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新东方背诵文选全集(共50 篇)

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发表于 2004-2-18 00:00:00 | 显示全部楼层 |阅读模式
新东方背诵文选全集(共50 篇)

01 The Language of Music
A painter hangs his or her finished pictures on a wall, and
everyone can see it. A composer writes a work, but no one can
hear it until it is performed. Professional singers and players
have great responsibilities, for the composer is utterly dependent
on them. A student of music needs as long and as arduous a
training to become a performer as a medical student needs to
become a doctor. Most training is concerned with technique, for
musicians have to have the muscular proficiency of an athlete or
a ballet dancer. Singers practice breathing every day, as their
vocal chords would be inadequate without controlled muscular
support. String players practice moving the fingers of the left
hand up and down, while drawing the bow to and fro with the
right arm-two entirely different movements.
Singers and instruments have to be able to get every note
perfectly in tune. Pianists are spared this particular anxiety, for
the notes are already there, waiting for them, and it is the piano
tuner’s responsibility to tune the instrument for them. But they
have their own difficulties; the hammers that hit the string have
to be coaxed not to sound like percussion, and each overlapping
tone has to sound clear.
This problem of getting clear texture is one that confronts
student conductors: they have to learn to know every note of the
music and how it should sound, and they have to aim at
controlling these sounds with fanatical but selfless authority.
Technique is of no use unless it is combined with musical
knowledge and understanding. Great artists are those who are so
thoroughly at home in the language of music that they can enjoy
performing works written in any century.
02 Schooling and Education
It is commonly believed in United States that school is where
people go to get an education. Nevertheless, it has been said
that today children interrupt their education to go to school. The
distinction between schooling and education implied by this
remark is important.
Education is much more open-ended and all-inclusive than
schooling. Education knows no bounds. It can take place
anywhere, whether in the shower or in the job, whether in a
kitchen or on a tractor. It includes both the formal learning that
takes place in schools and the whole universe of informal
learning. The agents of education can range from a revered
grandparent to the people debating politics on the radio, from a
child to a distinguished scientist. Whereas schooling has a
certain predictability, education quite often produces surprises.
A chance conversation with a stranger may lead a person to
discover how little is known of other religions. People are
engaged in education from infancy on. Education, then, is a very
broad, inclusive term. It is a lifelong process, a process that
starts long before the start of school, and one that should be an
integral part of one’s entire life.
Schooling, on the other hand, is a specific, formalized process,
whose general pattern varies little from one setting to the next.
Throughout a country, children arrive at school at approximately
the same time, take assigned seats, are taught by an adult, use
similar textbooks, do homework, take exams, and so on. The
slices of reality that are to be learned, whether they are the
alphabet or an understanding of the working of government, have
usually been limited by the boundaries of the subject being
taught. For example, high school students know that there not
likely to find out in their classes the truth about political
problems in their communities or what the newest filmmakers
are experimenting with. There are definite conditions
surrounding the formalized process of schooling.
03 The Definition of “Price”
Prices determine how resources are to be used. They are also
the means by which products and services that are in limited
supply are rationed among buyers. The price system of the
United States is a complex network composed of the prices of all
the products bought and sold in the economy as well as those of
a myriad of services, including labor, professional, transportation,
and public-utility services. The interrelationships of all these
prices make up the “system” of prices. The price of any
particular product or service is linked to a broad, complicated
system of prices in which everything seems to depend more or
less upon everything else.
If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to
define “price”, many would reply that price is an amount of
money paid by the buyer to the seller of a product or service or,
in other words that price is the money values of a product or
service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is,
of course, valid as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of
a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount
of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the seller
should be familiar with not only the money amount, but with the
amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged,
the time and place at which the exchange will take place and
payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit
terms and discounts that apply to the transaction, guarantees on
the product or service, delivery terms, return privileges, and
other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should be
fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total “package”
being exchanged for the asked-for amount of money in order that
they may evaluate a given price.
04 Electricity
The modern age is an age of electricity. People are so used to
electric lights, radio, televisions, and telephones that it is hard to
imagine what life would be like without them. When there is a
power failure, people grope about in flickering candlelight, cars
hesitate in the streets because there are no traffic lights to guide
them, and food spoils in silent refrigerators.
Yet, people began to understand how electricity works only a
little more than two centuries ago. Nature has apparently been
experimenting in this field for million of years. Scientists are
discovering more and more that the living world may hold many
interesting secrets of electricity that could benefit humanity.
All living cell send out tiny pulses of electricity. As the heart
beats, it sends out pulses of record; they form an
electrocardiogram, which a doctor can study to determine how
well the heart is working. The brain, too, sends out brain waves
of electricity, which can be recorded in an electroencephalogram.
The electric currents generated by most living cells are
extremely small - often so small that sensitive instruments are
needed to record them. But in some animals, certain muscle cells
have become so specialized as electrical generators that they do
not work as muscle cells at all. When large numbers of these cell
are linked together, the effects can be astonishing.
The electric eel is an amazing storage battery. It can seed a jolt
of as much as eight hundred volts of electricity through the water
in which it live. (An electric house current is only one hundred
twenty volts.) As many as four-fifths of all the cells in the electric
eel’s body are specialized for generating electricity, and the
strength of the shock it can deliver corresponds roughly to length
of its body.
05 The Beginning of Drama
There are many theories about the beginning of drama in ancient
Greece. The on most widely accepted today is based on the
assumption that drama evolved from ritual. The argument for this
view goes as follows. In the beginning, human beings viewed the
natural forces of the world-even the seasonal changes-as
unpredictable, and they sought through various means to control
these unknown and feared powers. Those measures which
appeared to bring the desired results were then retained and
repeated until they hardened into fixed rituals. Eventually stories
arose which explained or veiled the mysteries of the rites. As
time passed some rituals were abandoned, but the stories, later
called myths, persisted and provided material for art and drama.
