资源简介

The Large Hadron Collider
欧洲大型强子对撞机重启，有望揭开更多宇宙奥秘。
It’s the largest machine on earth. You can find it deep under the mountains of France and Switzerland in a 27-kilometer-long tunnel (隧道). It is the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (大型强子对撞机) and it can help discover the mysteries of the universe.
Thousands of scientists created the LHC. They built it from 1998 to 2008. However, the LHC has been turned off for over three years. “The shutdown was used to upgrade (升级) the machine,” explained Rende Steerenberg, a top leader for the LHC. In April this year, the machine was finally turned on again.
Everything in the universe is made up of tiny pieces called particles (粒子). The LHC can shoot particles at very fast speeds — almost as fast as the speed of light! With the new upgrades, the LHC’s particles can go faster than ever before. It blasts (喷射) the particles in two beams (束). Then the particle beams crash into each other. And scientists study the crash.
Already, scientists have learned a lot from the LHC. But there is a lot they still don’t know. For example, they hope the large science experiment can help them learn about dark matter — parts of space that cannot be seen with eyes. Using the LHC, they may better understand how the universe works, and learn more about how the universe began.
Right now, particles are moving very fast through the LHC. Scientists will use the machine to make the beams go even faster. Then, they will try to uncover more secrets of the universe.
【读后任务】回答问题。
1. Where is the LHC
________________________________________
2. When was the LHC built
_______________________________________
3. Why was the LHC turned off for over three years
__________________________________
4. What will scientists try to do with the LHC
____________________________
【语块积累】
crash into撞上
【答案】
1. It’s deep under the mountains of France and Switzerland (in a 27-kilometer-long tunnel).
2. It was built from 1998 to 2008.
3. Because it needed to be upgraded.
4. Uncover more secrets of the universe.Which “Orange” Came First, the Color or the Fruit
是先有橙子，还是先有橙色？
Which came first, the orange or ... orange
Did someone just make the un-creative decision to name the fruit after its color (That’s how the blueberry got its name, after all.) Or did the color get its name because of the fruit This mystery is right up there with the chicken vs. the egg mystery. Luckily, though, this one is much more easily solved!
So which came first, the color or the fruit The answer is ... neither. Well, one did come before the other, but neither was actually the first meaning of the word. The word “orange” was actually first used to describe the tree that the fruit grows on.
As time went on, the word came to mean the fruit, not just the orange tree. Back to the 13th century AD ( 公 元), the words “pume orange” which came from Old French meant “the fruit from the orange tree”.
“Orange” didn’t come to describe a color until almost 200 years later, making the fruit the clear winner. In 1512, for the first time, the word “orange” was used to describe the color. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the use of the word first appeared in a will (遗嘱).
So, the only mystery that remains is — how did people describe the color before 1512 According to Huffington Post, speakers of Old English used the word “geolurēad”, meaning “yellow-red”. Thanks to Old French, the color orange has a name of its own.
Orange, are you glad we’ve solved this mystery
【读后任务】　　
回答问题。
1. How did the blueberry get its name
___________________________________________________________________
2. What was the first meaning of the word “orange”
___________________________________________________________________
3. When was the word “orange” first used to describe the color
___________________________________________________________________
【语块积累】　　
right up there with ...
与……相似
答案
1. It was named after its color.
2. The tree that the fruit grows on. / The orange tree.
3. In 1512.Village of Dwarfs
一起走进现实生活中神秘的“小人国”。
Do you like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs We often see dwarfs, extremely small people, in stories and movies, but hardly in our daily life. However, things are quite different in Mingyangsi, a small village in Sichuan Province. Nearly half of the villagers there are dwarfs. People with a height of less than 1 meter are seen everywhere. Though scientists have spent many years trying to solve the mystery of the “Village of Dwarfs”, there is no clear answer yet.
According to the elderly people in the village, they used to enjoy a peaceful life until one summer night in 1951. A mysterious illness came by and mainly struck children between the ages of 5 and 7. These children simply stopped growing and their heights have never changed for the rest of their lives. A census (人口普查) in 1985 showed there were about 120 dwarfs in the village.
