READING PASSAGE 1
A
Hearing impairment or other auditory function deficit in young children can have a major impact on their development of speech and communication, resulting in a detrimental effect on their ability to learn at school.
This is likely to have major consequences for the individual and the population as a whole. The New Zealand Ministry of Health has found from research carried out over two decades that 6-10% of children in that country are affected by hearing loss.
B
A preliminary study in New Zealand has shown that classroom noise presents a major concern for teachers and pupils. Modern teaching practices, the organisation of desks in the classroom, poor classroom acoustics, and mechanical means of ventilation such as air-conditioning units all contribute to the number of children unable to comprehend the teacher's voice. Education researchers Nelson and Soli have also suggested that recent trends in learning often involve collaborative interaction of multiple minds and tools as much as individual possession of information. This all amounts to heightened activity and noise levels, which have the potential to be particularly serious for children experiencing auditory function deficit. Noise in classrooms can only exacerbate their difficulty in comprehending and processing verbal communication with other children and instructions from the teacher.
C
Children with auditory function deficit are potentially failing to learn to their maximum potential because of noise levels generated in classrooms. The effects of noise on the ability of children to learn effectively in typical classroom environments are now the subject of increasing concern. The International Institute of Noise Control Engineering (I-INCE), on the advice of the World Health Organization, has established an international working party, which includes New Zealand, to evaluate noise and reverberation control for school rooms.
D
While the detrimental effects of noise in classroom situations are not limited to children experiencing disability, those with a disability that affects their processing of speech and verbal communication could be extremely vulnerable. The auditory function deficits in question include hearing impairment, autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) and attention deficit disorders (ADD/ADHD).
E
Autism is considered a neurological and genetic life-long disorder that causes discrepancies in the way information is processed. This disorder is characterised by interlinking problems with social imagination,social communication and social interaction. According to Janzen, this affects the ability to understand and relate in typical ways to people, understand events and objects in the environment, and understand or respond to sensory stimuli. Autism does not allow learning or thinking in the same ways as in children who are developing normally.
Autistic spectrum disorders often result in major difficulties in comprehending verbal information and speech processing. Those experiencing these disorders often find sounds such as crowd noise and the noise generated by machinery painful and distressing. This is difficult to scientifically quantify as such extra-sensory stimuli vary greatly from one autistic individual to another. But a child who finds any type of noise in their classroom or learning space intrusive is likely to be adversely affected in their ability to process information.
F
The attention deficit disorders are indicative of neurological and genetic disorders and are characterised by difficulties with sustaining attention, effort and persistence, organisation skills and disinhibition. Children experiencing these disorders find it difficult to screen out unimportant information, and focus on everything in the environment rather than attending to a single activity. Background noise in the classroom becomes a major distraction, which can affect their ability to concentrate.
G
Children experiencing an auditory function deficit can often find speech and communication very difficult to isolate and process when set against high levels of background noise.These levels come from outside activities that penetrate the classroom structure, from teaching activities, and other noise generated inside, which can be exacerbated by room reverberation. Strategies are needed to obtain the optimum classroom construction and perhaps a change in classroom culture and methods of teaching. In particular, the effects of noisy classrooms and activities on those experiencing disabilities in the form of auditory function deficit need thorough investigation. It is probable that many undiagnosed children exist in the education system with 'invisible' disabilities. Their needs are less likely to be met than those of children with known disabilities.
H
The New Zealand Government has developed a New Zealand Disability Strategy and has embarked on a wideranging consultation process. The strategy recognises that people experiencing disability face significant barriers in achieving a full quality of life in areas such as attitude, education, employment and access to services. Objective 3 of the New Zealand Disability Strategy is to 'Provide the Best Education for Disabled People' by improving education so that all children, youth learners and adult learners will have equal opportunities to learn and develop within their already existing local school. For a successful education, the learning environment is vitally significant, so any effort to improve this is likely to be of great benefit to all children, but especially to those with auditory function disabilities.
I
A number of countries are already in the process of formulating their own standards for the control and reduction of classroom noise. New Zealand will probably follow their example. The literature to date on noise in school rooms appears to focus on the effects on schoolchildren in general, their teachers and the hearing impaired. Only limited attention appears to have been given to those students experiencing the other disabilities involving auditory function deficit. It is imperative that the needs of these children are taken into account in the setting of appropriate international standards to be promulgated in future.
