[外语类试卷]雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编1及答案与解析.doc

1、雅思（阅读）历年真题试卷汇编 1及答案与解析 0 William Gilbert and Magnetism A 16th and 17th centuries saw two great pioneers of modern science: Galileo and Gilbert. The impact of their findings is eminent. Gilbert was the first modern scientist, also the accredited father of the science of electricity and magnetism, an

2、Englishman of learning and a physician at the court of Elizabeth. Prior to him, all that was known of electricity and magnetism was what the ancients knew, nothing more than that the lodestone possessed magnetic properties and that amber and jet, when rubbed, would attract bits of paper or other sub

3、stances of small specific gravity. However, he is less well-known than he deserves. B Gilberts birth predated Galileo. Born in an eminent local family in Colchester county in the UK, on May 24, 1544, he went to grammar school, and then studied medicine at St. Johns College, Cambridge, graduating in

4、1573. Later he traveled in the continent and eventually settled down in London. C He was a very successful and eminent doctor. All this culminated in his election to the president of the Royal Science Society. He was also appointed the personal physician to the Queen(Elizabeth I), and later knighted

5、 by the Queen. He faithfully served her until her death. However, he didnt outlive the Queen for long and died on December 10, 1603, only a few months after his appointment as personal physician to King James. D Gilbert was first interested in chemistry but later changed his focus due to the large p

6、ortion of mysticism of alchemy involved(such as the transmutation of metal). He gradually developed his interest in physics after the great minds of the ancient, particularly about the knowledge the ancient Greeks had about lodestones, strange minerals with the power to attract iron. In the meantime

7、, Britain became a major seafaring nation in 1588 when the Spanish Armada was defeated, opening the way to British settlement of America. British ships depended on the magnetic compass, yet no one understood why it worked. Did the pole star attract it, as Columbus once speculated; or was there a mag

8、netic mountain at the pole, as described in Odyssey, which ships would never approach, because the sailors thought its pull would yank out all their iron nails and fittings? For nearly 20 years William Gilbert conducted ingenious experiments to understand magnetism. His works include On the Magnet a

9、nd Magnetic Bodies, Great Magnet of the Earth. E Gilberts discovery was so important to modern physics. He investigated the nature of magnetism and electricity. He even coined the word “electric“. Though the early beliefs of magnetism were also largely entangled with superstitions such as that rubbi

10、ng garlic on lodestone can neutralize its magnetism, one example being that sailors even believed the smell of garlic would even interfere with the action of compass, which is why helmsmen were forbidden to eat it near a ships compass. Gilbert also found that metals can be magnetized by rubbing mate

11、rials such as fur, plastic or the like on them. He named the ends of a magnet “north pole“ and “south pole“. The magnetic poles can attract or repel, depending on polarity. In addition, however, ordinary iron is always attracted to a magnet. Though he started to study the relationship between magnet

12、ism and electricity, sadly he didnt complete it. His research of static electricity using amber and jet only demonstrated that objects with electrical charges can work like magnets attracting small pieces of paper and stuff. It is a French guy named du Fay that discovered that there are actually two

13、 electrical charges, positive and negative. F He also questioned the traditional astronomical beliefs. Though a Coper-nican, he didnt express in his quintessential beliefs whether the earth is at the center of the universe or in orbit around the sun. However he believed that stars are not equidistan

14、t from the earth, but have their own earth-like planets orbiting around them. The earth is itself like a giant magnet, which is also why compasses always point north. They spin on an axis that is aligned with the earths polarity. He even likened the polarity of the magnet to the polarity of the eart

15、h and built an entire magnetic philosophy on this analogy. In his explanation, magnetism was the soul of the earth. Thus a perfectly spherical lodestone, when aligned with the earths poles, would wobble all by itself in 24 hours. Further, he also believed that suns and other stars wobble just like t

16、he earth does around a crystal core, and speculated that the moon might also be a magnet caused to orbit by its magnetic attraction to the earth. This was perhaps the first proposal that a force might cause a heavenly orbit. G His research method was revolutionary in that he used experiments rather

