | A | B | C | D | E | F | G |
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Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell was a famous scientist, teacher of deaf people[3] and inventor, who is widely known for the creation of the telephone. His father, grandfather and brothers had all been associated with work on speech, and both his mother and wife were deaf. The family greatly influenced Bell's life and work, making him look past people’s disadvantages and find solutions to help them. Alexander Bell was born in 1847, in Edinburgh, Scotland. As a young child, Bell received his early schooling at home from his parents. At the age of 10 he asked his father for a middle name like his two brothers. For his 11th birthday, his father allowed him to adopt the middle name "Graham", which was the surname of a close family friend. However, for most of his life he remained "Aleck" to close relatives and friends.
Alexander attended the Royal High School in Edinburgh, which he left at age 15, completing the first four forms only. He was not a good pupil, to the disappointment of his father. His main interest was in the sciences, especially biology, and he was indifferent to other school subjects. After graduation from university, Bell became his father's assistant. He taught deaf people to talk by using his father's system.
Both of Bell's brothers died of tuberculosis. In 1870 his family, in search of a healthier climate, moved to Canada. Soon, Alexander was invited to Boston to teach at Sarah Fuller's School for the Deaf, the first such school in the world.
Throughout his life Alexander Bell continued to educate deaf people.
From 1873 to 1876 Bell experimented with many inventions, including an electric speaking telegraph (the telephone). The money for his work came from the fathers of two of his students. One of these men had a deaf daughter, Mabel, who later became Bell's wife.
In 1876, at the age of 29, Alexander Bell invented his telephone and in 1877, he created the Bell Telephone Company. By 1886, over 150,000 people in the U.S. owned telephones. Later, Bell company engineers made numerous other improvements to the telephone. However, Bell considered his most famous invention an interruption to his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.
Although Alexander Graham Bell is most often associated with the invention of the telephone, his interests were extremely varied.
The magazine Science was founded in 1880 because of Bell's efforts. He took part in creating the National Geographic Society and became its second President. He was also involved in hydrodynamics (the study of the forces of water), and projects related to the development and design of aeroplanes. Alexander Graham Bell had 18 patents granted in his name alone and he shared 12 with colleagues. Bell's inventions included a metal jacket to assist in breathing, a device to locate icebergs, a metal detector, and investigations on how to separate salt from seawater.
Bell died at the age of 75 on August 2, 1922. His contribution to the modern world and its technologies was enormous.
Alexander Bell’s mother taught deaf people to talk.
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Alexander Bell got his middle name from his family friend.
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Alexander Bell was the best pupil at school.
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After university Alexander Bell started to work with deaf people.
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The creation of the telephone was sponsored by Bell’s father.
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There were several telephones in Alexander Bell’s study.
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As the president of the National Geographic Society, Bell travelled a lot.
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All Alexander Bell’s inventions were connected with improving the telephone.
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