Questions 1-6
Reading Passage 1 has nine sections, A-I.
Which section contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
1 An account of a national policy initiative
2 A description of a global team effort
3 A hypothesis as to one reason behind the growth in classroom noise
4 A demand for suitable worldwide regulations
5 A list of medical conditions which place some children more at risk from noise than others
6 The estimated proportion of children in New Zealand with auditory problems
Questions 7 and 8
Choose TWO letters, A-F.
The list below includes factors contributing to classroom noise.Which TWO are mentioned by the writer of the passage?
A Current teaching methods
B Echoing corridors
C Cooling systems
D Large class sizes
E Loud-voiced teachers
F Playground games
Question 9 Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.What is the writer’s overall purpose in writing this article?
A to compare different methods of dealing with auditory problems
B to provide solutions for overly noisy learning environments
C to increase awareness of the situation of children with auditory problems
D to promote New Zealand as a model for other countries to follow
READING PASSAGE 2
Venus in transit
June 2004 saw the first passage, known as a ‘transit’, of the planet Venus across the face of the Sun in 122 years. Transits have helped shape our view of the whole Universe, as Heather Cooper and Nigel Henbest explain.
A
On 8 June 2004, more than half the population of the world were treated to a rare astronomical event. For over six hours, the planet Venus steadily inched its way over the surface of the Sun. This ‘transit’ of Venus was the first since 6 December 1882. On that occasion, the American astronomer Professor Simon Newcomb led a party to South Africa to observe the event. They were based at a girls’ school, where - it is alleged -the combined forces of three schoolmistresses outperformed the professionals with the accuracy of their observations.
B
For centuries, transits of Venus have drawn explorers and astronomers alike to the four corners of the globe.And you can put it all down to the extraordinary polymath Edmond Halley. In November 1677, Halley observed a transit of the innermost planet, Mercury, from the desolate island of St Helena in the South Pacific.He realised that, from different latitudes, the passage of the planet across the Sun’s disc would appear to differ.By timing the transit from two widely-separated locations, teams of astronomers could calculate the parallax angle - the apparent difference in position of an astronomical body due to a difference in the observer’s position. Calculating this angle would allow astronomers to measure what was then the ultimate goal: the distance of the Earth from the Sun. This distance is known as the astronomical unit’ or AU.
C
Halley was aware that the AU was one of the most fundamental of all astronomical measurements. Johannes Kepler, in the early 17 th century, had shown that the distances of the planets from the Sun governed their orbital speeds, which were easily measurable. But no-one had found a way to calculate accurate distances to the planets from the Earth. The goal was to measure the AU; then, knowing the orbital speeds of all the other planets round the Sun, the scale of the Solar System would fall into place. However, Halley realised that Mercury was so far away that its parallax angle would be very difficult to determine. As Venus was closer to the Earth, its parallax angle would be larger, and Halley worked out that by using Venus it would be possible to measure the Suns distance to 1 part in 500. But there was a problem: transits of Venus, unlike those of Mercury, are rare, occurring in pairs roughly eight years apart every hundred or so years. Nevertheless, he accurately predicted that Venus would cross the face of the Sun in both 1761 and 1769 - though he didn’t survive to see either.
D
Inspired by Halley’s suggestion of a way to pin down the scale of the Solar System, teams of British and French astronomers set out on expeditions to places as diverse as India and Siberia. But things weren’t helped by Britain and France being at war. The person who deserves most sympathy is the French astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil.He was thwarted by the fact that the British were besieging his observation site at Pondicherry in India.Fleeing on a French warship crossing the Indian Ocean, Le Gentil saw a wonderful transit - but the ship’s pitching and rolling ruled out any attempt at making accurate observations. Undaunted, he remained south of the equator, keeping himself busy by studying the islands of Mauritius and Madagascar before setting off to observe the next transit in the Philippines. Ironically after travelling nearly 50,000 kilometres, his view was clouded out at the last moment, a very dispiriting experience.
E
While the early transit timings were as precise as instruments would allow, the measurements were dogged by the ‘black drop’ effect. When Venus begins to cross the Sun’s disc, it looks smeared not circular - which makes it difficult to establish timings. This is due to diffraction of light. The second problem is that Venus exhibits a halo of light when it is seen just outside the Sun’s disc. While this showed astronomers that Venuswas surrounded by a thick layer of gases refracting sunlight around it, both effects made it impossible to obtain accurate timings.