Those who believe that drama evolved out of ritual also argue
that those rites contained the seed of theater because music,
dance, masks, and costumes were almost always used,
furthermore, a suitable site had to be provided for performances
and when the entire community did not participate, a clear
division was usually made between the \"acting area\" and the
\"auditorium.\" In addition, there were performers, and, since
considerable importance was attached to avoiding mistakes in
the enactment of rites, religious leaders usually assumed that
task. Wearing masks and costumes, they often impersonated
other people, animals, or supernatural beings, and mimed the
desired effect-success in hunt or battle, the coming rain, the
revival of the Sun-as an actor might. Eventually such dramatic
representations were separated from religious activities.
Another theory traces the theater’s origin from the human
interest in storytelling. According to this vies tales (about the
hunt, war, or other feats) are gradually elaborated, at first
through the use of impersonation, action, and dialogue by a
narrator and then through the assumption of each of the roles by
a different person. A closely related theory traces theater to
those dances that are primarily rhythmical and gymnastic or that
are imitations of animal movements and sounds.
06 Televisions
Television-----the most pervasive and persuasive of modern
technologies, marked by rapid change and growth-is moving into
a new era, an era of extraordinary sophistication and versatility,
which promises to reshape our lives and our world. It is an
electronic revolution of sorts, made possible by the marriage of
television and computer technologies.
The word \"television\", derived from its Greek (tele: distant) and
Latin (visio: sight) roots, can literally be interpreted as sight from
a distance. Very simply put, it works in this way: through a
sophisticated system of electronics, television provides the
capability of converting an image (focused on a special
photoconductive plate within a camera) into electronic impulses,
which can be sent through a wire or cable. These impulses, when
fed into a receiver (television set), can then be electronically
reconstituted into that same image.
Television is more than just an electronic system, however. It is
a means of expression, as well as a vehicle for communication,
and as such becomes a powerful tool for reaching other human
beings.
The field of television can be divided into two categories
determined by its means of transmission. First, there is
broadcast television, which reaches the masses through broadbased
airwave transmission of television signals. Second, there
is nonbroadcast television, which provides for the needs of
individuals or specific interest groups through controlled
transmission techniques.
Traditionally, television has been a medium of the masses. We
are most familiar with broadcast television because it has been
with us for about thirty-seven years in a form similar to what
exists today. During those years, it has been controlled, for the
most part, by the broadcast networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, who
have been the major purveyors of news, information, and
entertainment. These giants of broadcasting have actually
shaped not only television but our perception of it as well. We
have come to look upon the picture tube as a source of
entertainment, placing our role in this dynamic medium as the
passive viewer.
07 Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie, known as the King of Steel, built the steel
industry in the United States, and, in the process, became one of
the wealthiest men in America. His success resulted in part from
his ability to sell the product and in part from his policy of
expanding during periods of economic decline, when most of his
competitors were reducing their investments.
Carnegie believed that individuals should progress through hard
work, but he also felt strongly that the wealthy should use their
fortunes for the benefit of society. He opposed charity, preferring
instead to provide educational opportunities that would allow
others to help themselves. \"He who dies rich, dies disgraced,\" he
often said.
Among his more noteworthy contributions to society are those
that bear his name, including the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh,
which has a library, a museum of fine arts, and a museum of
national history. He also founded a school of technology that is
now part of Carnegie-Mellon University. Other philanthropic gifts
are the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to promote
understanding between nations, the
Carnegie Institute of Washington to fund scientific research, and
Carnegie Hall to provide a center for the arts.
Few Americans have been left untouched by Andrew Carnegie’s
generosity. His contributions of more than five million dollars
established 2,500 libraries in small communities throughout the
country and formed the nucleus of the public library system that
we all enjoy today.
08 American Revolution
The American Revolution was not a sudden and violent
overturning of the political and social framework, such as later
occurred in France and Russia, when both were already
independent nations. Significant changes were ushered in, but
they were not breathtaking. What happened was accelerated
evolution rather than outright revolution. During the conflict itself
people went on working and praying, marrying and playing. Most
of them were not seriously disturbed by the actual fighting, and
many of the more isolated communities scarcely knew that a war
was on.
America’s War of Independence heralded the birth of three
modern nations. One was Canada, which received its first large
influx of English-speaking population from the thousands of
loyalists who fled there from the United States. Another was
Australia, which became a penal colony now that America was
no longer available for prisoners and debtors. The third
newcomer-the United States-based itself squarely on republican
principles.
Yet even the political overturn was not so revolutionary as one
might suppose. In some states, notably Connecticut and Rhode
Island, the war largely ratified a colonial self-rule already
existing. British officials, everywhere ousted, were replaced by a
home-grown governing class, which promptly sought a local
substitute for king and Parliament.
09 Suburbanization
If by \"suburb\" is meant an urban margin that grows more rapidly
than its already developed interior, the process of
suburbanization began during the emergence of the industrial
city in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Before that
period the city was a small highly compact cluster in which
people moved about on foot and goods were conveyed by horse
and cart. But the early factories built in the 1840’s were located
along waterways and near railheads at the edges of cities, and
housing was needed for the thousands of people drawn by the
prospect of employment. In time, the factories were surrounded
by proliferating mill towns of apartments and row houses that
abutted the older, main cities. As a defense against this
encroachment and to enlarge their tax bases, the cities
appropriated their industrial neighbors. In 1854, for example, the
city of Philadelphia annexed most of Philadelphia County. Similar
municipal maneuvers took place in Chicago and in New York.
Indeed, most great cities of the United States achieved such
status only by incorporating the communities along their borders.
With the acceleration of industrial growth came acute urban
crowding and accompanying social stress-conditions that began
to approach disastrous proportions when, in 1888, the first
commercially successful electric traction line was developed.
Within a few years the horse-drawn trolleys were retired and
electric streetcar networks crisscrossed and connected every
major urban area, fostering a wave of suburbanization that
transformed the compact industrial city into a dispersed
metropolis. This first phase of mass-scale suburbanization was
reinforced by the simultaneous emergence of the urban Middle
Class, whose desires for homeownership in neighborhoods far
from the aging inner city were satisfied by the developers of
single-family housing tracts.
