下面的关于2016年8月27日
2016年8月27日托福阅读词汇题：黄色部分是词汇预测中有的
1.surplus=extra
2.disrupted=disordered
3.exclusively=only
4.regardless of=no matter
5.distinct=clear
6.adaptable=used with iron
7.immense=huge
8.surge=sudden increase
9.quantify=calculate
10.accelerated=speed up
11.capacity=full potential
12.cycle=repeat
2016年8月27日托福阅读第一篇 欧洲人口增加
原文回顾：欧洲经济发展相关，工业化和食物的增长促进了人口的增长。高速城市化：人们开始从乡下往城镇转移，因此带来了工作，生活资料等一系列的变化。细节讲到了熟练工和普通人的区别，考了两个题。最后讲到了人口的增加导致人均工资下降的问题。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO35-2 Population Growth in Nineteenth-century Europe
相关背景学习：
After a century of virtually no population growth, the countries of Western Europe experienced dramatic population increases between 1750 and 1800. Many countries doubled in size. In some countries, the growth continued through the nineteenth century. The population of Great Britain, for instance, doubled between 1750 and 1800 and then tripled between 1800 and 1900.
There were several reasons for the sudden increase. Medical advances and improved hygiene limited the devastation caused by epidemic diseases and plagues. The introduction of new food crops, most notably the potato, provided a better diet for the poor and reduced the incidence of famine. The combination of greater public order and fewer civil wars meant that life was less hazardous. The net result was a lower death rate and soaring populations.
The growing population, with a rising proportion of children to raise and older people to care for, put increased pressure on every aspect of society. Many peasants were no longer able to provide land for their children, who were forced to look for other ways to make their living. Small artisans in the cities suffered similar problems, unable to provide places for their children in their own workshops.
The exact relationship between population growth and industrialization is unclear, though the two are clearly intertwined. (Even countries that were late to industrialize shared in the general population increase, and its related problems.) What is clear is that the growth in population increased the demand for both food and manufactured goods and provided an abundance of cheap labor to produce them.
2016年8月27日托福阅读第二篇 非洲铁技术的发展
原文回顾：非洲铁的发展，非洲曾经是被殖民的地方，殖民者大量开采非洲的铁矿资源，并且他们在非洲大规模的用铁矿资源冶炼金属，牵扯到起源，谁把铁的技术引进非洲，以及铁技术之后的发展和改变。注意这篇阅读有地图。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO7-3 Agriculture, Iron, And The Bantu Peoples
相关背景学习：
(1)The African Iron Age is traditionally considered that period in Africa between the second century AD up to about 1000 AD, when iron smelting was practiced. In Africa, unlike the Europe and Asia, the Iron Age is not prefaced by a Bronze or Copper Age, but rather all the metals were brought together. The advantages of iron over stone are obvious--iron is much more efficient at cutting trees or quarrying stone than stone tools. But iron smelting technology is a smelly, dangerous one. This brief essay covers Iron Age up to the end of the first millennium AD.
Pre-Industrial Iron Ore Technology
To work iron, one must extract the ore from the ground and break it into pieces, then heat the pieces to a temperature of at least 1100 degrees centigrade under controlled conditions.
African Iron Age people built a cylindrical clay furnace and used charcoal and a hand-operated bellows to reach the level of heating for smelting. Once smelted, the metal was separated from its waste products or slag, and then brought to its shape by repeated hammering and heating, called forging.
African Iron Age Lifeways
From the 2nd century AD to about 1000 AD, the Chifumbaze spread iron throughout the largest portion of Africa, eastern and southern Africa. The Chifumbaze were farmers of squash, beans, sorghum and millet, and kept cattle, sheep, goats and chickens.
They built hill top settlements, at Bosutswe, large villages like Schroda, and large monumental sites like Great Zimbabwe. Gold, ivory, and glass bead working and trade was part of many of the societies. Many spoke a form of Bantu; many forms of geometric and schematic rock art are found throughout south and eastern Africa.
(2)In Africa, where there was no continent-wide universal Bronze Age, the use of iron succeeded immediately the use of stone.[14] Metallurgy was characterized by the absence of a Bronze Age, and the transition from "stone to steel" in tool substances. Sub-Saharan Africa has produced very early instances of carbon steel found to be in production around 2000 years ago in northwest Tanzania, based on complex preheating principles. Nubia was one of the relatively few places in Africa to have a sustained Bronze Age along with Egypt and much of the rest of North Africa. The Meroitic script was developed in the Napatan Period (c. 700–300 BC).
