Microwaves may be great at warming up food, but what about warming people?
Using microwaves to directly heat owners of a room would save much of the energy wasted by heating walls and furn
iture. And despite popular ideas about microwaves, this technique would be safe, according to Charles R. Buffler of the Microwave Research Center in Marlborough, New Hampshire. Low-power microwaves only penetrate (贯穿) the skin (low-power microwave penetration in a ham is about 0.2 inches, for example) and with no negative effects.
To test this idea, Buffler subjected himself to microwaves in a special room using a standard 500-watt, 2459 MHz magnetron (磁控管). He found that a person will start to feel warmth at about 20 milliwatts per square centimeter (mw. /sq.cm.); a satisfactory feeling of warmth occurs between 35 and 50 mw./sq.cm. By comparison, a person standing in noonday summer sun feels the amount of 85 mw./sq.cm. And a frozen meat pie in your microwave oven receives about 1000 mw./sq. cm.
In houses of the future, each room could be provided with its own magnetron, says Buffler. When you stepped into the living room, for example, a motion detector would turn on the magnetron, filling the room with low-power microwaves. In the same way that a microwaves oven heats up a hamburger, but not the plate it’s on, you would feel warmth from the microwaves without changing the temperature of your coffee table. (You could, however, make your favorite easy chair even more comfortable by treating it with a radiation-absorbing chemical.)
While it might be some time before homeowners are comfortable enough with the idea to set up whole body microwave heaters in houses, Buffler says microwaves may attract livestock farmers. Lambs that are born outdoors in winter, for example, are frequently lost to cold. Microwaves could warm the lambs safely and quickly. Which of the following can tell the main idea of the passage?
| A．A new heating system. | B．A new microwave oven. |
| C．A popular technique. | D．The magnetron. |
The test conducted by Buffler shows that when a person feels comfortable warmth, he receives about ____.
| A．20 mw. / sq. cm. | B．40 mw. / sq. cm. |
| C．60 mw. / sq. cm. | D．85 mw. / sq. cm. |
According to paragraph 4, which of the following fills the room with low-power microwaves?
| A．The magnetron. | B．The motion detector. |
| C．The microwave oven. | D．The radiation-absorbing chemical. |
Which of the following statements about microwave heaters would Buffler most probably agree with?
| A．Microwave heaters will soon be widely used by homeowners. |
| B．Microwave heaters sometimes make people feel uncomfortable. |
C．Microwave heaters will be probably first used by livestock farmers to prot ect their lambs in winter. |
| D．Microwave heaters cannot be accepted by the public because they are somewhat unsafe. |
IV.阅读理解（共16小题；每小题2分，满分32分）
阅读下列短文，然后从所给四个选项中选出最佳选项，并标在试卷的相应位置。
A holiday is any day when people lay aside their ordinary duties and cares. The word comes from Old English. At first, holidays honored some holy(神的) events or persons. People in Great Britain and other countries speak of holidays as Americans speak of vacations.
Every nation has its special holidays. China observes New Year’s Day(January 1), May Day and National Day as legal(法定的) holidays, as it was on Oct. 1, 1949 that People’s Republic of China was founded. The Chinese have long celebrated the Chinese lunar year. In the United States, congress（国会） has declared(宣告) several as legal days such as New Year's Day (January1), Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Birthday, Washington's Birthday, Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day and so on. Some holidays celebrate special events in the development of a country, such as Greece’s Independence Day, Italy’s Liberation Day and India’s Independence Day.
In the United States, banks and schools usually close on a legal holiday. When such a holiday falls on Sunday, the following Monday is often observed. Schools and organizations often observe days known as traditional holidays, although schools and businesses do not close then. Those holidays include Valentine's Day and Halloween.
1. Which of the following holidays has nothing to do with a country’s development?
A. China’s National Day B. Valentine’s Day
C. Italy’s Liberation Day D. America’s Independence Day
2. From the passage we can infer that _________.
A. Chinese will no longer observe the Spring Festival
B. students don’t have to go to school on any holiday
C. Chinese and Americans share at least one holiday
D. Americans can easily draw money from banks on legal days
3. In the sentence “China observes New Year’s Day(January 1)”, “observes” means_____.
A. praises B. spends C. celebrates D. cares
4. If a legal holiday falls on Sunday, people usually celebrate on_________.
A. Sunday B. the following Sunday
C. the following Monday D. the following Tuesday
四、阅读理解
Each morning a rich man found a poor man sitting on a park bench (长凳). The poor man always sat there, looking at the big hotel in which the rich man lived. One day the rich man got out of his car and said to the poor man, “Excuse me, but I just want to know why you sit here and look at my hotel every morning.” “Sir,” said the poor man, “I am a failure. I have no money, no family, no home. I sleep on this bench, and every night I dream that one day I’ll sleep in that hotel.” The rich man said, “That is not so hard. Tonight your dream will come true. I’ll pay for the best room in that hotel for you for a whole month.”
A few days later, the rich man went by the poor man’s room to ask him how he was enjoying himself. To his surprise, he found that the man had moved out of the hotel, back to his park bench. When the rich man asked why, the poor man said, “you see, when I am down here sleeping on my bench, I dream I’m up there, in that big hotel. It’s a wonderful dream. But when I was up there, I dreamed I was back to this cold bench. It was a terrible dream, and I couldn’t get any sleep at all.”
1. The poor man lived in_____ before he met the rich man.
A. the hotel B. his home C. the park D. the car
2. Every morning, the poor man sat on the bench and _____
A. waited for the rich man B. looked at the rich man’s hotel
C. looked at the rich man’s car D. enjoyed the clean air
3. The poor man moved out of the hotel because_______
A. he didn’t want to live in such a fine room
B. he didn’t like the rich man
C. he couldn’t pay for the room
D. he couldn’t get any sleep at all there
4. In the end, the poor man found it _____to sleep in the hotel.
A. sorry B. nice C. sad D.terrible