Pulling Strings to Build Pyramids.docxVIP

READING PASSAGE 1 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. Pulling Strings to Build Pyramids Pulling Strings to Build Pyramids No one knows exactly how the pyramids were built. Marcus Chown reckons the answer could be hanging in the air. The pyramids of Egypt were built more than three thousand years ago, and no one knows how. The conventional picture is that tens of thousands of slaves dragged stones on sledges（第1题答案）. But there is no evidence to back this up. Now a Californian software consultant called Maureen Clemmons has suggested that kites might have 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（第2题答案）.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 perhaps the bird was actually a giant kite, and the men were using it to lift a heavy object. Intrigued, Clemmons contacted Morteza Gharib, aeronautics professor at the California Institute of Technology. He was fascinated by the idea. Coming from Iran, I have a keen interest in Middle Eastern science, he says. He too was puzzled by the picture that had sparked Clemmonss interest. The object in the sky apparently had wings far too short and wide for a bird. ‘The possibility certainly existed that it was a kite, he says. And since he needed a summer project for his student Emilio Graff, investigating the possibility of using kites as heavy lifters seemed like a good idea. Gharib and Graff set themselves the task of raising a 4.5-metre stone column圆柱 from horizontal水平的to vertical, using no source of energy except the wind. （第4题答案） Their initia calculations and scale-model wind-tunnel experiments convinced them they wouldnt need a strong wind to lift the 33.5-tonne column. Even a modest force, if sustained, over a long time, would do.（第5题答案）The key was to use a pu