2015年高级(含教授级)任职资格外语考试试卷--英语(综合).pdfVIP

一、 阅读理解（阅读下列短文并用英语回答问题，共 20 分） 短文 1 （10 分） In one year the world uses as much energy as that contained in 21 billion barrels of oil. And the amount of fuel needed is growing rapidly. The supplies of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and gas—are limited. They may not last for a century. Then what will take their place? For the answer, let’s look to the sky. Each day the sun showers the world with several thousand times as much energy as man uses. Here, in a sense, energy is unlimited. The sun’s energy is free for the taking. If man could capture even a small part of the sun’s energy at low cost, no one would worry about running out of nonrenewable fuels. If scientists succeed in making use of the power of the sun, this new energy will have many different uses. The sun’s energy can be used in your own house for heating and cooking. Then the sun can also be used as a source of fuel for power plants. Solar energy can be used in telephone communication, in space travel, and in farming. One of the practical problems in controlling solar energy is making it continuous. What can be done when the sun is not shining on the heating system? If you were using a solar pump for irrigation, the interruption would not matter, since plants do not need a continuous supply of water in the night time. But suppose you were heating your house by solar energy, a number of experimental houses that are heated in this way use storage tanks to hold the heat for night time and rainy spells, or they must have supplementary heating supplied by ordinary fuels. Once the sun’s energy is captured, the supply of energy will be endless. No wonder those who look to the sky see there great changes in our future way of life. Questions: