Flying like a bird has been the dream of huma...

Flying like a bird has been the dream of humans since ancient times. Last week a group of modern birdmen put their courage on their wings and challenged gravity in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province.

“Yes, you can buy a ticket and fly to another city. But running with your own wings and feeling your feet ready to take off is totally different,” Dong Fang, said in an excited voice. He is one of 41 students from Hangzhou No. 14 Middle School to test their home-made aircrafts in the playground. Inspired by the International Bognor Birdman Competition in the UK, Ni Wangyue, a teacher in high school is holding a similar event. The Bognor Birdman competition started in 1971 in the England coastal city Bognor. People ran off the end of a pier (码头) with their own aircraft in an attempt to “fly” the farthest distance.

“From the very beginning , I didn’t expect my students to create a real plane or break any records. I told them the competition is more for seeing how far your imagination can stretch,” Said Ni. He was surprised to see his students create 10 different aircrafts with all kinds of material available in the past month. Many students said that they learnt much more in the process of creating their planes than in ordinary classes.

Jing Yuchen and his team named their plane “Weiming E”, which means an unknown goose. The 17-year-old boy deeply believes their goose of steel pipe and sailcloth will honour its name by successfully making it fly.

“Our work is much more imaginative than others. With several colourful balloons on its back and a pair of light plastic wings, it surely is the most eye-catching work, if not the best,” said Yu Liang, another student.

“Although most of those home-made aircrafts cannot really take the boys flying, the boys’ braveness and creativity in this project will encourage every one of them to fly high in the future,” Ni said.

1.The purpose of the competition is to ___________.

A. prepare to create more real planes.

B. let students break some records.

C. run off the end of a pier.

D. encourage braveness and creativity.

2.According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?

A. There were 41 students taking part in the competition.

B. A similar kind of competition started in 1971.

C. The teacher didn’t expect his students could create 10 different aircrafts.

D. Most of those home-made aircrafts could take the boys flying.

3. By saying “you can buy a ticket and fly to another city”, the writer actually means ___________.

A. if you want to take part in the competition you have to buy a ticket.

B. people who take part in the competition have to fly to another city.

C. people can pay to get a chance to go to another place by air.

D. the students have to fly to another city in their home-made aircrafts.

4.Why did the teacher organize this activity?

A. He wanted to develop students’ imagination.

B. He wanted his students to have the feeling of flying.

C. He wanted his students to break records.

D. He wanted to increase his students’ grades.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

It has been a dream for 30 years but now the world’s first flying car is set to hit the roads this year.

Ever since the “Back to the Future” movies lit up our screens in the 1980s，designers have dreamt of cars that could take to the sky at the push of a button．And now pilots can order their own “roadable” plane for just £ 127,000.

The plane, which has fold-out wings that span(翼展)17.5ft，has a range of flying distance of 460 miles and can be up to 115 mph．Back on the land，it can also travel at“highway speeds”in car mode(模式)．

Fueling the 19ft. long plane couldn’t be simpler----you just drive it into a petrol station and fill it up．

A spokeswoman said, “You can keep you ‘light-sport airplane’ in your garage.But because it needs a short runway to take to the air, you will have to drive to your local airport，fly up to 460 miles, land，and drive directly to your destination．You will always be ready to drive or fly．"

The spokeswoman added,“Never let bad weather change your trip.You call simply divert(改道)and continue on the ground until the weather clears.”　　

There is no risk to you—This is only the chance for you to be the first at your home field to unfold your wings and fly into the future．

1.According to the text, the“roadable”plane________.

A. can fly at“highway speeds”in car mode　　

B. is 19ft long and 17.5ft wide inside

C. is a kind of car with fold-out wings

D. can only travel on the highway

2.We can infer that in the“Back to the Future”movies_________. ‘’

A. cars can fly in the sky

B. pilots have no cars to drive

C. pilots can’t afford a“roadable”plane

D. there are some skillful pilots　

3.The last sentence of the text aims to__________．

A. ask people to unfold their wings and fly into the future

B. show people the use of the“roadable”plane

C. tell people only the“roadable”plane can fly in the future

D. call on people to buy the“roadable”plane

4.If you meet with a thunderstorm in your“roadable”plane in the skies，you can ________ ．

A. land in a nearby airport until it clears

B. 1and and drive on the ground

C. turn back home until it clears

D. fly high up to 460 miles

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

Disposing(处理) of waste has been a problem since humans started producing it. As more and more people choose to live close together in cities, the waste-disposal problem becomes increasingly difficult.

