2014年9月21，希望对各位考生的备考有所帮助，祝每位烤鸭考试顺利，都能取得好成绩！
20140921阅读机经(张俊聪整理)
机经词汇：
sequence=series
tangible=physical
converted=changed
approximating=estimating
subsequent=later
henceforth=from now on
obliged=forced
launched=started
ensure=guarantee
pronouncement=statement
counterpart=equivalent
rekindled=renewed
第一篇：Dating the Geologic Age of the Earth 地球年龄测定
版本1:文章主旨是说怎么测定地球年龄的，有三个方法。
第一个是根据化石(fossil)的演化率(evolutionary rate)来测定(date)。这个方法的问题在于演化率不稳定，同时得到的化石也会受到损害。
第二个是根据地层厚度，比如知道某一个时间段的地层有多厚以及整体的地层有多厚，计算一下就可以得出地球年龄了。但是地层经常受到侵蚀(erosion)。
第三个办法是通过海水的盐度。是Halley提出，然后另外一个科学家做实验验证的。得到每年新的沉淀物(deposit)的盐分、海水总量和海水目前的盐度就知道啦。但是不知道海水每年循环，同时沉积在海底的盐分也不准确。但是很多科学家喜欢这个理论，因为根据它得出来的数据，与他们自己研究所需要的地球年龄相符。
版本2： 推断地球年龄。By natural process;By deposit rate of sediment;By level of salty of sea.有个人测海水的盐分来计算，尽管可能有问题，但是得出more ancient than former think的结论。很多名人也支持这个，因为符合它们在biology方面的证据。
解析：本文属于地质学为背景的文章。从段落结构看，段落结构清晰，主题明确，阅读文章的难度中等。地质类这种偏自然科学背景的文章对事实的描述简单而直接，不会出现像社会科学类文章那样，因为背景知识的生疏而严重影响对于文章理解的情况。但考生们必须提前对相关类型的TPO文章的背景知识与生词熟悉，尤其是各种地质学中各种常见词汇都要熟悉，尽量减少在阅读过程中生词而导致的速度的缓慢。TPO中相关类型的推荐文章包括: OG Geology and Landscape ;TPO7 The Geologic History of the Mediterranean;TPO27 The Formation of Volcanic Islands
相关背景学习：
The oldest historic records on Earth date back no further than 3000 BC. A study of numerous Biblical chronologies dates the earth to a maximum of 10,000 years, with most chronologies advocating an age of 6000 years.
Even if we accept a Bible-based age of 10,000 years, the discrepancy between 10,000 years and the scientifically-accepted age of 4.5 billion years is vast.
How do scientists calculate the age of the earth?
The age of the earth can be derived by applying the principle of uniformitarianism, the idea that current processes in the world today also existed in the past, and present events can be used to create models of past events.
For example, it can be observed how quickly sediments accumulate in a shallow lake. Assuming that we find that the rate of accumulation is 0.1 cm/year over our study period, then we could use this figure to calculate the approximate age of a sedimentary geological feature which we consider to have developed under similar circumstances. A layer of sediment 10 meters thick could then have taken 10,000 years to form. It is easy to see that geological age can be considered vast indeed.
The conclusion reached in the above scenario is, however, only correct if the uniformitarian principle applies. What if there had been a catastrophic flood that washed vast amounts of sediment into the lake within one day? Whole villages can be buried in sediment in an instant after catastrophic floods.
Our assumption that the sedimentary layer took 10,000 years to develop might be based on logic, but it need not necessarily be right. It could have formed rapidly.
