在九月的这一周中，
2016年9月10日下午场托福考试阅读解析
ETS首次安排了下午场的考试。本次考试整体难度一般。词汇题的单词都是基础词汇，很多词汇题都在以往考试中考过。大家平时一定要积累机经词汇。文章题材都较常见，分别是工业发展史，艺术类和生物类，都是真题考试中常见的题材，并在TPO模考软件中都有相似的阅读篇章，因此平时一定要关机真题回忆以及TPO模考软件上出现的题目。
2016年9月10日下午托福阅读词汇题：
ultimately=finally viable=capable of succeeding
constraint=limit hence=therefore abrupt=sudden
2016年9月10日下午托福阅读第一篇：
题材划分：工业发展史
主要内容：英国的工业革命。重复2016年9月10日上午场考试内容，主要说的是如何挖煤，蒸汽机的发明，煤的运输和铁路建造。 有些人认为是cotton machine促成英国的工业革命，但是这一点不足以促成。英国那时候挖煤供暖，后来伦敦煤挖光了，就开始去远处、深处挖，于是煤矿里有水，所以为了排水，就发明了steam engine，但是那时候的engine效率不高，不过反正煤有的是，效率不高但是利用很频繁。但是用于挖煤排水的engine用途很窄，也不是它促成的工业革命。真正促成的是engine在火车上的使用。为了把煤从远处运到伦敦，发明了火车，就能降低运输成本。同时纺纱机工业化后，也促成了织布机的工业化。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO-6 Powering the Industrial Revolution
TPO-26 Energy and the Industrial Revolution
TPO-34 The Development of Steam Power
相关文章：
The steam engine was one of the most important technologies of the Industrial Revolution, although steam did not replace water power in importance in Britain until after the Industrial Revolution. From Englishman Thomas Newcomen's atmospheric engine, of 1712, through major developments by Scottish inventor and mechanical engineer James Watt, the steam engine began to be used in many industrial settings, not just in mining, where the first engines had been used to pump water from deep workings. Early mills had run successfully with water power, but by using a steam engine a factory could be located anywhere, not just close to water. Water power varied with the seasons and was not available at times due to freezing, floods and dry spells.
In 1775 Watt formed an engine-building and engineering partnership with manufacturer Matthew Boulton. The partnership of Boulton & Watt became one of the most important businesses of the Industrial Revolution and served as a kind of creative technical centre for much of the British economy. The partners solved technical problems and spread the solutions to other companies. Similar firms did the same thing in other industries and were especially important in the machine tool industry. These interactions between companies were important because they reduced the amount of research time and expense that each business had to spend working with its own resources. The technological advances of the Industrial Revolution happened more quickly because firms often shared information, which they then could use to create new techniques or products.
From mines to mills, steam engines found many uses in a variety of industries. The introduction of steam engines improved productivity and technology, and allowed the creation of smaller and better engines. After Richard Trevithick's development of the high-pressure engine, transport-applications became possible, and steam engines found their way into boats, railways, farms and road vehicles. Steam engines are an example of how changes brought by industrialization led to even more changes in other areas.
The development of the stationary steam engine was an essential early element of the Industrial Revolution, however it should be remembered that for most of the period of the Industrial Revolution the majority of industries still relied on wind and water power as well as horse and man-power for driving small machines.
2016年9月10日下午托福阅读第二篇
题材划分：艺术发展类
主要内容：
电影的发展史。电影从默片发展到有声电影，以及讲到了某个俄国导演说他很会运用拍摄技巧。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO-12 Transition to Sound in Film
相关文章：
A Very Short History of the Transition from Silent to Sound Movies
by Emily Thompson
Emily Thompson 2011
In 1877, Thomas Edison invented the phonograph and for the first time ever, people could record sound, save it, then listen to it later at another time and place. To make a recording, a person spoke or sang into a big horn. This horn collected the sound energy and sent it to a needle, which wiggled up and down as if it were being tickled by the sound. As the needle wiggled, it cut a long wavy groove into a record made of soft wax, which was spun in a circle underneath the needle. After the recording was made, you could play the record back by placing the needle back at the start of the groove and spinning the record in circles again. This time, the needle rode the wavy groove like a roller coaster. As it moved up and down, it recreated the sounds that had been recorded earlier, and it sent them out of the horn for people to hear again. It seemed almost magical to hear a person's voice coming, not from their own mouth, but from the horn of a machine that remembered exactly what they said and that sounded just like they did.
In the 1890s, Edison invented moving pictures, or movies. A long strip of tiny photographs was captured on film by a special camera, so that each picture was just a little bit different from the ones before and after it. The strip of film was later run through another machine, a projector, that would blend the different pictures together to create the illusion of motion and project the movie onto a large screen in a theater. Edison thought that, if he could unite the sound of his phonograph with his moving pictures, he could create the illusion of life itself—a picture of a person that could move and speak, as if it were alive.
Unfortunately, these two inventions didn't want to work with each other in the way that Edison desired. It was very difficult to synchronize, or "sync," the different machines—to make them work precisely together—so that the recorded sounds of a person's voice would match the movements of their lips seen in the moving pictures. Also, the sound recordings were not very loud, so it was difficult for more than just a few people at a time to hear them.
2016年9月10日下午托福阅读第三篇
题材划分： 生物类文章
主要内容：
恐龙如何灭绝的三个理论。第一个说是因为基因突变;第二个说是气候变化引发的一系列连锁反应;第三个说的是海水咸度。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO-42 Explaining Dinosaur Extinction
TPO-48 Determining Dinosaur Diet
相关文章：
Scientists tend to huddle around one of two hypotheses that may explain the Cretaceous extinction: an extraterrestrial impact, such as an asteroid or comet, or a massive bout of volcanism. Either scenario would have choked the skies with debris that starved the Earth of the sun's energy, throwing a wrench in photosynthesis and sending destruction up and down the food chain. Once the dust settled, greenhouse gases locked in the atmosphere would have caused the temperature to soar, a swift climate swing to topple much of the life that survived the prolonged darkness.
Asteroid or Volcanoes?
The extraterrestrial impact theory stems from the discovery that a layer of rock dated precisely to the extinction event is rich in the metal iridium. This layer is found all over the world, on land and in the oceans. Iridium is rare on Earth but it's found in meteorites at the same concentration as in this layer. This led scientists to postulate that the iridium was scattered worldwide when a comet or asteroid struck somewhere on Earth and then vaporized. A 110-mile-wide (180-kilometer-wide) crater carved out of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, called Chicxulub, has since been found and dated to 65 million years ago. Many scientists believe the fallout from the impact killed the dinosaurs.
But Earth's core is also rich in iridium, and the core is the source of magma that some scientists say spewed out in vast, floodlike flows that piled up more than 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) thick over 1 million square miles (2.6 million square kilometers) of India. This bout of volcanism has also been dated to about 65 million years ago and would have spread the iridium around the world, along with sunlight-blocking dust and soot and greenhouse gases.
Both hypotheses have merit. Some scientists think both may have contributed to the extinction, and others suggest the real cause was a more gradual shift in climate and changing sea levels. Regardless of what caused the extinction, it marked the end of Tyrannosaurus rex's reign of terror and opened the door for mammals to rapidly diversify and evolve into newly opened niches.