TEST 4

READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Passage 1
on pages 2 and 3.
The history of the pencil

The history of the pencil starts with a violent thunderstorm. When some particularly
ferocious weather struck the Lake. District in North West England in the sixteenth
century, locals in the village of Borrowdale discovered large uprooted tree.
Underneath the tree lay an unknown black substance which we now easily, was
slightly shiny and smooth to the touch. And it left a black smear on the hands of all
who touched it.

Initially, the local farmers used the newly discovered material as a handy way to
identify their sheep. However, others quickly realised the potential for using this
intriguing substance to write on paper. When it was untreated the material was very
soft, which meant that it was messy to handle. To make it fit for use with paper,
people enclosed a thin core of the substance in stiff sheep hides or rope. At this time
chemistry was still in its infancy. People searched for a word to describe this
increasingly useful substance and came up with plumbago which, in Latin, means acts
or writes like lead. Later the name was changed to graphite. But because words have
remarkable staying power, we still call graphite the lead of a pencil even though it is
now known that there is no trace of real lead in graphite.

Graphite has a very high melting point at around 3, 500 degrees Celsius. This made it
invaluable to the British army and navy as a secret ingredient in the manufacture of
cannon balls. The Royal Ordnance, or weaponry section of the British armed forces,
used graphite as a lining inside the moulds for cannon balls, which as a result the
British could turn out faster and more cheaply than their European rivals. In addition
to its value to the armed forces, the government quickly realised the commercial
potential of the graphite at Borrowdale, and assumed control of all the mines there
during the sixteenth century, Armed guards accompanied the precious graphite all the
way down to the metal foundries by the naval shipyards in the south of England. The
graphite was so valuable that the locals, who called it wadd, started to steal it. As a

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deterrent, an act of parliament in 1752 made this offence punishable by time in
prison.

The Italians originally invented the wooden casing to hold a thin rod of plumbago
firmly in place for ease of writing. Italian craftsmen hollowed out two small sections of
cedar wood, into one of which they laid the lead. They then glued the other section
over the top and left the two halves to set. When dry, the whole apparatus formed
what today we know as a pencil. The Germans took this technique and developed it
further by applying mass-production techniques to pencils. At the same time Nicolas-
Jacques Conte, a French officer in Napoleon Bonaparte's army during the late 1700s,
developed a method of mixing powdered graphite and clay together for firming in a
kiln. Adding more clay to the mixture helped make the pencil harder, sharper, and
more precise in its mark. More graphite helped make a pencil mark that was softer,
thicker and darker.

The varying quality of pencil leads eventually gave rise to a system for categorizing
the fineness of the pencil mark. Pencil manufactures all over the world still use this so-
called HB grading system today. The H stands for the Hardness of the pencil while the
B stands for its Blackness. An HB pencil is a standard pencil and a variety of letters
and numbers are used to designate different types of lead.

Significant seams of graphite exist in parts of China, which now produces most of the
world's pencils Interestingly, the Borrowdale mine in the Lake District remains the
only significant source of graphite in its near-pure form in the world. Nowadays the
highest grade of graphite at Borrowdale is totally exhausted, although other grades
can still be found, and England's pencil industry continues to thrive in the nearby town
of Keswick.

The pencil has turned out to be a remarkably resilient and valuable tool whose use
has survived well into our high-tech times, as a well-known story shows. It is
sometimes said that the American space programme spent millions of dollars to
invent a pen capable of writing in the zero gravity of space. The Russians, by contrast,
simply equipped their astronauts with good old-fashioned pencils that never let them
down. It should be pointed out though, that the popular myth about Americans
overlooking the practical advantages of pencils in zero gravity is merely fiction. In

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actual fact, both American and Russian astronauts were equipped with pencils in their
respective country's first space flights. A private company later developed pens for
writing in zero gravity. In fact, astronauts of every nation now use pens. But no matter
- pencils remain in use in every classroom, every planning, building and drawing
office, and in every art studio in the world. And there is nothing to suggest that we are
likely to invent anything better than graphite to use in our pencils.

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Questions 1-6
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.
The early history of graphite in Britain

- Graphite was first found below a 1 _____ blown down in a storm.