17、than pure logic and reasoning like the ancient Greek philosophers did. It was a new attitude toward scientific investigation. Until then, scientific experiments were not in fashion. It was because of this scientific attitude, together with his contribution to our knowledge of magnetism, that a unit

18、of magneto motive force, also known as magnetic potential, was named Gilbert in his honor. His approach of careful observation and experimentation rather than the authoritative opinion or deductive philosophy of others had laid the very foundation for modern science. Reading passage 1 has seven para

19、graphs A-G Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below. Write the correct number i-x in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet. List of Headings i Early years of Gilbert ii What was new about his scientific research method iii The development of chemistry iv Questioning tra

20、ditional astronomy v Pioneers of the early science vi Professional and social recognition vii Becoming the president of the Royal Science Society viii The great works of Gilbert ix His discovery about magnetism x His change of focus 1 Paragraph A 2 Paragraph B 3 Paragraph C 4 Paragraph D 5 Paragraph

21、 E 6 Paragraph F 7 Paragraph G 7 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 8-10 on your answer sheet write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on th

22、is 8 He is less famous than he should be. （ A） TRUE （ B） FALSE （ C） Not Given 9 He was famous as a doctor before he was employed by the Queen. （ A） TRUE （ B） FALSE （ C） Not Given 10 He lost faith in the medical theories of his time. （ A） TRUE （ B） FALSE （ C） Not Given 10 Choose THREE letters A-F. Wr

23、ite your answers in boxes 11-13 on your answer sheet. Which THREE of the following are parts of Gilberts discovery? A Metal can be transformed into another. B Garlic can remove magnetism. C Metals can be magnetized. D Stars are at different distances from the earth. E The earth wobbles on its axis.

24、F There are two charges of electricity. 13 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading Passage 2 below. IT WAS the summer, scientists now realise, when global warming at last made itself unmistakably felt. We knew that summer 2003 was remarkable: Britain experienc

25、ed its record high temperature and continental Europe saw forest fires raging out of control, great rivers drying to a trickle and thousands of heat-related deaths. But just how remarkable is only now becoming clear. The three months of June, July and August were the warmest ever recorded in western

26、 and central Europe, with record national highs in Portugal, Germany and Switzerland as well as in Britain. And they were the warmest by a very long way. Over a great rectangular block of the earth stretching from west of Paris to northern Italy, taking in Switzerland and southern Germany, the avera

27、ge temperature for the summer months was 3.78C above the long-term norm, said the Climatic Research Unit(CRU)of the University of East Anglia in Norwich, which is one of the worlds leading institutions for the monitoring and analysis of temperature records. That excess might not seem a lot until you

28、 are aware of the context but then you realise it is enormous. There is nothing like this in previous data, anywhere. It is considered so exceptional that Professor Phil Jones, the CRUs director, is prepared to say openly in a way few scientists have done before that the 2003 extreme may be directly

29、 attributed, not to natural climate variability, but to global warming caused by human actions. Meteorologists have hitherto contented themselves with the formula that recent high temperatures are “consistent with predictions“ of climate change. For the great block of the map that stretching between

30、 35-50N and 0-20E the CRU has reliable temperature records dating back to 1781. Using as a baseline the average summer temperature recorded between 1961 and 1990, departures from the temperature norm, or “anomalies“, over the area as a whole can easily be plotted. As the graph shows, such is the var

31、iability of our climate that over the past 200 years, there have been at least half a dozen anomalies, in terms of excess temperature the peaks on the graph denoting very hot years approaching, or even exceeding, 2C. But there has been nothing remotely like 2003, when the anomaly is nearly four degr

32、ees. “This is quite remarkable,“ Professor Jones told The Independent “Its very unusual in a statistical sense. If this series had a normal statistical distribution, you wouldnt get this number. The return periodhow often it could be expected to recurwould be something like one in a thousand years.