Many scientists and experts have visited the village to study the water, soil and grain (土壤和谷物) in the area. They've also examined the villagers to collect a few clues (线索). However, luck is never with them. It is still mysterious today just as it was many years ago. Much to their relief, things seem to be improving: more and more young villagers are growing to normal adult height.The Mystery of Glacier Mice
冰川上的神秘生物。
Glaciers (冰川) are large bodies of ice and snow. Because they’ re so icy, it’ s very hard for things to live on them. But glacier mice do somehow.
Of course, glacier mice aren’ t mice. They’ re round balls of moss (苔藓) that can grow to about the size of a tennis ball. They’ re usually found in groups near small rocks on the surface of icy glaciers.
Normal moss can’ t form on a glacier, so scientists believe glacier mice probably form around something small, like a bit of dust (尘土). Because staying on the ice too long would kill the moss, glacier mice form into a ball. It allows them to move around, so that their different parts touch the ice at different times.
Some scientists once did an experiment on glacier mice. They put a small device (装置) inside 30 glacier mice to follow their movements. They learned that the mice traveled about 2.5 centimeters a day. They seemed to move in groups. They moved in the same direction and at about the same speed, almost like a group of animals. The scientists tested several ideas that might explain how the mice moved together, such as rolling downhill, being blown by the wind, or following the sun. None of these explained the movement of the glacier mice.
Glacier mice are still a mystery to scientists. For their next experiment, the scientists said they would use cameras to take pictures of the movements of the mice over a long period of time. Are you looking forward to the answer Stonehenge
Each year, more than 1 million people travel from all over the world to southern England to see prehistoric Stonehenge. Little is known about who built the monument, how they achieved this wonder of engineering, or what purpose the stones served. Now, some archaeologists believe they've discovered the origin of the stones, providing new information on Stonehenge's mysterious past.
Prehistoric people built Stonehenge about 4,500 years ago. It is made up of a series of vertical stones with connecting horizontal stones on top. Only some of the stones still stand today. The most common theory about Stonehenge is that the arrangement of stones formed an astrological (占星学的) calendar. It was used to track the movement of the stars and predict eclipses (日食，月食).
Stonehenge is made of bluestone. Experts have long agreed that this type of rock wasn't quarried (采得) in southern England. A recent study shows that the stone originally came from 225 kilometers away in Wales. There, archaeologists found indentations (缺口) in cliff walls that perfectly match the sizes and shapes of stones located at Stonehenge.
The quarry's discovery has caused some controversy. Scientists used carbon dating to estimate the age of the remnants (遗迹) of a campfire at the Welsh quarry. The results may indicate that people excavated the stones as many as 500 years before Stonehenge was constructed at its current location. Some archaeologists have proposed that Stonehenge actually stood in Wales for many years before people moved it to England, challenging all previous theories of its origin. Mike Parker Pearson, the director of the project and a professor at University College London, said, “It's more likely that the stones were first used in a local monument, somewhere near the quarries, that was then taken apart and dragged off to Wiltshire.”
The secrets of Stonehenge may one day be solved, but for now, the mystery remains part of its worldwide appeal.Mysterious boiling river in Peru
亚马逊雨林有一条“沸水河”，水温可达100 C。
There is a mysterious river running deep through the Amazon rainforest in Peru. The water temperatures along the river range from 50 C to 90 C, and in some parts they can almost reach the boiling point of 100 C. For the rest of the world, however, this natural wonder used to be just a legend (传说). The river’s existence (存在) was officially confirmed (证实) in 2011 by a scientist named Andrés Ruzo.
Ruzo heard lots of stories and legends about the strange river when he was young. His grandfather told him the river was discovered by Spanish persons hundreds of years ago, when they traveled deep into the rainforest in search of gold. 20 years after he’d heard this story, Ruzo’s aunt told him she had seen the river first-hand. Guided by her, the young scientist finally found the river himself, and confirmed that its waters do reach boiling temperatures. “Dipping my hand into the river would give me third-degree burns in less than half a second. Falling in could easily kill me,” he wrote in his book The Boiling River: Adventure and Discovery in the Amazon. Ruzo said, “What was amazing is that the locals had always known about this place, and that I was by no means the first outsider to see it. It is just a part of their everyday life. They cook with it, clean with it, even make their medicines with it.” But so far, no one has been able to explain the mystery of the boiling water. “It is a reminder that there are still great wonders to be discovered,” Ruzo said. “The biggest part of the Boiling River area remains wild and untamed (野性的) — and we hope to keep it this way.”

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