F
But astronomers laboured hard to analyse the results of these expeditions to observe Venus transits. Johann Franz Encke, Director of the Berlin Observatory, finally determined a value for the AU based on all the parallax measurements:153,340,000 km. Reasonably accurate for the time, that is quite close to today’s value of 149,597,870 km,determined by radar, which has now superseded transits and all other methods in accuracy. The AU is a cosmic measuring rod, and the basis of how we scale the Universe today. The parallax principle can be extended to measure the distances to the stars. If we look at a star in January - when Earth is at one point in its orbit - it will seem to be in a different position from where it appears six months later. Knowing the width of Earth’s orbit, the parallax shift lets astronomers calculate the distance.
G
June 2004’s transit of Venus was thus more of an astronomical spectacle than a scientifically important event.But such transits have paved the way for what might prove to be one of the most vital breakthroughs in the cosmos - detecting Earth-sized planets orbiting other stars.
Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
10 examples of different ways in which the parallax principle has been applied
11 a description of an event which prevented a transit observation
12 a statement about potential future discoveries leading on from transit observations
13 a description of physical states connected with Venus which early astronomical instruments failed to overcome
Questions 18-21
Look at the following statements (Questions 18-21) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter, A, B, C or D, in boxes 18-21 on your answer sheet.
14 He calculated the distance of the Sun from the Earth based on
observations of Venus with a fair degree of accuracy.
15 He understood that the distance of the Sun from the Earth could be
worked out by comparing observations of a transit.
16 He realised that the time taken by a planet to go round the Sun depends on
its distance from the Sun.
17 He witnessed a Venus transit but was unable to make any calculations
List of People
A Edmond Halley
B Johannes Kepler
C Guillaume Le Gentil
D Johann Franz Encke
READING PASSAGE 3
Tidal Power
Undersea turbines which produce electricity from the tides are set to become an important source of renewable energy for Britain. It is still too early to predict the extent of the impact they may have, but all the signs are that they will play a significant role in the future
A
Operating on the same principle as wind turbines, the power in sea turbines comes from tidal currents which turn blades similar to ships’ propellers, but, unlike wind, the tides are predictable and the power input Iska. constant. The technology raises the prospect of Britain becoming self-sufficient in renewable energy and drastically reducing its carbon dioxide emissions. If tide, wind and wave power are all developed, Britain would be able to close gas, coal and nuclear power plants and export renewable power to other parts of Europe.
Unlike wind power, which Britain originally developed and then abandoned for 20 years allowing the Dutch to make it a major industry, undersea turbines could become a big export earner to island nations such as Japan and New Zealand.
B
Tidal sites have already been identified that will produce one sixth or more of the UK’s power - and at prices competitive with modern gas turbines and undercutting those of the already ailing nuclear industry. One site alone, the Pentland Firth, between Orkney and mainland Scotland, could produce 10% of the country’s electricity with banks of turbines under the sea, and another at Alderney in the Channel Islands three times the 1,200 megawatts of Britain’s largest and newest nuclear plant, Sizewell B, in Suffolk. Other sites identified include the Bristol Channel and the west coast of Scotland, particularly the channel between Campbeltown and Northern Ireland.
C
Work on designs for the new turbine blades and sites are well advanced at the University of Southampton’s sustainable energy research group. The first station is expected to be installed off Lynmouth in Devon shortly to test the technology in a venture jointly funded by the department of Trade and Industry and the European Union. AbuBakr Bahaj, in charge of the Southampton research, said: The prospects for energy from tidal currents are far better than from wind because the flows of water are predictable and constant. The technology for dealing with the hostile saline environment under the sea has been developed in the North Sea oil industry and much is already known about turbine blade design, because of wind power and ship propellers. There are a few technical difficulties, but I believe in the next five to ten years we will be installing commercial marine turbine farms.’ Southampton has been awarded £215,000 over three years to develop the turbines and is working with Marine Current Turbines, a subsidiary of IT power, on the Lynmouth project. EU research has now identified 106 potential sites for tidal power, 80% round the coasts of Britain. The best sites are between islands or around heavily indented coasts where there are strong tidal currents.