10 Types of Speech
Standard usage includes those words and expressions
understood, used, and accepted by a majority of the speakers of
a language in any situation regardless of the level of formality. As
such, these words and expressions are well defined and listed in
standard dictionaries. Colloquialisms, on the other hand, are
familiar words and idioms that are understood by almost all
speakers of a language and used in informal speech or writing,
but not considered appropriate for more formal situations. Almost
all idiomatic expressions are colloquial language. Slang, however,
refers to words and expressions understood by a large number of
speakers but not accepted as good, formal usage by the majority.
Colloquial expressions and even slang may be found in standard
dictionaries but will be so identified. Both colloquial usage and
slang are more common in speech than in writing.
Colloquial speech often passes into standard speech. Some slang
also passes into standard speech, but other slang expressions
enjoy momentary popularity followed by obscurity. In some cases,
the majority never accepts certain slang phrases but
nevertheless retains them in their collective memories. Every
generation seems to require its own set of words to describe
familiar objects and events. It has been pointed out by a number
of linguists that three cultural conditions are necessary for the
creation of a large body of slang expressions. First, the
introduction and acceptance of new objects and situations in the
society; second, a diverse population with a large number of
subgroups; third, association among the subgroups and the
majority population.
Finally, it is worth noting that the terms \"standard\" \"colloquial\"
and \"slang\" exist only as abstract labels for scholars who study
language. Only a tiny number of the speakers of any language
will be aware that they are using colloquial or slang expressions.
Most speakers of English will, during appropriate situations,
select and use all three types of expressions.
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11 Archaeology
Archaeology is a source of history, not just a bumble auxiliary
discipline. Archaeological data are historical documents in their
own right, not mere illustrations to written texts, Just as much
as any other historian, an archaeologist studies and tries to
reconstitute the process that has created the human world in
which we live - and us ourselves in so far as we are each
creatures of our age and social environment. Archaeological data
are all changes in the material world resulting from human action
or, more succinctly, the fossilized results of human behavior. The
sum total of these constitutes what may be called the
archaeological record. This record exhibits certain peculiarities
and deficiencies the consequences of which produce a rather
superficial contrast between archaeological history and the more
familiar kind based upon written records.
Not all human behavior fossilizes. The words I utter and you hear
as vibrations in the air are certainly human changes in the
material world and may be of great historical significance. Yet
they leave no sort of trace in the archaeological records unless
they are captured by a Dictaphone or written down by a clerk.
The movement of troops on the battlefield may "change the
course of history," but this is equally ephemeral from the
archaeologist’s standpoint. What are perhaps worse, most
organic materials are perishable. Everything made of wood, hide,
wool, linen, grass, hair, and similar materials will decay and
vanish in dust in a few years or centuries, save under very
exceptional conditions. In a relatively brief period the
archaeological record is reduce to mere scraps of stone, bone,
glass, metal, and earthenware. Still modern archaeology, by
applying appropriate techniques and comparative methods, aided
by a few lucky finds from peat-bogs, deserts, and frozen soils, is
able to fill up a good deal of the gap.
12 Museums
From Boston to Los Angeles, from New York City to Chicago to
Dallas, museums are either planning, building, or wrapping up
wholesale expansion programs. These programs already have
radically altered facades and floor plans or are expected to do so
in the not-too-distant future.
In New York City alone, six major institutions have spread up and
out into the air space and neighborhoods around them or are
preparing to do so.
The reasons for this confluence of activity are complex, but one
factor is a consideration everywhere - space. With collections
expanding, with the needs and functions of museums changing,
empty space has become a very precious commodity.
Probably nowhere in the country is this more true than at the
Philadelphia Museum of Art, which has needed additional space
for decades and which received its last significant facelift ten
years ago. Because of the space crunch, the Art Museum has
become increasingly cautious in considering acquisitions and
donations of art, in some cases passing up opportunities to
strengthen its collections.
Deaccessing - or selling off - works of art has taken on new
importance because of the museum’s space problems. And
increasingly, curators have been forced to juggle gallery space,
rotating one masterpiece into public view while another is sent
to storage.
Despite the clear need for additional gallery and storage space,
however," the museum has no plan, no plan to break out of its
envelope in the next fifteen years," according to Philadelphia
Museum of Art’s president.
13 Skyscrapers and Environment
In the late 1960’s, many people in North America turned their
attention to environmental problems, and new steel-and-glass
skyscrapers were widely criticized. Ecologists pointed out that a
cluster of tall buildings in a city often overburdens public
transportation and parking lot capacities.
Skyscrapers are also lavish consumers, and wasters, of electric
power. In one recent year, the addition of 17 million square feet
of skyscraper office space in New York City raised the peak daily
demand for electricity by 120, 000 kilowatts-enough to supply the
entire city of Albany, New York, for a day.
Glass-walled skyscrapers can be especially wasteful. The heat
loss (or gain)through a wall of half-inch plate glass is more than
ten times that through a typical masonry wall filled with
insulation board. To lessen the strain on heating and airconditioning
equipment, builders of skyscrapers have begun to
use double-glazed panels of glass, and reflective glasses coated
with silver or gold mirror films that reduce glare as well as heat
gain. However, mirror-walled skyscrapers raise the temperature
of the surrounding air and affect neighboring buildings.
Skyscrapers put a severe strain on a city’s sanitation facilities,
too. If fully occupied, the two World Trade Center towers in New
York City would alone generate 2.25 million gallons of raw
sewage each year-as much as a city the size of Stanford,
Connecticut , which has a population of more than 109, 000.
14 A Rare Fossil Record
The preservation of embryos and juveniles is a rate occurrence in
the fossil record. The tiny, delicate skeletons are usually
scattered by scavengers or destroyed by weathering before they
can be fossilized. Ichthyosaurs had a higher chance of being
preserved than did terrestrial creatures because, as marine
animals, they tended to live in environments less subject to
erosion. Still, their fossilization required a suite of factors: a slow
rate of decay of soft tissues, little scavenging by other animals, a
lack of swift currents and waves to jumble and carry away small
bones, and fairly rapid burial. Given these factors, some areas
have become a treasury of well-preserved ichthyosaur fossils.