Interestingly, the more data is accumulated, the more the age of Earth theories come into conflict. In fact, recent arguments on rates of evolution have produced a storm of scientific papers, slashing millions of years out of the geological time frame in order to accommodate new ideas. If this is acceptable in the scientific world, then surely it is an admittance that their time frame is not as rigid as they would have us believe.#p#副标题#e#
第二篇：Venetian Water Problems 威尼斯水问题
版本一： 文章的主旨是威尼斯的缺水问题严重。
先说威尼斯的水的污染问题严重，政府不让染坊(dyer)等乱倾倒污水，这些人一开始很排斥，后来倒在城外。
后来开始用cistern(储水器)来收集雨水，但是这个事情是physically&socially complex。后来发展了城市供水系统。
13-15世纪又另外建了一些cistern，中间暂停了一部分时间，欧洲其他的城市爆发了瘟疫。后来cistern的供水跟不上需要，有人用船去最近的河流中打水过来卖。政府支持这个做法，并且还设想了其他好多方案，但是最终都胎死腹中，因为钱的问题。
版本二：Venice的水污染问题。染料排放到河流导致用水不卫生，因此政府采取相关措施禁止运河排放，但是可以排入lagoon(泄湖/咸水湖)。之后他们用了一种cistern的储存雨水的系统。富人一家一个，穷人好多家一个。后来想建设一个永久的存水系统，但是被瘟疫(plague)打乱了。
解析：本文围绕威尼斯的水污染与治理为主题展开论证，很显然是属于“问题—解决方案(Problems-Solutions)”结构的文章。做题时需注意记录各个问题与其解决办法，这对于结构化阅读及文章总结题的解答有很大好处。“问题—解决方案”类文章是托福阅读常见文章，结构不难理解。需注意各个问题和其解决方案的对应关系，很可能就是最后一题的正确选项。由于条理清晰，最后一题尽量考虑从正面选出，排除为辅。推荐的文章是TPO14的文章Maya Water Problems;关于威尼斯相关背景还有TPO25的The Decline of Venetian Shipping。
相关背景学习：
Maya Water Problems
To understand the ancient Mayan people who lived in the area that is today southern Mexico and Central America and the ecological difficulties they faced, one must first consider their environment, which we think of as "jungle" or "tropical rainforest." This view is inaccurate, and the reason proves to be important. Properly speaking, tropical rainforests grow in high-rainfall equatorial areas that remain wet or humid all year round. But the Maya homeland lies more than sixteen hundred kilometers from the equator, at latitudes 17 to 22 degrees north, in a habitat termed a "seasonal tropical forest." That is, while there does tend to be a rainy season from May to October, there is also a dry season from January through April. If one focuses on the wet months, one calls the Maya homeland a "seasonal tropical forest"; if one focuses on the dry months, one could instead describe it as a "seasonal desert."
From north to south in the Yucatan Peninsula, where the Maya lived, rainfall ranges from 18 to 100 inches (457 to 2,540 millimeters) per year, and the soils become thicker, so that the southern peninsula was agriculturally more productive and supported denser populations. But rainfall in the Maya homeland is unpredictably variable between years; some recent years have had three or four times more rain than other years. As a result, modern farmers attempting to grow corn in the ancient Maya homelands have faced frequent crop failures, especially in the north. The ancient Maya were presumably more experienced and did better, but nevertheless they too must have faced risks of crop failures from droughts and hurricanes.
Although southern Maya areas received more rainfall than northern areas, problems of water were paradoxically more severe in the wet south. While that made things hard for ancient Maya living in the south, it has also made things hard for modern archaeologists who have difficulty understanding why ancient droughts caused bigger problems in the wet south than in the dry north. The likely explanation is that an area of underground freshwater underlies the Yucatan Peninsula, but surface elevation increases from north to south, so that as one moves south the land surface lies increasingly higher above the water table. In the northern peninsula the elevation is sufficiently low that the ancient Maya were able to reach the water table at deep sinkholes called cenotes, or at deep caves. In low-elevation north coastal areas without sinkholes, the Maya would have been able to get down to the water table by digging wells up to 75 feet (22 meters) deep. But much of the south lies too high above the water table for cenotes or wells to reach down to it. Making matters worse, most of the Yucatan Peninsula consists of karst, a porous sponge-like limestone terrain where rain runs straight into the ground and where little or no surface water remains available.