D
A marine turbine blade needs to be only one third of the size of a wind generator to produce three times as much power. The blades will be about 20 metres in diameter, so around 30 metres of water is required.Unlike wind power, there are unlikely to be environmental objections. Fish and other creatures are thought unlikely to be at risk from the relatively slow-turning blades. Each turbine will be mounted on a tower which will connect to the national power supply grid via underwater cables. The towers will stick out of the water and be lit, to warn shipping, and also be designed to be lifted out of the water for maintenance and to clean seaweed from the blades.
E
Dr Bahaj has done most work on the Alderney site, where there are powerful currents. The single undersea turbine farm would produce far more power than needed for the Channel Islands and most would be fed into the French Grid and be re-imported into Britain via the cable under the Channel.
F
One technical difficulty is cavitation, where low pressure behind a turning blade causes air bubbles. These can cause vibration and damage the blades of the turbines. Dr Bahaj said: ‘We have to test a number of blade types to avoid this happening or at least make sure it does not damage the turbines or reduce performance. Another slight concern is submerged debris floating into the blades. So far we do not know how much of a problem it might be. We will have to make the turbines robust because the sea is a hostile environment, but all the signs that we can do it are good.’
Questions 14-17
Reading Passage 2 has six paragraphs, A-F.Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 14-17 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
19 The location of the first test site
20 A way of bringing the power produced on one site back into Britain
21 A reference to a previous attempt by Britain to find an alternative source of energy
22 Mention of the possibility of applying technology from another industry
Questions 23-27
Choose FIVE letters, A-J.
Write the correct letters in boxes 18-22 on your answer sheet.Which FIVE of the following claims about tidal power are made by the writer?
A It is a more reliable source of energy than wind power.
B It would replace all other forms of energy in Britain.
C Its introduction has come as a result of public pressure.
D It would cut down on air pollution.
E It could contribute to the closure of many existing power stations in Britain.
F It could be a means of increasing national income.
G It could face a lot of resistance from other fuel industries.
H It could be sold more cheaply than any other type of fuel.
I It could compensate for the shortage of inland sites for energy production.
J It is best produced in the vicinity of coastlines with particular features.
READING PASSAGE 4
Information theory - the big idea
Information theory lies at the heart of everything - from DVD players and the genetic code of DNA to the physics of the universe at its most fundamental. It has been central to the development of the science of communication, which enables data to be sent electronically and has therefore had a major impact on our lives
A
In April 2002 an event took place which demonstrated one of the many applications of information theory. The space probe, Voyager I, launched in 1977, had sent back spectacular images of Jupiter and Saturn and then soared out of the Solar System on a one-way mission to the stars. After 25 years of exposure to the freezing temperatures of deep space, the probe was beginning to show its age. Sensors and circuits were on the brink of failing and NASA experts realised that they had to do something or lose contact with their probe forever. The solution was to get a message to Voyager I to instruct it to use spares to change the failing parts. With the probe 12 billion kilometres from Earth, this was not an easy task. By means of a radio dish belonging to NASA’s Deep Space Network, the message was sent out into the depths of space. Even travelling at the speed of light, it took over 11 hours to reach its target, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Yet, incredibly, the little probe managed to hear the faint call from its home planet, and successfully made the switchover.
B
It was the longest-distance repair job in history, and a triumph for the NASA engineers. But it also highlighted the astonishing power of the techniques developed by American communications engineer Claude Shannon,who had died just a year earlier. Born in 1916 in Petoskey, Michigan, Shannon showed an early talent for maths and for building gadgets, and made breakthroughs in the foundations of computer technology when still a student. While at Bell Laboratories, Shannon developed information theory, but shunned the resulting acclaim. In the 1940s, he single-handedly created an entire science of communication which has since inveigled its way into a host of applications, from DVDs to satellite communications to bar codes - any area, in short, where data has to be conveyed rapidly yet accurately.
C
This all seems light years away from the down-to-earth uses Shannon originally had for his work, which began when he was a 22-year-old graduate engineering student at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1939. He set out with an apparently simple aim: to pin down the precise meaning of the concept of ‘information’. The most basic form of information, Shannon argued, is whether something is true or false - which can be captured in the binary unit, or ‘bit’, of the form 1 or 0. Having identified this fundamental unit, Shannon set about defining otherwise vague ideas about information and how to transmit it from place to place. In the process he discovered something surprising: it is always possible to guarantee information will get through random interference - ‘noise’ - intact.