During the eighteenth century, it was usual for several neighboring towns to get together to select a faraway spot as a dumpsite. Residents or trash haulers(垃圾托运者) would transport household rubbish, rotted wood, and old possessions to the site. Periodically(定期的) some of the trash was burned and the rest was buried. The unpleasant sights and smells caused no problem because nobody lived close by.

Factories, mills, and other industrial sites also had waste to be disposed of. Those located on rivers often just dumped the unwanted remains into the water. Others built huge burners with chimneys to deal with the problem.

Several facts make these choices unacceptable to modern society. The first problem is space. Dumps, which are now called landfills, are most needed in heavily populated areas. Such areas rarely have empty land suitable for this purpose. Property is either too expensive or too close to residential(住宅区的)neighborhoods. Long-distance trash hauling has been a common practice, but once farm areas are refusing to accept rubbish from elsewhere, cheap land within trucking distance of major city areas is almost nonexistent.

Awareness of pollution dangers has resulted in more strict rules of waste disposal. Pollution of rivers, ground water, land and air is a price people can no longer pay to get rid of waste. The amount of waste, however, continues to grow.

Recycling efforts have become commonplace, and many towns require their people to take part. Even the most efficient recycling programs, however, can hope to deal with only about 50 percent of a city's reusable waste.

1.The most suitable title for this passage would be ______.

A. Waste Disposal Problem　　 B. Waste Pollution Dangers

C. Ways of Getting Rid of Waste　　 D. Places for Disposing Waste

2.During the 18th century, people disposed their waste in many ways EXCEPT for ______.

A. burying it　　 B. burning it

C. recycling it　　 D. throwing it into rivers

3.What can be inferred from the fourth paragraph?

A. Farm areas accept waste from the city in modern society.

B. There is cheap land to bury waste in modem society.

C. Ways to deal with waste in modem society stay the same.

D. It is difficult to find space to bury waste in modem society.

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

The dream of flying like Buzz Lightyear never dies. For years, space-age inventors have tested one wearable jet pack after another. And time after time, the designs have been grounded by dangerous fuels, excessive weight, or very loud noise levels. Now a Canadian inventor has sidestepped those weaknesses with an aquatic jet pack. Designed for travel over lakes or oceans, it’s driven by pressurized water, not burning rocket fuel.

When Raymond Li first told the idea for the aquatic jet pack to his friends, they said he must be nuts. How could a jet pack carry that much water? Its thrust-to-weight rate would be so low and it would never become airborne. Thrust-to-weight rate is a measure of the forward force produced compared with the weight of the vehicle. A vehicle with a low thrust-to-weight rate is relatively heavy for the amount of force it generates.

Li's genius idea was to place the jet pack’s engine and its water pump in a separate boat. The pump would draw water from the lake the boat was floating on. It would then force the water under pressure through a hose connected to the jet pack. The hose would be long enough to let the pack go up as high as 8.5 meters (28 feet) in the air.

Today, Li's invention, the Jetlev-Flyer, is ready to go into production. The pack itself, complete with jet nozzles （管嘴） and handlebars, weighs just 14 kilograms. The boat is a floating pod. To take off, the operator hits a trigger on a handlebar, which starts the pump, and then turns the throttle. Two streams of high-velocity water shoot through the hose and out the nozzles, lifting the operator into the air. The operator hovers there or pushes down on the handlebars, zooming forward at speeds of up to 64 kilometers per hour, pulling the pod behind.

1.All the following factors contribute to the failure of inventing a wearable jet pack EXCEPT ______.

A. excessive water     B. unbearable noise    C. unsafe fuels   D. too much weight

2. The underlined word “sidestepped” in Para. 1 most probably means ________.

A. improved          B. reduced         C. avoided         D. solved

3. Raymond Li’s friends found his idea for the aquatic jet pack was ________.

A. exciting           B. crazy          C. realistic         D. creative

4.Which of the following is TRUE according to the passage?