33、If we look at an excess above the average of nearly four degrees, then perhaps nearly three degrees of that is natural variability, because weve seen that in past summers. But the final degree of it is likely to be due to global warming, caused by human actions.“ The summer of 2003 has, in a sense,

34、been one that climate scientists have long been expecting. Until now, the warming has been manifesting itself mainly in winters that have been less cold than in summers that have been much hotter. Last week, the United Nations predicted that winters were warming so quickly that winter sports would d

35、ie out in Europes lower-level ski resorts. But sooner or later the unprecedented hot summer was bound to come, and this year it did. One of the most dramatic features of the summer was the hot nights, especially in the first half of August. In Paris, the temperature never dropped below 23C(73.4F)at

36、all between 7 and 14 August, and the city recorded its warmest-ever night on 11-12 August, when the mercury did not drop below 25.5C(77.9F). Germany recorded its warmest-ever night at Weinbiet in the Rhine valley with a lowest figure of 27.6C(80.6F)on 13 August, and similar record-breaking nighttime

37、 temperatures were recorded in Switzerland and Italy. The 15,000 excess deaths in France during August, compared with previous years, have been related to the high night-time temperatures. The number gradually increased during the first 12 days of the month, peaking at about 2,000 per day on the nig

38、ht of 12-13 August, then fell off dramatically after 14 August when the minimum temperatures fell by about 5C. The elderly were most affected, with a 70 per cent increase in mortality rate in those aged 75-94. For Britain, the year as a whole is likely to be the warmest ever recorded, but despite th

39、e high temperature record on 10 August, the summer itself defined as the June, July and August period still comes behind 1976 and 1995, when there were longer periods of intense heat. At the moment, the year is on course to be the third-hottest ever in the global temperature record, which goes back

40、to 1856, behind 1998 and 2002, but when all the records for October, November and December are collated, it might move into second place, Professor Jones said. The 10 hottest years in the record have all now occurred since 1990. Professor Jones is in no doubt about the astonishing nature of European

41、 summer of 2003. “The temperatures recorded were out of all proportion to the previous record,“ he said. “It was the warmest summer in the past 500 years and probably way beyond that. It was enormously exceptional.“ His colleagues at the University of East Anglias Tyndall Centre for Climate Change R

42、esearch are now planning a special study of it. “It was a summer that has not been experienced before, either in terms of the temperature extremes that were reached, or the range and diversity of the impacts of the extreme heat,“ said the centres executive director, Professor Mike Hulme. “It will ce

43、rtainly have left its mark on a number of countries, as to how they think and plan for climate change in the future, much as the 2000 floods have revolutionised the way the Government is thinking about flooding in the UK. “The 2003 heatwave will have similar repercussions across Europe.“ Questions 1

44、4-19 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet write YES if the statement agrees with the information NO if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 14 The average summer temper

45、ature in 2003 is almost 4 degrees higher than the average temperature of the past. （ A） Yes （ B） No （ C） Not Given 15 Global warming is caused.by human activities. （ A） Yes （ B） No （ C） Not Given 16 Jones believes the temperature variation is within the normal range. （ A） Yes （ B） No （ C） Not Given

46、17 The temperature is measured twice a day in major cities. （ A） Yes （ B） No （ C） Not Given 18 There were milder winters rather than hotter summers before 2003. （ A） Yes （ B） No （ C） Not Given 19 Governments are building new high-altitude ski resorts. （ A） Yes （ B） No （ C） Not Given 19 Answer the qu

47、estions below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 20-21 on your answer sheet. 20 What are the other two hottest years in Britain besides 2003? 21 What will also influence government policies in the future like the hot summer in 2003? 21 Complete

48、 the summary below using NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage. Write your answers in boxes 22-25 on your answer sheet. The other two hottest years around globe were【 R1】 _. The ten hottest years on record all come after the year【 R2】 _. This temperature data has been gathered since【 R3】 _. Thousa

49、nds of people died in the country of【 R4】 _. 22 【 R1】 23 【 R2】 24 【 R3】 25 【 R4】 26 Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D. Write your answer in box 26 on your answer sheet. Which one of the following can be best used as the title of this passage? A Global Warming B What Caused Global Warming C The Effects of Global Warming D That Hot Year in Europe 26 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading Passage 3 below. Amateur Naturalists From the results of an annual Alaskan betting contes