High-Q | סימולציה 4

15

סימולציה מס' 4

פרק ראשון

– אנגלית

16. What is the purpose of the second paragraph?

(1) To explain why snakes are the subject for many myths (2) To explain why snakes are curious and startling (3) To make us fond of snakes (4) To shatter incorrect myths regarding snakes

17. What is the best title to this text?

(1) The Snake - Once a Traitor, Always a Traitor (2) What Snakes Are Really Like (3) The Snake - an Impressive Killer (4) Snakes - They Are Not So Bad After all

Text II (Questions 18-22)

When you see lightning, it has already missed you. When you hear thunder, relax; the show is over. The noise is just the audience rushing for the exits. One of the great figures in thunderstorm exploration, the late Dr. Karl B. McEachran, used to reassure nervous laymen that way. If a big stroke were to hit you, you'd never know it. In the meantime, enjoy the spectacle. 5 Lightning is one of the most dramatic examples in nature of the ill wind that blows good. It is true that it kills more people in the United States than any other natural disaster: an average of 400 dead and 1000 injured yearly. It destroys 37 million dollars' worth of U.S. property annually - and this figure does not include the losses from some 8000 forest fires started by lightning. Yet it is also true that without lightning, plant life could not exist. 10 Eighty percent of our atmosphere is nitrogen - an essential food for plants. About 22 million tons of this nutriment float over each square mile of earth. But in its aerial form nitrogen is insoluble, unusable. before plants can take life from it, it must undergo what our food undergoes in our digestive machinery: a series of chemical reactions. Lightning touches off the series. 15 This extraordinary process was described by Dr. M. F. Fogler, formerly executive vice-president of the nitrogen division of an American chemical and dye corporation. Air particles are made white-hot by lightning. They reach temperatures as high as 30,000 0 C . Under this intense heat, the nitrogen combines with the oxygen in the air to form nitrogen oxides that are soluble in water. The rain dissolves the oxides and carries them down to 20 earth as dilute nitric acid. You can smell this acid - the pungent, tingly odor that hangs in the rainy air of a thunderstorm. Reaching the earth, the nitric acid reacts with minerals there to become nitrates on which plants can feed. Here is a wander, indeed: Lightning, which meteorologists estimate to be bombarding the earth at a rate of more than 100 times a second, transforms the upper air into fertilizer for plants! 25

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