A. His friends encouraged him to do the invention.

B. He put the engine and its water pump in the same boat.

C. The success of his invention lies in his bravery.

D. His invention finally succeeded and will go into production.

5.Which is the right order to make the Jetlev-Flyer take off?

a. The throttle is turned.                  b. The operator is lifted into the air.

c. A trigger is hit.                       d. Two streams of water shoot out.

The pump is started.

A. c, e, a, d, b          B. c, e, a, b, d            C. e, c, d, b, a          D. e, a, c, d, b

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

Scientists have created a “ human-like robot” that can dance and do the housework.

“ Mahru” has been developed to imitate humans and can move its lips, eyebrows and pupils(瞳孔). The machine can also move its upper and lower body freely and automatically stop itself when walking.

In addition, it has been programmed to give out two kinds of pleasant smells to match its emotions.

The 1.5 tall robot was produced by researchers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) and is the first South Korean- developed machine of its kind.

“‘Mahru’ will open the way for the commercial use of humanoid robots doing housework,” You Bum-Jae, leader of the development research team ,said. “‘Mahru’ can dance while walking on its legs and is able to work in place of a human.”

Through an advanced motion capture (捕获) system, “Mahru” can follow a variety of human movements and move its hands freely enough to deal with any obstacles that may get in its way when walking.

State-funded KIST showed the robot during a presentation at its head office in Seoul.

People here were treated to an entertaining demonstration which saw the robot show off the full range of its skills, most notably s series of dance moves.

The research team added that they had designed another “ Mahru”, this time with sensors(传感器) allowing it to distinguish(分辨) between faces and objects.

The showing of “ Mahru” came a week after researcher in Japan said they had created the “most human-like” robot in the world. A team at robotics department of Osaka University in Japan claimed that “ robogirl”, Repliee R-1, “ looks, moves and interacts (相互作用) like a human, and has silicone(硅胶) skin that feels almost human to the touch.”

1. “Mahru” made by KIST can do the following things EXCEPT____________

2. According to what You Bum- Jae said in Paragraph 5, his research team wants to ________.

3. When Mahru” meets something in its way, it will be likely to________.

4.According to the last paragraph, Repliee R-1 __________.

5.The passage is probably a  __________.

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

Cloning humans has been _____ in the science world for many years and it is likely to continue .

A. ridiculous　　 　 B. contemporary

C. controversial　　 D. contradictory

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

Information has always been at the center of human communication. You may ask why. Well, communication between people contains giving and receiving information. The way we give and receive information today has experienced a revolution in the development of the mass media in the 20th century.

The first truly mass communication medium was the newspaper. For the first time in history, people could read about events in their country and from around the world every day. However, there were two problems with newspapers of that time. Firstly, newspapers were available only in large cities, for getting newspapers to the countryside was a difficult and time-consuming（耗时的） task. Secondly, newspapers weren’t always reliable, as there was a limited range of opinions.

Nowadays, we can choose from a wide variety of sources to get information. Television and the Internet have given us the chance to be informed about everything the minute it happens. Large numbers of radio and TV stations, satellite channels and millions of websites help people keep up with the latest news. People live in history and are part of it.

The media have come a long way in the last century and there is no doubt that we now live in the information age.  Whatever type of media we choose, it all comes down to the need for information. This will always be a basic need as long as communication is part of human nature.

1.Information is considered the center of human communication because ________.

A. human communication means information exchange

B. human communication involves people’s participation

C. information is now experiencing a revolution

D. information helps people gather together

2.What was the historical contribution of the newspaper as a source of information?

A. It made the mass communication truly develop.

B. It helped the mass communication develop in cities.

C. It kept people timely informed about home and world events.

D. It kept reliable information available in big cities.

3.The third paragraph mainly tells us that technology helps ________.

A. information easily available           B. people be part of history

C. inform everything timely             D. produce the latest news

4.It can be concluded from the last paragraph that a basic need today is ________.

A. communication                     B. information

C. high technology                    D. media types

高二英语阅读理解简单题查看答案及解析

阅读下列短文，从每题所给的四个选项（A、B、C和D）中，选出最佳选项。

Research on the human brain has been attracting the attention of more and more scientists in recent years. One of the latest research topics is how to change the human brain or combine the computer and the human brain, i.e., to transplant (移植) a chip into human brain. This innovation (创新) may make everyone’s dream come true. If we compare a human brain to a hard disc, what the scientists do is to enlarge the capacity (容量) of the hard disc. There are some difficulties in such transplant experiments, but scientists never give up.