The deposits at Holzmaden, Germany, present an interesting
case for analysis. The ichthyosaur remains are found in black,
bituminous marine shales deposited about 190 million years ago.
Over the years, thousands of specimens of marine reptiles, fish
and invertebrates have been recovered from these rocks. The
quality of preservation is outstanding, but what is even more
impressive is the number of ichthyosaur fossils containing
preserved embryos. Ichthyosaurs with embryos have been
reported from 6 different levels of the shale in a small area
around Holzmaden, suggesting that a specific site was used by
large numbers of ichthyosaurs repeatedly over time. The embryos
are quite advanced in their physical development; their paddles,
for example, are already well formed. One specimen is even
preserved in the birth canal. In addition, the shale contains the
remains of many newborns that are between 20 and 30 inches
long.
Why are there so many pregnant females and young at
Holzmaden when they are so rare elsewhere? The quality of
preservation is almost unmatched and quarry operations have
been carried out carefully with an awareness of the value of the
fossils. But these factors do not account for the interesting
question of how there came to be such a concentration of
pregnant ichthyosaurs in a particular place very close to their
time of giving birth.
15 The Nobel Academy
For the last 82years, Sweden’s Nobel Academy has decided who
will receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, thereby determining
who will be elevated from the great and the near great to the
immortal. But today the Academy is coming under heavy
criticism both from the without and from within. Critics contend
that the selection of the winners often has less to do with true
writing ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the
Academy and of Sweden itself. According to Ingmar Bjorksten,
the cultural editor for one of the country’s two major newspapers,
the prize continues to represent "what people call a very
Swedish exercise: reflecting Swedish tastes."
The Academy has defended itself against such charges of
provincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical
distance from the great literary capitals of the world actually
serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This may
well be true, but critics respond that this very distance may also
be responsible for the Academy’s inability to perceive accurately
authentic trends in the literary world.
Regardless of concerns over the selection process, however, it
seems that the prize will continue to survive both as an indicator
of the literature that we most highly praise, and as an elusive
goal that writers seek. If for no other reason, the prize will
continue to be desirable for the financial rewards that
accompany it; not only is the cash prize itself considerable, but it
also dramatically increases sales of an author’s books.
16. the war between Britain and France
In the late eighteenth century, battles raged in almost every
corner of Europe, as well as in the Middle East, South Africa, the
West Indies, and Latin America. In reality, however, there was
only one major war during this time, the war between Britain and
France. All other battles were ancillary to this larger conflict, and
were often at least partially related to its antagonist’ goals and
strategies. France sought total domination of Europe. This goal
was obstructed by British independence and Britain’s efforts
throughout the continent to thwart Napoleon; through treaties.
Britain built coalitions (not dissimilar in concept to today’s NATO)
guaranteeing British participation in all major European conflicts.
These two antagonists were poorly matched, insofar as they had
very unequal strengths; France was predominant on land, Britain
at sea. The French knew that, short of defeating the British navy,
their only hope of victory was to close all the ports of Europe to
British ships. Accordingly, France set out to overcome Britain by
extending its military domination from Moscow t Lisbon, from
Jutland to Caldaria. All of this entailed tremendous risk, because
France did not have the military resources to control this much
territory and still protect itself and maintain order at home.
French strategists calculated that a navy of 150 ships would
provide the force necessary to defeat the British navy. Such a
force would give France a three-to-two advantage over Britain.
This advantage was deemed necessary because of Britain’s
superior sea skills and technology because of Britain’s superior
sea skills and technology, and also because Britain would be
fighting a defensive war, allowing it to win with fewer forces.
Napoleon never lost substantial impediment to his control of
Europe. As his force neared that goal, Napoleon grew
increasingly impatient and began planning an immediate attack.
17 Evolution of sleep
Sleep is very ancient. In the electroencephalographic sense we
share it with all the primates and almost all the other mammals
and birds: it may extend back as far as the reptiles.
There is some evidence that the two types of sleep, dreaming
and dreamless, depend on the life-style of the animal, and that
predators are statistically much more likely to dream than prey,
which are in turn much more likely to experience dreamless
sleep. In dream sleep, the animal is powerfully immobilized and
remarkably unresponsive to external stimuli. Dreamless sleep is
much shallower, and we have all witnessed cats or dogs cocking
their ears to a sound when apparently fast asleep. The fact that
deep dream sleep is rare among pray today seems clearly to be a
product of natural selection, and it makes sense that today,
when sleep is highly evolved, the stupid animals are less
frequently immobilized by deep sleep than the smart ones. But
why should they sleep deeply at all? Why should a state of such
deep immobilization ever have evolved?
Perhaps one useful hint about the original function of sleep is to
be found in the fact that dolphins and whales and aquatic
mammals in genera seem to sleep very little. There is, by and
large, no place to hide in the ocean. Could it be that, rather than
increasing an animal’s vulnerability, the University of Florida and
Ray Middies of London University have suggested this to be the
case. It is conceivable that animals who are too stupid to be
quite on their own initiative are, during periods of high risk,
immobilized by the implacable arm of sleep. The point seems
particularly clear for the young of predatory animals. This is an
interesting notion and probably at least partly true.
18 Modern American Universities
Before the 1850’s, the United States had a number of small
colleges, most of them dating from colonial days. They were
small, church connected institutions whose primary concern was
to shape the moral character of their students.
Throughout Europe, institutions of higher learning had developed,
bearing the ancient name of university. In German university was
concerned primarily with creating and spreading knowledge, not
morals. Between mid-century and the end of the 1800’s, more
than nine thousand young Americans, dissatisfied with their
training at home, went to Germany for advanced study. Some of
them return to become presidents of venerable colleges-----
Harvard, Yale, Columbia---and transform them into modern
universities. The new presidents broke all ties with the churches
and brought in a new kind of faculty. Professors were hired for
their knowledge of a subject, not because they were of the
proper faith and had a strong arm for disciplining students. The
new principle was that a university was to create knowledge as
well as pass it on, and this called for a faculty composed of
teacher-scholars. Drilling and learning by rote were replaced by
the German method of lecturing, in which the professor’s own
research was presented in class. Graduate training leading to the
Ph.D., an ancient German degree signifying the highest level of
advanced scholarly attainment, was introduced. With the
establishment of the seminar system, graduate student learned
to question, analyze, and conduct their own research.