D
Noise usually means unwanted sounds which interfere with genuine information. Information theory generalises this idea via theorems that capture the effects of noise with mathematical precision. In particular,Shannon showed that noise sets a limit on the rate at which information can pass along communication channels while remaining error-free. This rate depends on the relative strengths of the signal and noise travelling down the communication channel, and on its capacity (its ‘bandwidth’). The resulting limit, given in units of bits per second, is the absolute maximum rate of error-free communication given signal strength and noise level. The trick, Shannon showed, is to find ways of packaging up - ‘coding’ - information to cope with the ravages of noise, while staying within the information-carrying capacity - ‘bandwidth’ - of the communication system being used.
E
Over the years scientists have devised many such coding methods, and they have proved crucial in many technological feats. The Voyager spacecraft transmitted data using codes which added one extra bit for every single bit of information; the result was an error rate of just one bit in 10,000 - and stunningly clear pictures of the planets. Other codes have become part of everyday life - such as the Universal Product Code, or bar code, which uses a simple error-detecting system that ensures supermarket check-out lasers can read the price even on, say, a crumpled bag of crisps. As recently as 1993, engineers made a major breakthrough by discovering so-called turbo codes - which come very close to Shannon’s ultimate limit for the maximum rate that data can be transmitted reliably, and now play a key role in the mobile videophone revolution.
F
Shannon also laid the foundations of more efficient ways of storing information, by stripping out superfluous(‘redundant’) bits from data which contributed little real information. As mobile phone text messages like ‘ICN C U’ show, it is often possible to leave out a lot of data without losing much meaning. As with error correction, however, there’s a limit beyond which messages become too ambiguous. Shannon showed how to calculate this limit, opening the way to the design of compression methods that cram maximum information into the minimum space.
Questions 27-32
Reading Passage 3 has six paragraphs, A-F.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.
28 An explanation of the factors affecting the transmission of information
29 An example of how unnecessary information can be omitted
30 A reference to Shannon’s attitude to fame
31 Details of a machine capable of interpreting incomplete information
32 A detailed account of an incident involving information theory
33 Reference to what Shannon initially intended to achieve in his research.
READING PASSAGE 5
Young children's sense of identity
A
A sense of self develops in young children by degrees. The process can usefully be thought of in terms of the gradual emergence of two somewhat separate features: the self as a subject, and the self as an object. William James introduced the distinction in 1892, and contemporaries of his, such as Charles Cooley, added to the developing debate. Ever since then psychologists have continued building on the theory.
B
According to James, a child's first step on the road to self-understanding can be seen as the recognition that he or she exists. This is an aspect of the self that he labelled 'self-as-subject', and he gave it various elements.
These included an awareness of one's own agency (i.e. one's power to act), and an awareness of one's distinctiveness from other people. These features graduallyemerge as infants explore their world and interact with caregivers. Cooley (1902) suggested that a sense of the self-as-subject was primarily concerned with being able to exercise power. He proposed that the earliest examples of this are an infant's attempts to control physical objects, such as toys or his or her own limbs. This is followed by attempts to affect the behaviour of other people. For example, infants learn that when they cry or smile someone responds to them.
C
Another powerful source of information for infants about the effects they can have on the world around them is provided when others mimic them. Many parents spend a lot of time, particularly in the early months, copying their infant's vocalizations and expressions. In addition, young children enjoy looking in mirrors, where the movements they can see are dependent upon their own movements.This is not to say that infants recognize the reflection as their own image (a later development). However,Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) suggest that infants' developing understanding that the movements they see in the mirror are contingent on their own, leads to a growing awareness that they are distinct from other people. This is because they, and only they, can change the reflection in the mirror.
D
This understanding that children gain of themselves as active agents continues to develop in their attempts to co-operate with others in play. Dunn (1988) points out that it is in such day-to-day relationships and interactions that the child's understanding of his- or herself emerges. Empirical investigations of the self-assubject in young children are, however, rather scarce because of difficulties of communication: even if young infants can reflect on their experience, they certainly cannot express this aspect of the self directly.
E
Once children have acquired a certain level of self-awareness, they begin to place themselves in a whole series of categories, which together play such an important part in defining them uniquely as'themselves'. This second step in the development of a full sense of self is what James called the 'self-asobject'. This has been seen by many to be the aspect of the self which is most influenced by social elements,since it is made up of social roles (such as student, brother, colleague) and characteristics which derive their meaning from comparison or interaction with other people (such as trustworthiness, shyness, sporting ability).