Iron Age finds in East and Southern Africa, corresponding to the early 1st millennium Bantu expansion.
2016年8月27日托福阅读第三篇 美国铁路的发展和影响
原文回顾：说的是讲美国铁路发展和影响，先说了铁路给人们带来了很多好处，后面还说铁路比其他交通工具更为广泛。然后大概说17世纪的几个铁路说明跨越疆域的时间变得有多短。然后分别写旅游和经济的影响。原来一个洲到另一个洲要好久，现在时间缩短了很多。这一篇词汇题考的比较多，其中有词汇题quantify，很多人可以有personal travel。还有一个问题问的是对当地居民的影响，说他们可以种更加适合气候的庄稼，因为交通的便捷。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO33-2 Railroads and Commercial Agriculture in Nineteenth-century United States
相关背景学习：
Early American Railroads
In 1869, a golden spike linked the Central Pacific Railroad and the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah.
The development of BB#00081900RAILROADS was one of the most important phenomena of the Industrial Revolution. With their formation, construction and operation, they brought profound social, economic and political change to a country only 50 years old. Over the next 50 years, America would come to see magnificent bridges and other structures on which trains would run, awesome depots, ruthless rail magnates and the majesty of rail locomotives crossing the country.
The railroad was first developed in Great Britain. A man named BB#00081901GEORGE STEPHENSON successfully applied the steam technology of the day and created the world's first successful locomotive. The first engines used in the United States were purchased from the BB#00081902STEPHENSON WORKS in England. Even rails were largely imported from England until the Civil War. Americans who had visited England to see new BB#00081903STEAM LOCOMOTIVES were impressed that railroads dropped the cost of shipping by carriage by 60-70%.
This stereograph of the Central Pacific Railroad would have appeared three-dimensional when viewed through special glasses.
Baltimore, the third largest city in the nation in 1827, had not invested in a canal. Yet, Baltimore was 200 miles closer to the frontier than New York and soon recognized that the development of a railway could make the city more competitive with New York and the Erie Canal in transporting people and goods to the West. The result was the BB#00081904BALTIMORE AND OHIO RAILROAD, the first railroad chartered in the United States. There were great parades on the day the construction started. On July 4, 1828, the first spadesful of earth were turned over by the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, 91-year-old BB#00081905 CHARLES CARROLL.
New railroads came swiftly. In 1830, the BB#00081906 SOUTH CAROLINA CANAL AND RAIL-ROAD COMPANY was formed to draw trade from the interior of the state. It had a steam locomotive built at the West Point Foundry in New York City, called BB#00081907THE BEST FRIEND OF CHARLESTON, the first steam locomotive to be built for sale in the United States. A year later, the Mohawk & Hudson railroad reduced a 40-mile wandering canal trip that took all day to accomplish to a 17-mile trip that took less than an hour. Its first steam engine was named the DeWitt Clinton after the builder of the Erie Canal.
Although the first railroads were successful, attempts to finance new ones originally failed as opposition was mounted by turnpike operators, canal companies, stagecoach companies and those who drove wagons. Opposition was mounted, in many cases, by tavern owners and innkeepers whose businesses were threatened. Sometimes opposition turned to violence. Religious leaders decried trains as sacrilegious. But the economic benefits of the railroad soon won over the skeptics.
Shares were sold to fund the construction of the B&O Railroad. In only 12 days, the company had raised over $4,000,000.
Perhaps the greatest physical feat of 19th century America was the creation of the BB#00081908 TRANSCONTINENTAL RAILROAD. Two railroads, the BB#00081909CENTRAL PACIFIC starting in San Francisco and a new railroad, the Union Pacific, starting in Omaha, Nebraska, would build the rail-line. Huge forces of immigrants, mainly Irish for the BB#00081910UNION PACIFIC and Chinese for the Central Pacific, crossed mountains, dug tunnels and laid track. The two railroads met at BB#00081911PROMONTORY, UTAH, on May 10, 1869, and drove a last, golden spike into the completed railway.