- The first use of graphite was to make marks on 2 _____.

- The characteristics of raw graphite:

+ dirty to use because it is so 3 _____
+ originally wrapped in 4 _____ or animal skin to make it useable as a pencil

- Graphite came to the notice of the government for military and commercial
purposes.
+ The government completely took over the 5 _____ at Borrowdale.
+ They employed guards to protect the graphite on its journey south.

- Local people began to 6 _____ graphite for the money involved.

+ The government passed a law to protect the graphite industry.

Questions 7-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1 ?
In boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
7 The Italians were the first to make pencils out of wood.
8 The Germans used different types of wood to produce pencils.
9 More clay in a pencil makes it write more darkly.
10 After the HB code was introduced, it very quickly became used by all
manufacturers.
11 English pencil factories have now all closed down.
12 American astronauts used pencils on their early journeys into space.

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13 The use of graphite pencils is unlikely to continue into the future.
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 on page 7 and 8.

Questions 14-20
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G.
Choose the correct heading for each paragraph from the list of headings below.
Write the correct number, i-ix, in boxes 14-20 on your answer sheet.

List of Headings
i Early research into athletes' physiology
ii A convenient method of acclimatization = adaptation
iii The need for a rational approach.
iv Changes in the body
v The athletes who break the rules
vi Well-founded concerns
vii The surprising outcome = result of a race
viii The reversal of a decision
ix The runners who dominate

14 Paragraph A vii
15 Paragraph B vi
16 Paragraph C ix
17 Paragraph D iv
18 Paragraph E ii
19 Paragraph F ix
20 Paragraph G iii

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 What is an unfair advantage in sport?
Olympic athletes increasingly depend on technology to help them win, but is that fair?

A
What happened to the Australian athlete Ron Clarke in the 10,000 metres at the
Mexico City Olympics of 1968 is now virtually = almost/ mostly forgotten, though at
the time it was headline news. Clarke was the greatest distance runner in history he'd
broken more world records than anybody else. But in front of 55,000 horrified
spectators, the event went disastrously wrong. In the third lap, one runner keeled
over and with six laps to go, two more were carried away. Yet the race was being
conducted at a relatively leisurely speed: the halfway time was the slowest since the
Paris Olympics of 1924. With two laps to go, Clarke was in the leading pack. 'I'd never
felt better in a race,' he says. But suddenly he too began to struggle, and as the
frontrunners moved up a gear, a gap opened up. Clarke remembers nothing of his last
lap which he ran in 90 seconds 'Normally I would run it in 64,' he explains. He
stumbled across the line in sixth place and collapsed. He was administered oxygen
and stretchered off the track.

B
Mexico City is surrounded by mountains and is over 2,240 metres above sea level.
That the altitude would have an impact on the Games was predicted. Clarke had
raised the issue himself, but had been told by the Australian sports authorities that
complaining was regarded as bad sportsmanship. As it turned out, he had good
reason to do so. Clearly, the link between athletic performance and altitude needed
further investigation.

C
Although there were few standout performances in distance running at the Mexico
Games, they marked a turning point: the start of an astonishing record of success by
east Africans. While Clarke lay crumpled in a heap, runners from Kenya and Ethiopia
were celebrating their gold and silver medals. The record books confirm how
entrenched this pattern has become. The names of the seven fastest men in history
over 5,000 metres are Bekele, Gebrselassie, Komen, Kipchoge, Sihine, Songkok and
Chereno. They are all from either Kenya or Ethiopia. Between 1997 and 2011 the
10,000 metres mens world record was smashed five times, dropping from 26:31.32 to

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26: 17.53. Each time, the record was broken by a Kenyan or an Ethiopian. While there
is a complex mix of economic, political, social and cultural explanations for the pre-
eminence of east Africans, one factor is surely that many of these athletes have lived
most of their lives in thin air.

D
At high altitudes, a number of physiological alterations occur, most importantly more
red blood cells and haemoglobin are produced. This, in tum, increases the capacity of
the blood to carry oxygen, which feeds the muscles and which gives an advantage to
the athletes when they return to sea level. However, it is impossible to train with the
same level of intensity in the mountains-aerobic capacity and cardio-respiratory
function both suffer at altitude. As a result, the consensus is that the optimum
approach to athletic preparation is: Live High, Train Low(LHTL) Yet that has obvious
practical drawbacks. Not many people live in the mountains and those who do would
prefer not to spend several hours each day driving up and down winding treacherous
roads.

