Chapter 2 Section 2 Guided Reading Pyramids on the Nile Worksheet Answers

IELTS Academic Reading Sample 158 - Pulling cord to build pyramids

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You should spend about twenty minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 158 beneath.

Pulling cord to build pyramids

No one knows exactly how- the pyramids were congenital. Marcus Chown reckons the answer could be 'hanging in the air'

The pyramids of Arab republic of egypt were congenital more than three thousand years agone, and no i knows how. The conventional picture is that tens .of thousands of slaves dragged stones on sledges. Simply there is no evidence to dorsum this up. Now a Californian software consultant chosen Maureen Clemmons has suggested that kites might accept been- involved. While perusing a book on the monuments of Egypt, she noticed a hieroglyph that showed a row of men standing in odd postures. They were holding what looked like ropes that led, via some kind of mechanical system, to a giant bird in the sky. She wondered if maybe the bird was actually a giant kite, and the men were using it to elevator a heavy object.

Intrigued, Clemmons contacted Morteza Gharib, aeronautics professor at the California Constitute of Engineering science. He was fascinated by the idea. 'Coming from Iran, I have a bully interest in Center Eastern science/ he says. He too was puzzled past the flick that had sparked Clemmons'due south interest. The object in the sky apparently had wings far too brusk and wide for a bird 'The possibility certainly existed that it was a kite/ he says. And since he needed a summertime project for his student Emilio Graff, investigating the possibility of using kites equally heavy lifters seemed like a good idea.

Gharib and Graff set themselves the chore of raising a 4.5-metre stone column from horizontal to vertical, using no source of energy except the wind. Their initial calculations and scale-model wind-tunnel experiments convinced them they wouldn't demand a potent air current to lift the 33.five-tonne column. Fifty-fifty a minor force, if sustained over a long lime, rose, the base of operations would roll beyond the ground on a trolley.

Before this year, the team put Clemmons's unlikely theory to the test, using a xl-square- meter rectangular nylon sail. The kite lifted the column clean off the ground. 'Nosotros were admittedly stunned/ Gharib says. The instant the sail opened into the wind, a huge forcefulness was generated and the column was raised to the vertical in a mere 40 seconds.'

The air current was blowing at a gentle 16 to 20 kilometers an hour, little more than half what they thought would be needed. What they had failed to reckon with was what happened when the kite was opened. At that place was a huge initial force - five times larger than the steady state strength/ Gharib says. This wiggle meant that kites could lift huge weights, Gharib realised. Even a 300-tonne cavalcade could have been lifted to the vertical with 40 or so men and iv or 5 sails. Then Clemmons was right: the pyramid builders could have used kites to lift massive stones into place. 'Whether they actually did is another matter,' Gharib says. There are no pictures showing the construction of the pyramids, so there is no way to tell what really happened. The show for using kites to motion large stones is no improve or worse than the testify for the beast force method/ Gharib says.

Indeed, the experiments triage left many specialists unconvinced. The show for kite- lifting is non-existent/ says Wallace Wendrich, an associate professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Other experience at that place is more of a example for the theory. Harnessing the wind would non have been a problem for accomplished sailors similar the Egyptians. And they are known to have used wooden pulleys, which could have been made strong enough to carry the weight of massive blocks of rock. In addition, there is some physical evidence that the aboriginal Egyptians were interested in flight. A wooden artifact found on the step pyramid at Saqqara looks uncannily like a modernistic glider. Although it dates from several hundred years after the building of the pyramids, its sophistication suggests that the Egyptians might have been developing ideas of flight for a long time. And other ancient civilisations certainly knew about kites; as early as 1250 BC, the Chinese were using them to evangelize messages and dump flaming droppings on their foes.

The experiments might even accept practical uses nowadays. There are plenty of places around the globe where people accept no access to heavy machinery, simply exercise know how to bargain with, current of air, sailing and basic mechanical principles. Gharib has already been contacted by a ceremonious engineer in Nicaragua, who wants to put upward buildings with adobe roofs supported by concrete arches on a site that heavy equipment tin't reach. His idea is to build the arches horizontally, so lift them into place using kites. 'We've given him some design hints/ says Gharib. 'We're just waiting for him to report dorsum.' Then whether they were actually used to build the pyramids or not, it seems that kites may make sensible construction tools in the 21st century AD.

Questions one-seven
Practise the following statement with the information given in Reading Passage 158?
In boxes 1-7 on your reply  canvass, write

True if the argument agrees with the data
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this

1 Information technology is generally believed that large numbers of people were needed to build the pyramids.
two Clemmons found a strange hieroglyph on the wall of an Egyptian monument.
iii Gharib had previously done experiments on bird flying.
4 Ghari band Graff tested their theory before applying it.
5 The success of the actual experiment was due to the high speed of the air current.
6 They found that, as the kite flew college, the wind force got stronger.
7 The team decided that it was possible to utilize kites to raise very heavy stones.

Questions 8-thirteen
Complete the summary below.
Choose NO MORE THAN WORDS from the passage for each respond

Write your answers in boxes 8-13 your reply sheet.

Addition bear witness for theory of kite lifting

The Egyptians had viii……………… , which could elevator big pieces of 9...................., and they knew how to use the energy of the air current from their skill as 10................... The discovery on one pyramid of an object which resembled a 11................. suggests they may have experimented with 12 .............. . In improver, over two thousand years agone kites used in Mainland china every bit weapons, as well as for sending 13..................

Click the push button to Bear witness/ Hide Answers

Answer:
1 Truthful
2 Fake
3 NOT GIVEN
iv TRUE
five FALSE
6 NOT GIVEN
vii Truthful
viii (wooden) pulleys
9 rock
10 (accomplished) sailors
eleven (modernistic) glider
12 flight
thirteen letters

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