老托福听力93篇-Okay, as you简介

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　　Okay, as you look at this next exhibit, you'll notice something quite common—an ordinary bar of soap. Now, soap has been around a long time. In fact, the ancient Phoenicians produced soap as a substance for washing the body way back in 600 B.C. They made it by blending goat's fat with wood ash. The Phoenicians, as you may know, regularly traded along the Mediterranean, and they were the ones who introduced soap to the Greeks and Romans. Now, soap was not something welcomed by all countries. In fact, during the superstitious Middle Ages, many people were afraid to bathe their whole body too frequently. They thought it could be dangerous for their health—that it could even kill them. And even after the production of soap became common in some European countries in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, even then some people in the heart of Europe refused to use it. You'll find it interesting that when a duchess was given a box of soap as a present in 1549, she was so insulted that she had the gift-giver thrown off her estate! But by the nineteenth century the attitude toward soap had changed drastically. In some regions of Europe the tax on soap was so high that people secretly made their own. A baron went so far as to suggest that the wealth of a nation could be judged according to the amount of soap it used. Now, if you turn your attention to the next exhibit, you can see how soap is manufactured today.

　　【生词摘录】

　　1. bar: n. [C]长方块

　　2. Phoenician: n. [C]腓尼基人

　　3. substance: n. [C]物质，物体

　　4. goat: n. [C]山羊

　　5. ash: n. [C]灰烬

　　6. trade: v. 交易，买卖，经商

　　7. Mediterranean: n. [C]地中海

　　8. superstitious: adj. 迷信的

　　9. bathe: v. 沐浴，洗

　　10. duchess: n. [C]公爵夫人，女公爵

　　11. insult: v. 侮辱，凌辱

　　12. gift-giver: n. [C]送礼者

　　13. estate: n. [C]房地产;庄园，种植园

　　14. drastically: adv. 激烈地，彻底地

　　15. baron: n. [C]男爵，贵族

　　84

　　The winds of a tornado are the most violent and destructive ones on Earth. Any of you who have seen one knows very well how frightening and powerful they are. What's interesting about them is that scientists don't actually know exactly why tornadoes occur. We do know, however, what happens when tornadoes are formed. As you remember, a front occurs when cool, dry air from the north meets warm, humid air coming from the south, from the Gulf of Mexico, for tornadoes in the United States. Where these air masses meet, a narrow zone of storm clouds develops, and thunderstorms, and sometimes tornadoes, occur. How is this violent weather produced? Well, a mass of warm, humid air rises very rapidly. As it rises, more warm air rushes in to replace it. This inrushing air also rises, and in some cases, especially when there is extreme thermal instability, begins to rotate. When this happens, the rotating air forms a tornado. Even if you've seen tornadoes only in movies, you know that they can demolish buildings in seconds. This is possible because when a tornado passes over a house, it sucks up air from around the house and so the air pressure outside the house drops rapidly. Inside, pressure remains the same. So, air pressure inside is greater than air pressure outside. The result is that the building explodes outward. Next, we'll talk a little bit about how new technological developments are being used to try to predict tornadoes.

　　【生词摘录】

　　1. tornado: n. [C]飓风，龙卷风

　　2. destructive: adj. 破坏性的

　　3. humid: adj. 潮湿的，湿润的

　　4. mass: n. [C]团，块，堆

　　5. thunderstorm: n. [C]雷雨

　　6. inrushing: adj. 大批涌进的

　　7. thermal: adj. 热的，热量的

　　8. instability: n. [C]不稳定(性)

　　9. rotate: v. 旋转

　　10. demolish: v. 毁坏，破坏，推翻，粉碎

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