Experiments were started on animals. In 1996, a transplant experiment performed at the Defense and Military Physiology Research Institute in the U.S. turned a bear into a dolphin.

The dolphin was named Ted, and the bear was named Tallin. Using the most advanced technology, deep and detailed studies were made of the swimming action memory area in Ted’s brain by the scientists. They got a lot of useful information. The information was saved into a button-sized chip, which was then transplanted into the action memory area in Tallin’s brain. The information saved on the chip was released by means of electric power.

Recently, another memory transplant was performed at the Motor Nerve Research Institute of the University of California. The transplant was performed from a dog named “Genius” to a dog named “Idiot”. “Genius” could understand and follow up to 100 gestures and orders made by its master. It was a real genius. “Idiot” was the younger brother of “Genius”. It had no contact with people at all since its birth. It became an animal with nothing in its brain, without any memory.

The operation was a complete success. When the two dogs woke up, “Idiot” had all the abilities “Genius” possessed. It could follow every gesture and order given by its master. But “Genius” gave no response to its master, and in fact did not recognize him at all.

1.We can learn from the passage that _____.

A.　 the two experiments are about memory transplants

B.　 the scientists exchanged the dolphin’s and the bear’s brains

C.　 there is no possibility of changing the human brain

D.　 “Idiot” got only some abilities “Genius” possessed after the experiment

2.The scientists did the two experiments to _____.

A.　 see if animals can be taught some special skills

B.　 see if animals can share some common knowledge

C.　 learn if it’s safe to do such transplant experiments

D.　 make preparative research on changing the human brain

3.The underlined sentence “The operation was a complete success” in the last paragraph　　 means that _____.

A. the dogs exchanged their memories

B. the dogs could live as before

C. the dogs were as clever as human beings

D. the dogs were safe

4.It could be inferred from the passage that in the future _____.

A.　 human beings will be healthier

B.　 animals will be more tender

C.　 human beings may get knowledge more quickly

D. animals will cause more damage to the environment

高二英语阅读理解中等难度题查看答案及解析

The development of industry has been ________ gradual process throughout ______ human existence from stone tools to modern technology.

高二英语单项填空中等难度题查看答案及解析

Oh, the places you’ll go!

When it comes to habitat, human beings are creatures of habit. It has been known for a long time that, whether his habitat is a village, a city or, for real globe-trotters (周游世界者), the planet itself, an individual person generally visits the same places regularly. The details, though, have been surprisingly obscure. Now, thanks to an analysis of data collected from 40,000 smartphone users around the world, a new property of humanity’s locomotive (移动的) habits has been revealed.

It turns out that someone’s “location capacity”, the number of places which he or she visits regularly, remains constant over periods of months and years. What constitutes a “place” depends on what distance between two places makes them separate. But analyzing movement patterns helps illuminate the distinction and the researchers found that the average location capacity was 25. If a new location does make its way into the set of places an individual tends to visit, an old one drops out in response. People do not, in other words, gather places like collector cards. Rather, they cycle through them. Their geographical behavior is limited and predictable, not fancy-free.

The study demonstrating this, just published in Nature Human Behavior, does not offer any explanation for the limited location capacity it measures. But a statistical analysis carried out by the authors shows that it cannot be explained solely by constraints on time. Some other factor is at work. One of the researchers draws an analogy. He suggests that people’s cognitive capacity limits the number of places they can visit routinely, just as it limits the number of other people an individual can routinely socialize with. That socialization figure, about 150 for most people, is known as the Dunbar number, after its discoverer, Robin Dunbar.

Lehmann says his group is now in search of similar data from other primates (灵长目动物), in an attempt to work out where human patterns of mobility have their roots. For those, though, they will have to rely on old-fashioned methods of zoological observation unless they can work out a way to get chimpanzees to carry smartphones.

1.The underlined word “obscure” in paragraph 1 can be replaced by 　　 .

A. clear　　 B. little known

C. accurate　　 D. long forgotten

2.How can the researchers get similar data from other primates?

A. Observe the primates or let them carry smartphones.

B. Work together with Robin Dunbar.

C. Carry out statistical analysis.

D. Publish essays in Nature Human Behavior.

高二英语阅读理解困难题查看答案及解析