At the same time, the new university greatly expanded in size
and course offerings, breaking completely out of the old,
constricted curriculum of mathematics, classics, rhetoric, and
music. The president of Harvard pioneered the elective system,
by which students were able to choose their own course of study.
The notion of major fields of study emerged. The new goal was to
make the university relevant to the real pursuits of the world.
Paying close heed to the practical needs of society, the new
universities trained men and women to work at its tasks, with
engineering students being the most characteristic of the new
regime. Students were also trained as economists, architects,
agriculturalists, social welfare workers, and teachers.
19 children’s numerical skills
People appear to born to compute. The numerical skills of
children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to
imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their
growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the
table with impress accuracy---one knife, one spoon, one fork, for
each of the five chairs.
Soon they are capable of nothing that they have placed five
knives, spoons and forks on the table and, a bit later, that this
amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered
addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost
reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert
island at birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could
enter a second enter a second-grade mathematics class without
any serious problems of intellectual adjustment.
Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of
cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily
learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were
observed as they slowly grasped-----or, as the case might be,
bumped into----- concepts that adults take for quantity is
unchanged as water pours from a short glass into a tall thin one.
Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children,
asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of
blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed into finding the total.
Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics
are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also
suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers------the idea
of a oneness, a twoness, a threeness that applies to any class of
objects and is a prerequisite for doing anything more
mathematically demanding than setting a table-----is itself far
from innate
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20 The Historical Significance of American Revolution
The ways of history are so intricate and the motivations of
human actions so complex that it is always hazardous to attempt
to represent events covering a number of years, a multiplicity of
persons, and distant localities as the expression of one
intellectual or social movement; yet the historical process which
culminated in the ascent of Thomas Jefferson to the presidency
can be regarded as the outstanding example not only of the birth
of a new way of life but of nationalism as a new way of life. The
American Revolution represents the link between the
seventeenth century, in which modern England became
conscious of itself, and the awakening of modern Europe at the
end of the eighteenth century. It may seem strange that the
march of history should have had to cross the Atlantic Ocean, but
only in the North American colonies could a struggle for civic
liberty lead also to the foundation of a new nation. Here, in the
popular rising against a “tyrannical” government, the fruits were
more than the securing of a freer constitution. They included the
growth of a nation born in liberty by the will of the people, not
from the roots of common descent, a geographic entity, or the
ambitions of king or dynasty. With the American nation, for the
first time, a nation was born, not in the dim past of history but
before the eyes of the whole world.
21 The Origin of Sports
When did sport begin? If sport is, in essence, play, the claim
might be made that sport is much older than humankind, for , as
we all have observed, the beasts play. Dogs and cats wrestle and
play ball games. Fishes and birds dance. The apes have simple,
pleasurable games. Frolicking infants, school children playing
tag, and adult arm wrestlers are demonstrating strong,
transgenerational and transspecies bonds with the universe of
animals - past, present, and future. Young animals, particularly,
tumble, chase, run wrestle, mock, imitate, and laugh (or so it
seems) to the point of delighted exhaustion. Their play, and ours,
appears to serve no other purpose than to give pleasure to the
players, and apparently, to remove us temporarily from the
anguish of life in earnest.
Some philosophers have claimed that our playfulness is the most
noble part of our basic nature. In their generous conceptions,
play harmlessly and experimentally permits us to put our creative
forces, fantasy, and imagination into action. Play is release from
the tedious battles against scarcity and decline which are the
incessant, and inevitable, tragedies of life. This is a grand
conception that excites and provokes. The holders of this view
claim that the origins of our highest accomplishments ---- liturgy,
literature, and law ---- can be traced to a play impulse which,
paradoxically, we see most purely enjoyed by young beasts and
children. Our sports, in this rather happy, nonfatalistic view of
human nature, are more splendid creations of the nondatable,
transspecies play impulse.
22. Collectibles
Collectibles have been a part of almost every culture since
ancient times. Whereas some objects have been collected for
their usefulness, others have been selected for their aesthetic
beauty alone. In the United States, the kinds of collectibles
currently popular range from traditional objects such as stamps,
coins, rare books, and art to more recent items of interest like
dolls, bottles, baseball cards, and comic books.
Interest in collectibles has increased enormously during the past
decade, in part because some collectibles have demonstrated
their value as investments. Especially during cycles of high
inflation, investors try to purchase tangibles that will at least
retain their current market values. In general, the most
traditional collectibles will be sought because they have
preserved their value over the years, there is an organized
auction market for them, and they are most easily sold in the
event that cash is needed. Some examples of the most stable
collectibles are old masters, Chinese ceramics, stamps, coins,
rare books, antique jewelry, silver, porcelain, art by well-known
artists, autographs, and period furniture. Other items of more
recent interest include old photograph records, old magazines,
post cards, baseball cards, art glass, dolls, classic cars, old
bottles, and comic books. These relatively new kinds of
collectibles may actually appreciate faster as short-term
investments, but may not hold their value as long-term
investments. Once a collectible has had its initial play, it
appreciates at a fairly steady rate, supported by an increasing
number of enthusiastic collectors competing for the limited
supply of collectibles that become increasingly more difficult to
locate.
23 Ford
Although Henry Ford’s name is closely associated with the
concept of mass production, he should receive equal credit for
introducing labor practices as early as 1913 that would be
considered advanced even by today’s standards. Safety
measures were improved, and the work day was reduced to eight
hours, compared with the ten-or twelve-hour day common at the
time. In order to accommodate the shorter work day, the entire
factory was converted from two to three shifts.
In addition, sick leaves as well as improved medical care for
those injured on the job were instituted. The Ford Motor Company
was one of the first factories to develop a technical school to
train specialized skilled laborers and an English language school
for immigrants. Some efforts were even made to hire the
handicapped and provide jobs for former convicts.
The most widely acclaimed innovation was the five-dollar-a-day
minimum wage that was offered in order to recruit and retain the
best mechanics and to discourage the growth of labor unions.