F
Cooley and other researchers suggested a close connection between a person's own understanding of their identity and other people's understanding of it. Cooley believed that people build up their sense of identity from the reactions of others to them, and from the view they believe others have of them. He called the self-asobject the 'looking-glass self', since people come to see themselves as they are reflected in others. Mead (1934)went even further, and saw the self and the social world as inextricably bound together: ‘The self is essentially a social structure, and it arises in social experience ... it is impossible to conceive of a self arising outside of social experience.’
G
Lewis and Brooks-Gunn argued that an important developmental milestone is reached when children become able to recognize themselves visually without the support of seeing contingent movement. This recognition occurs around their second birthday. In one experiment, Lewis and Brooks-Gunn (1979) dabbed some red powder on the noses of children who were playing in front of a mirror, and then observed how often they touched their noses. The psychologists reasoned that if the children knew what they usually looked like, they would be surprised by the unusual red mark and would start touching it. On the other hand, they found that children of 15 to 18 months are generally not able to recognize themselves unless other cues such as movement are present.
H
Finally, perhaps the most graphic expressions of self-awareness in general can be seen in the displays of rage which are most common from 18 months to 3 years of age. In a longitudinal study of groups of three or four children, Bronson (1975) found that the intensity of the frustration and anger in their disagreements increased sharply between the ages of 1 and 2 years. Often, the children's disagreements involved a struggle over a toy that none of them had played with before or after the tug-of-war: the children seemed to be disputing ownership rather than wanting to play with it. Although it may be less marked in other societies, the link between the sense of 'self' and of 'ownership' is a notable feature of childhood in Western societies
Questions 34- 39
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
34 an account of the method used by researchers in a particular study
35 the role of imitation in developing a sense of identity
36 the age at which children can usually identify a static image of themselves
37 a reason for the limitations of scientific research into ‘self-as-subject’
38 reference to a possible link between culture and a particular form of behaviour
39 examples of the wide range of features that contribute to the sense of ‘self-as-object’
Questions 20-23
Look at the following findings (Questions 20-23) and the list of researchers below.
Match each finding with the correct researcher or researchers, A-E.
List of Researchers
A James
B Cooley
C Lewis and Brooks-Gunn
D Mead
E Bronson
40 A sense of identity can never be formed without relationships with other people.
41 A child’s awareness of self is related to a sense of mastery over things and people.
42 At a certain age, children’s sense of identity leads to aggressive behaviour.
43 Observing their own reflection contributes to children’s self awareness.
READING PASSAGE 6
A Chronicle of Timekeeping
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, the Babylonians began to measure time, introducing calendars to co-ordinate 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 was 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. 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
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, 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, arose the question of when to begin counting, andso, 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 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 constant force to the gear wheels of the timekeeper despite the changing tension of its mainspring. 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 ship's anchor. The motion of a pendulum rocks this device so that it catches and then releases each tooth of the 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, this invention allowed the use of a long pendulum which could beat once a second and thus led to the development of a new floorstanding 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.
Questions 1-4
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-H, in boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet
44. A description of an early timekeeping invention affected by cold temperatures……….......…
45. An explanation of the importance of geography in the development of the Calendar in farming communities……………
46 A description of the origins of the pendulum clock…………
47 Details of the simultaneous efforts of different societies to calculate time using uniform hours………….
Questions 5-8
Look at the following events (Questions 5-8) and the list of nationalities below.
Match each event with the correct nationality, A-F.
List of Nationalities
A Babylonians
B Egyptians
C Greeks
D English
E Germans
F French
48 They devised a civil calendar in which the months were equal in length.
49 They divided the day into two equal halves.
50 They developed a new cabinet shape for a type of timekeeper.
51 They created a calendar to organise public events and work schedules
Answers
1 H
2 C
3 B
4 I
5 D
6 A
7 A (IN ANY ORDER)
8 C (IN ANY ORDER)
9 C
10 F
11 D
12 G
13 E
14 D
16 A
17 B
18 C
19 C
20 E
21 A
22 C
23 A (in any order)
24 D (in any order)
25 E (in any order)
26 F (in any order)
27 J (in any order)
28 D
29 F
30 B
31 E
32 A
33 C
34 G
35 C
36 G
37 D
38 H
39 E
40 D
41 B
42 E
43 C
44 D
45 B
46 F
47 E
48 B
49 F
50 D
51 A