How did those dense southern Maya populations deal with the resulting water problem? It initially surprises us that many of their cities were not built next to the rivers but instead on high terrain in rolling uplands. The explanation is that the Maya excavated depressions, or modified natural depressions, and then plugged up leaks in the karst by plastering the bottoms of the depressions in order to create reservoirs, which collected rain from large plastered catchment basins and stored it for use in the dry season. For example, reservoirs at the Maya city of Tikal held enough water to meet the drinking water needs of about 10,000 people for a period of 18 months. At the city of Coba the Maya built dikes around a lake in order to raise its level and make their water supply more reliable. But the inhabitants of Tikal and other cities dependent on reservoirs for drinking water would still have been in deep trouble if 18 months passed without rain in a prolonged drought. A shorter drought in which they exhausted their stored food supplies might already have gotten them in deep trouble, because growing crops required rain rather than reservoirs.#p#副标题#e#
第三篇：Motion Picture 动画电影
版本一：文章标题是Motion Picture and Camera，讲电影(动的画)的起源。
M拍摄了24张马的照片来证明某个时刻马的四脚离地。之后爱迪生发明了motion camera，一开始失败是因为不知道如何使得film快速通过camera，后来通过打孔解决了。
之后爱迪生发明了K,投币看short film(像我们玩的万花筒)，小屏幕，只容许一个人看。如果一大群人一起看就卖不出这么多的机器了。后来欧洲人改良了，他迫于无奈只好升级为大屏幕的v。
一开始film题材就是赛马、拳击等简单的，后来有人觉得用它来讲故事也不错。他拍了很多电影故事也没有什么名气，后面讲了其他人创办了电影公司什么的。
版本二： 文章主旨是讲摄像机的发明史。
先说人眼延迟的原理。说一个叫EM的人跟朋友打赌，内容是到底马跑步的时候脚会不会有一个瞬间是四只脚都抬起来的。做实验的时候涌而来24个摄像机。他发现播出的时候连贯，于是让助手继续研究发明了摄像机。他现实收费播放小片段给单独的顾客，后来做了大一点的机器播放给众人，再后来就有人用这个来拍摄电影。
解析： 本文讲述了动画技术(电影)的起源。这篇文章无论是从背景、内容以及结构铺排上，都非常接近OG的文章Early Cinema，推荐对于相关题材不熟悉的同学精读一下本文 。
相关背景学习：
Early Cinema
The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial "peepshow" format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edison's peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights, successive rounds of a single fight).
These Kinetoscope arcades were modeled on phonograph parlors, which had proven successful for Edison several years earlier. In the phonograph parlors, customers listened to recordings through individual ear tubes, moving from one machine to the next to hear different recorded speeches or pieces of music. The Kinetoscope parlors functioned in a similar way. Edison was more interested in the sale of Kinetoscopes (for roughly $1,000 apiece) to these parlors than in the films that would be run in them (which cost approximately $10 to $15 each). He refused to develop projection technology, reasoning that if he made and sold projectors, then exhibitors would purchase only one machine-a projector-from him instead of several.
Exhibitors, however, wanted to maximize their profits, which they could do more readily by projecting a handful of films to hundreds of customers at a time (rather than one at a time) and by charging 25 to 50 cents admission. About a year after the opening of the first Kinetoscope parlor in 1894, showmen such as Louis and Auguste Lumiere, Thomas Armat and Charles Francis Jenkins, and Orville and Woodville Latham (with the assistance of Edison's former assistant, William Dickson) perfected projection devices. These early projection devices were used in vaudeville theaters, legitimate theaters, local town halls, makeshift storefront theaters, fairgrounds, and amusement parks to show films to a mass audience.
With the advent of projection in 1895-1896, motion pictures became the ultimate form of mass consumption. Previously, large audiences had viewed spectacles at the theater, where vaudeville, popular dramas, musical and minstrel shows, classical plays, lectures, and slide-and-lantern shows had been presented to several hundred spectators at a time. But the movies differed significantly from these other forms of entertainment, which depended on either live performance or (in the case of the slide-and-lantern shows) the active involvement of a master of ceremonies who assembled the final program.
Although early exhibitors regularly accompanied movies with live acts, the substance of the movies themselves is mass-produced, prerecorded material that can easily be reproduced by theaters with little or no active participation by the exhibitor. Even though early exhibitors shaped their film programs by mixing films and other entertainments together in whichever way they thought would be most attractive to audiences or by accompanying them with lectures, their creative control remained limited. What audiences came to see was the technological marvel of the movies; the lifelike reproduction of the commonplace motion of trains, of waves striking the shore, and of people walking in the street; and the magic made possible by trick photography and the manipulation of the camera.
With the advent of projection, the viewer's relationship with the image was no longer private, as it had been with earlier peepshow devices such as the Kinetoscope and the Mutoscope, which was a similar machine that reproduced motion by means of successive images on individual photographic cards instead of on strips of celluloid. It suddenly became public—an experience that the viewer shared with dozens, scores, and even hundreds of others. At the same time, the image that the spectator looked at expanded from the minuscule peepshow dimensions of 1 or 2 inches (in height) to the life-size proportions of 6 or 9 feet.