Ford explained the new wage policy in terms of efficiency and
profit sharing. He also mentioned the fact that his employees
would be able to purchase the automobiles that they produced -
in effect creating a market for the product. In order to qualify for
the minimum wage, an employee had to establish a decent home
and demonstrate good personal habits, including sobriety,
thriftiness, industriousness, and dependability. Although some
criticism was directed at Ford for involving himself too much in
the personal lives of his employees, there can be no doubt that,
at a time when immigrants were being taken advantage of in
frightful ways, Henry Ford was helping many people to establish
themselves in America.
24 Piano
The ancestry of the piano can be traced to the early keyboard
instruments of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries --- the spinet,
the dulcimer, and the virginal. In the seventeenth century the
organ, the clavichord, and the harpsichord became the chief
instruments of the keyboard group, a supremacy they maintained
until the piano supplanted them at the end of the eighteenth
century. The clavichord’s tone was metallic and never powerful;
nevertheless, because of the variety of tone possible to it, many
composers found the clavichord a sympathetic instrument for
intimate chamber music. The harpsichord with its bright,
vigorous tone was the favorite instrument for supporting the bass
of the small orchestra of the period and for concert use, but the
character of the tone could not be varied save by mechanical or
structural devices.
The piano was perfected in the early eighteenth century by a
harpsichord maker in Italy (though musicologists point out
several previous instances of the instrument). This instrument
was called a piano e forte (sort and loud), to indicate its dynamic
versatility; its strings were struck by a recoiling hammer with a
felt-padded head. The wires were much heavier in the earlier
instruments. A series of mechanical improvements continuing
well into the nineteenth century, including the introduction of
pedals to sustain tone or to soften it, the perfection of a metal
frame, and steel wire of the finest quality, finally produced an
instrument capable of myriad tonal effects from the most
delicate harmonies to an almost orchestral fullness of sound,
from a liquid, singing tone to a sharp, percussive brilliance.
25. Movie Music
Accustomed though we are to speaking of the films made before
1927 as“silent”, the film has never been, in the full sense of the
word, silent. From the very beginning, music was regarded as an
indispensable accompaniment; when the Lumiere films were
shown at the first public film exhibition in the United States in
February 1896, they were accompanied by piano improvisations
on popular tunes. At first, the music played bore no special
relationship to the films; an accompaniment of any kind was
sufficient. Within a very short time, however, the incongruity of
playing lively music to a solemn film became apparent, and film
pianists began to take some care in matching their pieces to the
mood of the film.
As movie theaters grew in number and importance, a violinist,
and perhaps a cellist, would be added to the pianist in certain
cases, and in the larger movie theaters small orchestras were
formed. For a number of years the selection of music for each
film program rested entirely in the hands of the conductor or
leader of the orchestra, and very often the principal qualification
for holding such a position was not skill or taste so much as the
ownership of a large personal library of musical pieces. Since the
conductor seldom saw the films until the night before they were
to be shown (if indeed, the conductor was lucky enough to see
them then), the musical arrangement was normally improvised in
the greatest hurry.
To help meet this difficulty, film distributing companies started
the practice of publishing suggestions for musical
accompaniments. In 1909, for example, the Edison Company
began issuing with their films such indications of mood as
“pleasant”, “sad”, “lively”. The suggestions became more explicit,
and so emerged the musical cue sheet containing indications of
mood, the titles of suitable pieces of music, and precise
directions to show where one piece led into the next.
Certain films had music especially composed for them. The most
famous of these early special scores was that composed and
arranged for D.W Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation, which was
released in 1915.
26. International Business and Cross-cultural Communication
The increase in international business and in foreign investment
has created a need for executives with knowledge of foreign
languages and skills in cross-cultural communication. Americans,
however, have not been well trained in either area and,
consequently, have not enjoyed the same level of success in
negotiation in an international arena as have their foreign
counterparts.
Negotiating is the process of communicating back and forth for
the purpose of reaching an agreement. It involves persuasion and
compromise, but in order to participate in either one, the
negotiators must understand the ways in which people are
persuaded and how compromise is reached within the culture of
the negotiation.
In many international business negotiations abroad, Americans
are perceived as wealthy and impersonal. It often appears to the
foreign negotiator that the American represents a large multimillion-
dollar corporation that can afford to pay the price without
bargaining further. The American negotiator’s role becomes that
of an impersonal purveyor of information and cash.
In studies of American negotiators abroad, several traits have
been identified that may serve to confirm this stereotypical
perception, while undermining the negotiator’s position. Two
traits in particular that cause cross-cultural misunderstanding
are directness and impatience on the part of the American
negotiator. Furthermore, American negotiators often insist on
realizing short-term goals. Foreign negotiators, on the other hand,
may value the relationship established between negotiators and
may be willing to invest time in it for long- term benefits. In order
to solidify the relationship, they may opt for indirect interactions
without regard for the time involved in getting to know the other
negotiator.
27. Scientific Theories
In science, a theory is a reasonable explanation of observed
events that are related. A theory often involves an imaginary
model that helps scientists picture the way an observed event
could be produced. A good example of this is found in the kinetic
molecular theory, in which gases are pictured as being made up
of many small particles that are in constant motion.
A useful theory, in addition to explaining past observations, helps
to predict events that have not as yet been observed. After a
theory has been publicized, scientists design experiments to test
the theory. If observations confirm the scientist’s predictions, the
theory is supported. If observations do not confirm the
predictions, the scientists must search further. There may be a
fault in the experiment, or the theory may have to be revised or
rejected.
Science involves imagination and creative thinking as well as
collecting information and performing experiments. Facts by
themselves are not science. As the mathematician Jules Henri
Poincare said, “Science is built with facts just as a house is built
with bricks, but a collection of facts cannot be called science
any more than a pile of bricks can be called a house.”
Most scientists start an investigation by finding out what other
scientists have learned about a particular problem. After known
facts have been gathered, the scientist comes to the part of the
investigation that requires considerable imagination. Possible
solutions to the problem are formulated. These possible solutions
are called hypotheses.
