Reading comprehension

Exercise 3.1

Answer the questions

1. What are renewable and nonrenewable resources?

2. Can the renewable resources be used endlessly?

3. Can the nonrenewable resources be recycled?

4. What can we do when a nonrenewable mineral resource becomes almost exhausted?

5. What is the difference between recycling and reusing? Which of them takes less energy?

6. How much commercial energy is produced compared with the solar energy, which comes to the earth?

7. What country is the largest world's energy user?

8. How can the choice for any energy substitute be evaluated?

9. What is net energy and why it is so important in evaluating an energy resource?

10. Why is the net energy ratio of oil so high compared with that of nuclear power?

Language study

1. Complex sentence

Exercise 3.2

Analyze the structure of the sentences, find the subject in each sentence and translate the sentences.

1. These results are in fair agreement with the experiments.

2. This results in the electric and magnetic forces acting at right angles to each other.

3. The character of these results is clear.

4. The new hydroelectric station supplies energy to many industrial centers.

5. The supply of energy in our country is very great.

6. What material will you need to build those new machine tools?

7. A great need of metals with better properties led to creation of alloys.

8. The study of matter in a higher state of purity became a subject of vital interest to research workers.

9. Equations that state a rule in brief form are called formulae.

10. The American state includes 50 states; each state has its own administration.

11. The minister stated that the new budget had been successfully adopted.

Exercise 3.3

Analyze the structure of the sentences and translate them.

1. That any gas can be turned into a liquid by pressure is known to everyone.

2. That heat flows from a place of higher to one of lower temperature but never in the reverse direction should be kept in mind.

3. That we use countless machines today needs no proof.

4. How heat is transferred by convection can be illustrated by a stove.

5. One of the most important phenomena in nature is the transmission of energy from one point to another.

6. An important characteristic of radiation is that it can occur in a vacuum.

7. The question is whether the temperature of the air is high enough to ignite the particles of the injected fuel.

8. The question is what a diesel is, how it works and how it differs from a gasoline engine.

9. Now let’s trace what happens in a typical two-cycle diesel engine.

10. Experiments show us that there is very little attraction between the molecules of any gas.

11. The bell or other alarm signal operates only when the circuit is broken.

12. If we want to get a lot of power out of a particular engine, we run it as fast as it can go safely.

13. As the warm air rises, cooler air takes its place.

14. Properties of steel depend also on heat treatment the metal has been subjected to.

15. This is the principle the mercury thermometer is based on.

16. This part of mechanics, which includes both the study of motion and the forces that bring about the motion, is called dynamics.

17. A diesel engine is that type of internal combustion engine, which injects fuel oil in a finely divided state into a cylinder within which air has been compressed to a high pressure and temperature.

18. One of the reasons why people before the 18^th century knew hardly anything about gases was that they were difficult to handle.

19. Everyone who has taken snapshots knows that the lens focuses the light so that a picture is formed on the film.

20. It is a highly important instrument as it serves to indicate to the pilot whether his engine is operating efficiently.

21. Another remarkable fact is that the instruments not only show the operator how things are at the moment, but warn him of impending disturbances.

22. One should clearly understand that the direction and magnitude of the electric forces are represented by the lines of force.

23. It has been assumed in the proceeding discussion that all of the forces lie in the same plane.

24. It was on June 2, 1875, that the first sounds were transmitted by Bell and Watson.

25. It is this energy that is defined as the ability to do work.

26. Never before has a rocket reached the moon!

27. It is only by performing a large number of experiments and building up data, much of which must appear as irrelevant, that progress can be made.

28. In the case we are considering, the forces affecting the body remain unchanged.

29. Everyday observation shows us that the effect moving air produces on a body depends on the velocity of the air or the velocity of the body.

30. In the first stage of the long journey of the sound, the microphone transforms the music or speech it hears into electrical currents.

31. The ratio of useful work done by an engine to the heating value of fuel it consumes is called thermal efficiency of the engine.

32. The retarding force which stops an automobile when its brakes are applied is the friction force between the tires and the road, and the larger the coefficient of friction, the greater is the available force.

Exercise 3.4

Odd man out. In each of the following groups of words, there is one, which doesn’t fit. Choose the «odd man out».

1. To extinct, to pollute, to poison, to contaminate.

2. To deteriorate, to deplete, to replenish, to diminish, to degrade.

3. A forest, a grassland, a fishery, a farmland.

4. To double, to expand, to drop, to increase, to accelerate.

5. Damage, loss, depletion, erosion, extinction, advance.

Exercise 3.5

Translate the words in brackets.

1. Such resources as food, water, goods (удовлетворяют потребности и желания человека).

2. Solar energy, fresh air, drinking water (непосредственно готовы к потреблению).

3. It takes several decades (чтобы возобновить) such renewable resource as forests.

4. If the resource's natural replacement rate (превышена), this source degrades.

5. (Истощаемые) resources are called nonrenewable ones.

6. Some mineral resources (слишком дорого) to recycle.

7. A resource becomes economically depleted when (затраты на добычу и использование) what is left exceed its (экономическую ценность).

8. (Повторное использование) resources takes less energy and produces less pollution.

9. Carbon-containing fossil fuels (добываются из земной коры).

10. (В развивающихся странах) the most important source of renewable energy is from biomass  mostly fuel wood and charcoal.

Exercise 3.6

Translate from Russian into English

1. Основные потребности человека включают пищу, чистый воздух, питьевую воду и крышу над головой.

2. Мы должны научиться удовлетворять свои основные потребности без истощения природных ресурсов.

3. Некоторые ресурсы могут возобновляться бесконечно, если скорость их использования не будет превышать скорость, с которой природа их восстанавливает.

4. Ископаемоe топливо (уголь, нефть, природный газ) являются истощаемыми энергетическими ресурсами и не могут быть использованы повторно.

5. Чтобы не истощить природные ресурсы, мы должны меньше их использовать, меньше тратить впустую, и повторно использовать некоторые из них.

6. В течение нескольких десятилетий 1/4 часть населения мира может столкнуться с недостатком нефти.

7. В ХХ веке человечество сократило использование угля на 33% и увеличило потребление нефти на 31%.

8. Сокращение потерь энергии является одним из путей решения проблемы энергетического кризиса.

9. В ближайшем будущем некоторые доступные залежи нефти могут стать экономически невыгодными для добычи (economically depleted).

10. Прежде чем выбрать тот или иной альтернативный источник энергии, необходимо выяснить, как его добыча (получение), транспортировка и использование повлияют на окружающую среду и климат земли, а также на наше здоровье.

Exercise 3.7

Render the following in English.