The United States of America Geography and climate

The USA is situated in the central part of the North American continent. Its western coast is washed by the Pacific Ocean and its eastern coast by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

The USA is separated from Canada in the north by the forty ninth parallel and the Great Lakes and from Mexico in the south by a line following the Rio Grande River and continuing across the highlands to the Pacific Ocean.

The USA is a federal republic of fifty states and the District of Columbia. The state of Alaska is separated from the rest of the USA by Canada, and its western end is only 80 kilometers from the Russian Federation. Hawaii, which became the fiftieth state in 1959, is in the Pacific Ocean, halfway between the continents of America and Asia.

The total area of the USA is over 9 million square kilometers.

The continental part of the USA consists of two highland regions and two lowland regions. The highland regions are the Appalachian Mountains in the east, and the Cordillera in the west. The Appalachian Mountains run parallel to the Atlantic coast almost from the Gulf of Mexico into Canada. Their highest peak is 2, 000 meters high. The Cordillera stretches along the Pacific coast with the Sierra Nevada in the south and the Rocky Mountains continuing into Canada and Alaska in the north. Their highest point in the USA is 4, 540 meters in the Sierra Nevada.

Between the Cordillera and the Appalachian Mountains are the central lowlands, which are called the prairie, and the eastern lowlands, called the Mississippi valley.

The five Great Lakes, between the USA and Canada, are joined together by short rivers or canals, to the Atlantic Ocean by the Saint Lawrence River, and to the Hudson River by a canal. In the west of the USA there is another lake called the Great Salt Lake.

The principal rivers of the USA are the Mississippi, the longest river in the world (7, 330 kilometers), which flows into the Gulf of Mexico, the Colorado and the Columbia, which flow into the Pacific Ocean, and the Hudson River, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean.

The climate in the USA differs greatly from one part of the country to another. The coldest climate is in the north, where there is heavy snow in winter and the temperature may go down to 40 degrees below zero. The south has a subtropical climate, with temperatures as high as 49 degrees in summer. Hot winds blowing from the Gulf of Mexico often bring typhoons. The climate along the Pacific coast is much warmer than that of the Atlantic coast. The heaviest rains in the country are in the Washington region, and the climate in the Gulf of Mexico area is also very damp. The region around the Great Lakes is known for its changeable climate.

1.3.2 Экономическое положение Великобритании/сша

26. Прочитайте следующий текст и переведите его на русский язык. Дайте русские эквиваленты всех выделенных слов и словосочетаний. British economy

Britain lives by manufacture and trade. For every person employed in agriculture eleven people are employed in mining, manufacturing and building. The United Kingdom is one of the world’s largest exporters of manufactured goods per head of population.

Apart from coal and iron ore Britain has very few natural resources and mostly depends on imports. Its agriculture provides only half the food it needs. The other half and most of the raw materials for its industries such as oil and various metals (copper, zinc, uranium ore and others) have to be imported. Britain also has to import timber, cotton, fruit and farm products.

Britain used to be richly forested, but most of the forests were cut down to make more room for cultivation. The greater part of land is used for cattle and sheep breeding and pig raising. Among the crops grown on the farms are wheat, barley and oats. The fields are mainly in the eastern part of the country. Most of the farms are small (one third of them is less than one hundred acres). Farms tend to be bigger where the soil is less fertile.

In the past century Britain secured a leading position in the world as manufacturer, merchant and banker. After World War I the world demand for the products of Britain’s traditional industries – textiles, coal and machinery – fell off, and Britain began expanding trade in new engineering products and electrical goods.

The crisis of 1929-1933 brought about mass unemployment, which reached its peak in 1932. Britain’s share in the world industrial output decreased. During World War II Britain’s economy was fully employed in the war effort. World War II brought about a further weakening of Britain’s might. Great Britain is no longer the leading power it used to be. It has lost its colonies, which used to supply it with cheap raw materials.

Britain produces high quality expensive goods, which has always been characteristic of its industry. A shortage of raw materials, as well as the high cost of production makes it unprofitable for British industry to produce semi-finished goods or cheap articles. Britain mostly produces articles requiring skilled labor, such as precision instruments, electronic equipment, chemicals and high quality consumer goods. Britain produces and exports cotton and woolen goods, leather goods, and articles made of various kinds of synthetic (man-made) materials.

The original basis of British industry was coalmining, and the early factories grew up not far from the main mining areas. Glasgow and Newcastle became great centers of engineering and shipbuilding. Lancashire produced cotton goods and Yorkshire woolens, with Sheffield concentrating on iron and steel. Birmingham developed light engineering. There appeared a tendency for industry and population to move to the south, particularly to the London area. Britain’s industry is now widely dispersed. Great progress was made in the development of new industries, such as the aircraft, automobile, electronic industries and others. A number of atomic power reactors were made. Great emphasis was made on the development of the war industry.

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Us economy

The United States is rich in natural resources, the main being iron ore, coal and oil. The nation produces more than 100 million tons of iron a year. Four fifths of the ore mined in the USA comes from the Great Lakes region. Though a great deal of the ore has been used up, its resources have not been exhausted. Most of the coal mined in the USA is used by power plants to produce electricity. Coal is also used in the chemical industries for the manufacture of plastics and other synthetics. The production, processing and marketing of such oil products as petrol (called “gasoline” or “gas” in the USA) make up one of America’s largest industries.

The basic metals and minerals mined in the United States are zinc, copper and silver.

Some of the main crops grown in the USA are wheat, maize, cotton, tobacco and fruit.

Cattle breeding and pig raising make up an important branch of America’s agriculture.

To make the farmer’s work more productive scientific methods of farming are employed and modern technique or freezing, canning and packaging farm products is used.

The United States is a highly industrialized country with various branches of heavy industry prevailing, namely, the mining, metallurgical, automobile and chemical industries as well as engineering. Many branches of light industry are also developed; among them are the textile, food and wood-working industries.

A great deal of attention in American industry is devoted to research and emphasis is made on the use of labor-saving machines. In the past few years the number of workers has increased only a few per cent, while the number of scientists and engineers in the plants has almost doubled.

Mechanization and automation do away with thousands of office jobs, intensify production and increase labor productivity. But they also bring a further growth of unemployment.

New industries are created as new discoveries are made in physics, chemistry and other sciences. Atomic energy, for example, has created a wide range of new industries. Electronics has become a major industry.

Throughout American industry great emphasis is being made on management training. A great number of schools are training young people to become industrial leaders.

American industry is distributed unevenly. Most of the industrial enterprises are located in the eastern past of the country. But industry is spreading out as there is a tendency to build factories far removed from removed from the home plant and closer to natural resources and markets. Good transportation facilities and rapid communications systems make it possible for the main plants to keep in touch with branch factories.

The leading US exports are industrial machinery, electronic equipment, textiles, grain, iron, coal, oil products and chemicals.