In a way, any hypothesis is a leap into the unknown. It extends
the scientist’s thinking beyond the known facts. The scientist
plans experiments, performs calculations, and makes
observations to test hypotheses. Without hypothesis, further
investigation lacks purpose and direction. When hypotheses are
confirmed, they are incorporated into theories.
28 Changing Roles of Public Education
One of the most important social developments that helped to
make possible a shift in thinking about the role of public
education was the effect of the baby boom of the 1950’s and
1960’s on the schools. In the 1920’s, but especially in the
Depression conditions of the 1930’s, the United States
experienced a declining birth rate --- every thousand women aged
fifteen to forty-four gave birth to about 118 live children in 1920,
89.2 in 1930, 75.8 in 1936, and 80 in 1940. With the growing
prosperity brought on by the Second World War and the economic
boom that followed it young people married and established
households earlier and began to raise larger families than had
their predecessors during the Depression. Birth rates rose to 102
per thousand in 1946,106.2 in 1950, and 118 in 1955. Although
economics was probably the most important determinant, it is
not the only explanation for the baby boom. The increased value
placed on the idea of the family also helps to explain this rise in
birth rates. The baby boomers began streaming into the first
grade by the mid 1940’s and became a flood by 1950. The public
school system suddenly found itself overtaxed. While the number
of schoolchildren rose because of wartime and postwar
conditions, these same conditions made the schools even less
prepared to cope with the
food. The wartime economy meant that few new schools were
built between 1940 and 1945. Moreover, during the war and in
the boom times that followed, large numbers of teachers left
their profession for better- paying jobs elsewhere in the economy.
Therefore in the 1950’s and 1960’s, the baby boom hit an
antiquated and inadequate school system. Consequently, the
“ custodial rhetoric” of the 1930’s and early 1940’s no longer
made sense that is, keeping youths aged sixteen and older out of
the labor market by keeping them in school could no longer be a
high priority for an institution unable to find space and staff to
teach younger children aged five to sixteen. With the baby boom,
the focus of educators and of laymen interested in education
inevitably turned toward the lower grades and back to basic
academic skills and discipline. The system no longer had much
interest in offering nontraditional, new, and extra services to
older youths.
29 Telecommuting
Telecommuting-- substituting the computer for the trip to the job
---- has been hailed as a solution to all kinds of problems related
to office work.
For workers it promises freedom from the office, less time
wasted in traffic, and help with child-care conflicts. For
management, telecommuting helps keep high performers on
board, minimizes tardiness and absenteeism by eliminating
commutes, allows periods of solitude for high-concentration
tasks, and provides scheduling flexibility. In some areas, such as
Southern California and Seattle, Washington, local governments
are encouraging companies to start telecommuting programs in
order to reduce rush-hour congestion and improve air quality.
But these benefits do not come easily. Making a telecommuting
program work requires careful planning and an understanding of
the differences between telecommuting realities and popular
images.
Many workers are seduced by rosy illusions of life as a
telecommuter. A computer programmer from New York City
moves to the tranquil Adirondack Mountains and stays in contact
with her office via computer. A manager comes in to his office
three days a week and works at home the other two. An
accountant stays home to care for her sick child; she hooks up
her telephone modern connections and does office work between
calls to the doctor.
These are powerful images, but they are a limited reflection of
reality. Telecommuting workers soon learn that it is almost
impossible to concentrate on work and care for a young child at
the same time. Before a certain age, young children cannot
recognize, much less respect, the necessary boundaries between
work and family. Additional child support is necessary if the
parent is to get any work done.
Management too must separate the myth from the reality.
Although the media has paid a great deal of attention to
telecommuting in most cases it is the employee’s situation, not
the availability of technology that precipitates a telecommuting
arrangement.
That is partly why, despite the widespread press coverage, the
number of companies with work-at-home programs or policy
guidelines remains small.
30 The origin of Refrigerators
By the mid-nineteenth century, the term “icebox” had entered the
American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the
diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew
with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and
hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat,
fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865), as ice was
used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use.
Even before 1880, half of the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia,
and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago,
went to families for their own use. This had become possible
because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor
of the modern refrigerator, had been invented.
Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now
suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the
physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration,
was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox
was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course
mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the
cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included
wrapping up the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its
job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors
achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed
for an efficient icebox.
But as early as 1803, and ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas
Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about
twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village
of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox
of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that
customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of
his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh
and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox,
Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel
to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.
31 British Columbia
British Columbia is the third largest Canadian provinces, both in
area and population. It is nearly 1.5 times as large as Texas, and
extends 800 miles (1,280km) north from the United States border.
It includes Canada’s entire west coast and the islands just off the
coast.
Most of British Columbia is mountainous, with long rugged ranges
running north and south. Even the coastal islands are the
remains of a mountain range that existed thousands of years ago.
During the last Ice Age, this range was scoured by glaciers until
most of it was beneath the sea. Its peaks now show as islands
scattered along the coast.
The southwestern coastal region has a humid mild marine
climate. Sea winds that blow inland from the west are warmed by
a current of warm water that flows through the Pacific Ocean. As
a result, winter temperatures average above freezing and
summers are mild. These warm western winds also carry
moisture from the ocean.
Inland from the coast, the winds from the Pacific meet the
mountain barriers of the coastal ranges and the Rocky Mountains.
As they rise to cross the mountains, the winds are cooled, and
their moisture begins to fall as rain. On some of the western
slopes almost 200 inches (500cm) of rain fall each year.
More than half of British Columbia is heavily forested. On
mountain slopes that receive plentiful rainfall, huge Douglas firs
rise in towering columns. These forest giants often grow to be as
much as 300 feet (90m) tall, with diameters up to 10 feet (3m).
More lumber is produced from these trees than from any other
kind of tree in North America. Hemlock, red cedar, and balsam fir
are among the other trees found in British Columbia.