E
That's where the altitude tent - sometimes called the hypoxic tent - comes in. Around
two decades ago, two different scientists had the same exciting thought. If they could
artificially control the atmosphere within a confined = limited space, they could
stimulate the effects of high altitude = height /level and save an athlete at sea-level
from the time and expense of travelling to higher ground. Altitude tents have
improved over the years: they're not as hot or as noisy as the early prototypes, and
are much cheaper too. They are also perfectly lawful. Five years ago when the tents
were investigated by Wada (the World Anti Doping Agency), it was ruled that they did
not violate the spirit of distance running. It is now routine for athletes to sleep in them
in preparation for an event.

F
However, it is not the case that all new technologies gain approval. In 2008, a
staggering 105 world records were broken in swimming. The vast majority achieved
by competitors wearing the new Speedo LZR Racer suit. These suits use a high-tech
fabric tested in Nasa's wind tunnels, which reduces drag and improves buoyancy. The
LZR was initially sanctioned by Fina, the international swimming body. But as better

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suits were produced by Speedo and other manufacturers, and more records were
broken, they became increasingly controversial. In a 2009 ruling, Fina changed its
mind, banning all suits made with this high-tech fabric.

G
Going faster, higher, stronger is intergral to the logic of athletics in general, and the
Olympics in particular. Athletes believe they need records all the time. And the only
way minute changes of 0.0001 of a second. But when a new technology is invented,
the relevant sports authority has to consider whether to embrace = adopt/accept or
reject it. In some cases athletes are granted permission to use the technology: in
others, it is banned. But whatever the outcome, rulings should not appear arbitrary =
random: arguments have to be examined and weighed and the rules of logic ought to
apply in every case.

Questions 21 and 22
Choose TWO letters, A-E
Write the correct letters in boxes 21 and 22 on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following statements about Ran Clarke are made in the passage?
A Clarke was not performing well immediately prior to the Mexico Games.
B The worries Clarke had before the Mexico Games were not taken into
account/consideration.
C Clarke's experiences at the Mexico Games are widely talked about today.
D At one stage of the Mexico Games 10,000 metres, Clarke was near the front.
E Clarke was the only runner at the Mexico Games who appeared to be affected by
the altitude.

Questions 23-26
Complete the summary below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Write your answers in
boxes 23-26 on your answer sheet.
Do all new technologies gain approval?
Some people may be puzzled by altitudes towards performance-enhancing
technologies in sport. For example, why is the altitude tent considered acceptable, but
not the LZR Racer suit? For distance running, Wada concluded that the altitude tent

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was not contrary to the 23 spirit of the sport. However, the LZR swimsuit, which is
made from a special fabric that aids buoyancy and cuts down 24 drag was banned.

Athletes think they have to continually set fresh 25 records. This is made possible by
better 26 diet and training, as well as improved clothing and equipment. However,
when sports authorities have to decide whether to give permission for a new
performance-enhancing technology to be used, it is important that their decisions are
not seen as arbitrary.

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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on Reading
Passage 3 on pages 10 and 11.

Theories of planet formation questioned

A
The traditional view of astronomy has been that Planets form slowly as material
congeals within the disk of gas, dust and ice known to surround young stars. First,
gravity gathers together bits of dust that merge to form boulder-sized bodies, which
themselves coalesce into bigger and bigger objects. In about a million years, these
form rocky planets like Earth and Mar Over the ne few million years, gas from the disk
settles around some of these solid bodies and they crow far larger, becoming giants
like gaseous Saturn and Jupiter. This theory of planet formation is known as the care-
accretion model. However, several astronomers now say that this model for making
planets may not be entirely correct.

