下面是小编给同学们整理的2016年10月15日
2016年10月15日
2016年10月15日托福阅读词汇题：
第一篇：
题材划分：地质类
主要内容：
关于火星是否有生物存在。主要讲到液态水有可能存在于火星，一开始说火星环境恶劣，但是发现了和地球类似的岩石层还有水流的痕迹。但是因为sudden flood，又瞬间蒸发，时间太短很难有organism。化石要在生物存在几百年之后形成。另外，讲到了发现号在火星上的各种发现，一直在和地球做比较。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO-8 Running Water on Mars
Tpo-25 The surface of Mars
相关文章：
The current understanding of planetary habitability—the ability of a world to develop environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life—favors planets that have liquid water on their surface. Most often this requires the orbit of a planet to lie within the habitable zone, which for the Sun extends from just beyond Venus to about the semi-major axis of Mars.[174] During perihelion, Mars dips inside this region, but Mars's thin (low-pressure) atmosphere prevents liquid water from existing over large regions for extended periods. The past flow of liquid water demonstrates the planet's potential for habitability. Recent evidence has suggested that any water on the Martian surface may have been too salty and acidic to support regular terrestrial life.
The lack of a magnetosphere and the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars are a challenge: the planet has little heat transfer across its surface, poor insulation against bombardment of the solar wind and insufficient atmospheric pressure to retain water in a liquid form (water instead sublimes to a gaseous state). Mars is nearly, or perhaps totally, geologically dead; the end of volcanic activity has apparently stopped the recycling of chemicals and minerals between the surface and interior of the planet.
2016年10月15日托福阅读真题第二篇
题材划分： 艺术发展史
主要内容：
制造表的发展。先说以前一master—年只能做几十个表，特别painstaking (单词题)。只有富人才能买得起。后来有个人叫Eli Terry，他简化了钟表制造的材料，创新了一些设备，行了一系列变革，通过专业化啊水力啊，让表产量变大，又轻，又便宜。本来特别重，不好运输， 他就把弄得更轻了，可以挂住，不用专门做cabinet了。然后使钟表让中产阶级也可以买得起，从精细制造变成mass production。后来他为了peddler就继续发明创造，然后在1816年造出了shelf dock获得专利，但是还是有很多人抄袭模仿，这些模仿也在一定程度上促进了钟表的精细化。他有个员工叫Jerome,借鉴了上一个老板的经验，然后和Eli Terry—起将钟表变得美观时尚又物美价廉。(重复2016年4月23日大陆考题)
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO-30 The Invention of the Mechanical Clock
相关文章：
The British had predominated in watch manufacture for much of the 17th and 18th centuries, but maintained a system of production that was geared towards high quality products for the elite. Although there was an attempt to modernize clock manufacture with mass production techniques and the application of duplicating tools and machinery by the British Watch Company in 1843, it was in the United States that this system took off. In 1816, Eli Terry and some other Connecticut clock makers developed a way of mass-producing clocks by using interchangeable parts. Aaron Lufkin Dennison started a factory in 1851 in Massachusetts that also used interchangeable parts, and by 1861 was running a successful enterprise incorporated as the Waltham Watch Company.
2016年10月15日托福阅读真题第三篇
题材划分：生物类
主要内容：
始祖鸟化石的发现。一幵始人们错把始祖鸟归类到恐龙。后来科学家又有了新发现，各种发现新的化石，然后说始袓鸟已经具备了能飞的条件，但科学家怀疑之前可能就有能飞的了，但是缺乏证据。
相似TPO练习推荐：
TPO-20 Fossil Preservation
相关文章：
The lack of a bony breastbone suggests that Archaeopteryx was not a very strong flier, but flight muscles might have attached to the thick, boomerang-shaped wishbone, the platelike coracoids, or perhaps, to a cartilaginous sternum. The sideways orientation of the glenoid (shoulder) joint between scapula, coracoid, and humerus—instead of the dorsally angled arrangement found in modern birds—may indicate that Archaeopteryx was unable to lift its wings above its back, a requirement for the upstroke found in modern flapping flight. According to a study by Philip Senter in 2006, Archaeopteryx was indeed unable to use flapping flight as modern birds do, but it may well have used a downstroke-only flap-assisted gliding technique.
Archaeopteryx wings were relatively large, which would have resulted in a low stall speed and reduced turning radius. The short and rounded shape of the wings would have increased drag, but also could have improved its ability to fly through cluttered environments such as trees and brush (similar wing shapes are seen in birds that fly through trees and brush, such as crows and pheasants). The presence of "hind wings", asymmetrical flight feathers stemming from the legs similar to those seen in dromaeosaurids such as Microraptor, also would have added to the aerial mobility of Archaeopteryx. The first detailed study of the hind wings by Longrich in 2006, suggested that the structures formed up to 12% of the total airfoil. This would have reduced stall speed by up to 6% and turning radius by up to 12%.
The feathers of Archaeopteryx were asymmetrical. This has been interpreted as evidence that it was a flyer, because flightless birds tend to have symmetrical feathers. Some scientists, including Thomson and Speakman, have questioned this. They studied more than 70 families of living birds, and found that some flightless types do have a range of asymmetry in their feathers, and that the feathers of Archaeopteryx fall into this range. The degree of asymmetry seen in Archaeopteryx is more typical for slow flyers than for flightless birds.