32 Botany
Botany, the study of plants, occupies a peculiar position in the
history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years it was
the one field of awareness about which humans had anything
more than the vaguest of insights. It is impossible to know today
just what our Stone Age ancestors knew about plants, but form
what we can observe of pre- industrial societies that still exist a
detailed learning of plants and their properties must be
extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food
pyramid for all living things even for other plants. They have
always been enormously important to the welfare of people not
only for food, but also for clothing, weapons, tools, dyes,
medicines, shelter, and a great many other purposes. Tribes
living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognize literally
hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them,
botany, as such, has no name and is probably not even
recognized as a special branch of “knowledge” at all.
Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther
away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less
distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes
unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge,
and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an
orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East
about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be
harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next
season the first great step in a new association of plants and
humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from them
flowed the marvel of agriculture: cultivated crops. From then on,
humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled
production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a
little there from many varieties that grew wild- and the
accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of
experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin to
fade away.
33 Plankton
Scattered through the seas of the world are billions of tons of
small plants and animals called plankton. Most of these plants
and animals are too small for the human eye to see. They drift
about lazily with the currents, providing a basic food for many
larger animals.
Plankton has been described as the equivalent of the grasses
that grow on the dry land continents, and the comparison is an
appropriate one. In potential food value, however, plankton far
outweighs that of the land grasses. One scientist has estimated
that while grasses of the world produce about 49 billion tons of
valuable carbohydrates each year, the sea’s plankton generates
more than twice as much.
Despite its enormous food potential, little effect was made until
recently to farm plankton as we farm grasses on land. Now
marine scientists have at last begun to study this possibility,
especially as the sea’s resources loom even more important as a
means of feeding an expanding world population.
No one yet has seriously suggested that “plankton-burgers” may
soon become popular around the world. As a possible farmed
supplementary food source, however, plankton is gaining
considerable interest among marine scientists.
One type of plankton that seems to have great harvest
possibilities is a tiny shrimp-like creature called krill. Growing to
two or three inches long, krill provides the major food for the
great blue whale, the largest animal to ever inhabit the Earth.
Realizing that this whale may grow to 100 feet and weigh 150
tons at maturity, it is not surprising that each one
34 Raising Oysters
In the oysters were raised in much the same way as dirt farmers
raised tomatoes- by transplanting them. First, farmers selected
the oyster bed, cleared the bottom of old shells and other debris,
then scattered clean shells about. Next, they ”planted” fertilized
oyster eggs, which within two or three weeks hatched into larvae.
The larvae drifted until they attached themselves to the clean
shells on the bottom. There they remained and in time grew into
baby oysters called seed or spat. The spat grew larger by
drawing in seawater from which they derived microscopic
particles of food. Before long, farmers gathered the baby oysters,
transplanted them once more into another body of water to
fatten them up.
Until recently the supply of wild oysters and those crudely
farmed were more than enough to satisfy people’s needs. But
today the delectable seafood is no longer available in abundance.
The problem has become so serious that some oyster beds have
vanished entirely.
Fortunately, as far back as the early 1900’s marine biologists
realized that if new measures were not taken, oysters would
become extinct or at best a luxury food. So they set up wellequipped
hatcheries and went to work. But they did not have the
proper equipment or the skill to handle the eggs. They did not
know when, what, and how to feed the larvae. And they knew
little about the predators that attack and eat baby oysters by the
millions. They failed, but they doggedly kept at it. Finally, in the
1940’s a significant breakthrough was made.
The marine biologists discovered that by raising the temperature
of the water, they could induce oysters to spawn not only in the
summer but also in the fall, winter, and spring. Later they
developed a technique for feeding the larvae and rearing them to
spat. Going still further, they succeeded in breeding new strains
that were resistant to diseases, grew faster and larger, and
flourished in water of different salinities and temperatures. In
addition, the cultivated oysters tasted better!
35 Oil Refining
An important new industry, oil refining, grew after the Civil war.
Crude oil, or petroleum - a dark, thick ooze from the earth - had
been known for hundreds of years, but little use had ever been
made of it. In the 1850’s Samuel M. Kier, a manufacturer in
western Pennsylvania, began collecting the oil from local
seepages and refining it into kerosene. Refining, like smelting, is
a process of removing impurities from a raw material.
Kerosene was used to light lamps. It was a cheap substitute for
whale oil, which was becoming harder to get. Soon there was a
large demand for kerosene. People began to search for new
supplies of petroleum.
The first oil well was drilled by E.L. Drake, a retired railroad
conductor. In 1859 he began drilling in Titusville, Pennsylvania.
The whole venture seemed so impractical and foolish that
onlookers called it “Drake’s Folly”. But when he had drilled down
about 70 feet (21 meters), Drake struck oil. His well began to
yield 20 barrels of crude oil a day.
News of Drake’s success brought oil prospectors to the scene.
By the early 1860’s these wildcatters were drilling for “black
gold” all over western Pennsylvania. The boom rivaled the
California gold rush of 1848 in its excitement and Wild West
atmosphere. And it brought far more wealth to the prospectors
than any gold rush.
Crude oil could be refined into many products. For some years
kerosene continued to be the principal one. It was sold in
grocery stores and door-to-door. In the 1880’s refiners learned
how to make other petroleum products such as waxes and
lubricating oils. Petroleum was not then used to make gasoline or
heating oil.
36 Plate Tectonics and Sea-floor Spreading
The theory of plate tectonics describes the motions of the
lithosphere, the comparatively rigid outer layer of the Earth that
includes all the crust and part of the underlying mantle. The
lithosphere is divided into a few dozen plates of various sizes and
shapes, in general the plates are in motion with respect to one
another. A mid-ocean ridge is a boundary between plates where
new lithospheric material is injected from below. As the plates
diverge from a mid-ocean ridge they slide on a more
37 Icebergs
Icebergs are among nature’s most spectacular creations, and yet
most people have never seen one. A vague air of mystery
envelops them. They come into being ----- somewhere ------in
faraway, frigid waters, amid thunderous noise and splashing
turbulence, which in most cases no one hears or sees. They exist
only a short time and then slowly waste away just as unnoticed.
Objects of sheerest beauty they have been called. Appearing in
an endless variety of shapes, they may be dazzlingly white, or
they may be glassy blue, green or purple, tinted faintly of in
darker hues. They are
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