Unit 4: CLIMATE CHANGE

What Is Climate Change? The earth is getting warmer. Over the past 100 years Earths temperature rose by about 1F. Scientists predict that Earth will continue to warm by about 26F over the next 100 years. That may not sound like much, but think about this: During the last Ice Age, Earth was only 9F cooler than it is today, and large sheets of ice called glaciers covered large parts of North America! The warming of Earths climate is called global warming. What Causes Climate Change? Scientists are not sure of what causes climate change. Earth could be warming on its own, however, most scientists believe that human activity is speeding up the climate change. Earth warms itself through a process called the greenhouse effect. When sunlight enters Earths atmosphere, it passes through a layer of greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases occur naturally, but humans also create them by burning fossil fuels. When sunlight hits Earths surface it bounces back toward the sky. The greenhouse gases trap some of the sunlight on Earth and allow the rest to go back into space, making Earths temperature warm. The process works much in the same way as a greenhouse, hence its name. If there are too many

greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, too much sunlight may be trapped, making Earth warmer. What Are the Effects of Climate Change? Scientists cannot predict exactly what will happen as Earths temperature rises. They believe a rapid climate change could upset the balance of the ecosystem, causing some land and marine life to become extinct. As temperatures rise, the worlds glaciers will melt into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise between several inches to three feet during the next 100 years. Higher sea levels could cause flooding of coastal lands. Warmer ocean water could cause increased storm activity on the coasts while areas away from the coasts may experience droughts. These are just a few of the possible effects of global warming. (327 words)

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Unit 5: PARTIES & HEALTH

Parties are a part of life in our twenties. We all know smoke can damage the lungs, but smoke isnt the only hazard here. Our hearing is under threat too from loud noise. The problem is deep inside the ear. The fragile sensory hairs in the cochlea or stereosilia turns sound into nerve impulses. Loud noise destroys these irreplacable cells. The hairs that respond to high frequencies are the most affected may be because high pitched sounds shake their foundations more violently. The effect is too small to notice. But the frequency range of our hearing is already shrinking. Another source of damage is alcohol. As we absorb alcohol into our blood stream, it affects both our organs and our state of mind. It raises our blood pressure and makes our heart beat irregular. We relax, lose our inhibitions and coordination. These symptoms are consequences of chemical reactions in the brain, especially in this region, the cerebellum. It controls coordination and balance. When we drink, alcohol affects the cerebalums brain cells, some synapses accept the signal more frequently, Others become totally blocked. The more we drink, the more extreme the effect. It may feel great now, but there will be a price to pay later. After a party it is our livers that clean up the mess. The liver is the bodys biochemical control center. It performs more than 500 functions. One of them is to convert poisons like alcohol into harmless chemicals. The process requires water and the liver doesnt care where it takes it from. Usually it is the brain that suffers most since it is seventy percent

water. Water and essential salts are sucked from the brain and it shrinks away from the skull. We experience a very particular kind of headache, a hangover. (300 words) A) Mark the statements as True (T), False (F) or No Information (NI). 1. Smoking during parties has the most adverse effect on health. 2. The sensory hairs can not be replaced once damaged. 3. High frequency sounds gradually weaken our hearing ability. 4. Alcohol has both mental and physical benefits. 5. Alcoho addiction ruins the livers. 6. We can avoid the harmful effect of alcohol by drinking water. 7. Alcohol is toxic for our bodies. 8. The loss of water in the brain is the main cause of hangover. B) Match the words with their definitions. . range . hazard suppresses . fragile . convert . symptom foreseeable: . shrink F) to change (something) into a different form C)the extent to which or the limits between D) a sign or indication of something. E) an unavoidable danger or risk, even though often which variation is possible: A) to contract or lessen in size B) something that restrains, blocks, or

or properties. . inhibition G) easily broken, shattered, or damaged.

C) What do the following words refer to? 1. Their in line 3 refers to 2. it in line 4 refers to 3. These symptoms in line 5 refers to 4. Them in line 9 refers to 5. the process in line 9 refers to

Unit 6: Timekeeping
Mankind first developed a sense of time from observations of nature. For the short term, he observed the movement of heavenly bodiesthe sun and moon held particular importance, heralding the seasons and the months. For the long term, birth and death eventsof themselves and their livestockmarked the passage of time. One of the earliest inventions was the astrolabe, which astronomers used to track stars and planets. The first such instrument may have been made in the second century by the greatest astronomer of ancient times, the Greek Hipparchus, and was brought to perfection by the Arabs. Early artificial means of timekeeping to provide an estimate of the hour were all analogue in nature, whether passive, like the sundial, or dynamic, like the sandglass or water-clock, which measured time by rate of flow. The

sundial probably began with a stick thrust into the ground; the position of its shadow corresponded to the hour of the day. Very elaborate sundials have been constructed which compensate for the suns relative position during the year, and ingenious pocket versions have been popular from time to time. However, all such instruments are worthless if the day is cloudy, and after the sun goes down. Therefore, particularly for stargazers, independent means of time estimation were important. The simple sandglass, in which sand is made to run through a small opening, was adequate only for short durations. However, running water can power a mechanism indefinitely. The greatest water-clock ever made was a building-sized astronomical device, constructed by Su Sung in China in 1094, to simulate the movements of sun, moon and the principal stars. Chinese philosophers thought that because water flows with perfect evenness, it is the best basis for timekeeping. However, in this belief they were wrong; the secret of accurate timekeeping is to generate and count regular beats, which is a digital rather than an analogue process. This may be surprising, and not just to the ancients in China, because except for intraatomic events time can be regarded as a continuous phenomenon. (340 words)