B
These astronomers have devised an alternative theory in which planets as massive as
Jupiter, whether orbiting our sun or a distant star, would form completely within a few
hundred years, rather than millions of years as previously believed. Both theories for
planet formation start with the same reservoir of planet-making materials, The
spinning cloud of gas, dust and ice rapidly fattens into disk-like shapes known as
proto-planetary disks: and, as time goes by, gravity causes material in these disks to
clump into planet- sized objects. However it is the speed of the clustering, and the
size of the initial clumps, that provide the disparity in the two models for planet
formation.

C
According to the core-accretion model, the making of Jupiter required the initial
formation of a solid core five to ten times Earth's mass, It would have taken about a
million years to achieve this. Most astronomers believe that the large core then had
enough gravity to attract a huge amount of gas from the proto-planetary disk to
create a planet of the massive proportions of Jupiter. In this core-accretion model,
these 'gas giants may take as long as ten million years to form.

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D
That is several million years too long in the opinion of Lucio Mayer of Zurich
University. Direct telescope sightings suggest that the proto-planetary disks do not
last more than about seven million years, and studies of the environment in which
stars form suggest that many disks may evaporate in much less time, Mayer asserts
that most stars in the Milty Way form in dense clouds of gas, dust and ice. Their
temperatures are very intense and the ultraviolet light they send into space can
evaporate a proto-planetary disk in less than 100,000 years. In the core-accretion
model, that is not enough time for a Jupiter-like planet to form.

E
Recent computer simulations show that when individual stars form, the gravitational
pull between them can result in the outer gaseous parts of the proto-planetary disks
being destroyed in 100 000 years or less. Thus, Thomas Quinn of the University of
Washington concludes that if a 'gas giant' planet cannot form quickly, it will probably
never form. He also asserts that if the core-accretion model is correct. Gas giant
planets like Jupiter should be rare. However, since 1995, astronomers have found
more than one hundred planets as large as Jupiter outside our solar system.

F
Quinn and his colleagues recently analysed the standard core-accretion model of
planet formation and investigated whether not giant planets could form quickly. They
looked at the work of Gerard Kuiper who, in the 1950s, proposed that they could. Alan
P Boss of the Carnegie Institute did more extensive work on the subject in the late
1980s. Using computer simulations, he was surprised to find that ratty could cause a
proto-planetary disk. after a few orbits of its parent star, to break into clumps as big
as an average-sized planet. The clumps would continue to pull in gas, ice and dust.
This is called the gravitational-instability model of planet formation.

G
Recent calculations have suggested that many of the solid bodies that might be the
rocky core for Jupiter-size planets in the traditional theory would pin into the parent
star before the massive planet could form. Moreover, further analysis has shown that
other effects could also cause a proto-planetary disk to become unstable and split into

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large fragments. For instance, within the disk, electrically charged material might
accumulate, leading to fragmentation of the disk. Or a powerful gravitational
disturbance, such a he pull of a star passing nearby, could produce instability in the
proto-planetary disk.

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H
Nevertheless, the gravitational-instability model has problems of its own, as it is
mathematically complicated and requires sophisticated computer use. Therefore, no
one has studied the simulations long enough to establish conclusively that the model
allows for the formation of massive planets.

I
In response, Mayer says that he and his team have described the results of an
extensive simulation based on the gravitational-instability model. They spent two
years refining calculations to track what would happen to a proto-planetary disk over
one thousand years, which is more than any other simulation had done. In addition,
over a decade previously Mayer and his team had made simulations of the formation
and evolution of galaxies. In doing this, they had already developed a fast computer
code that could run in parallel on machines with hundreds of processors, and this
knowledge assisted them in investigating their gravitational-instability theory.

Questions 27-32

Reading Passage 3 has nine paragraphs, A-I

Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 27-32 on your answer sheet.

27 the significance of recent discoveries of a large number of massive planets

28 an explanation of the difference between the theories of planet creation
29 the difficulties of proving that the more recent theory of planet creation is correct
30 reasons why Mayer claims he was able to develop his theory
31 a detailed explanation of the long-held theory of planet creation
32 description of the destructive effect of heat in space

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Questions 33-37
Complete each sentence with the correct ending, A-G, below.
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 33-37 on your answer sheet.
33 Traditionally astronomers have believed that
34 LCIO Mayer physically observed that
35 Thomas Quinn believes that
36 Gerard Kuiper was the first to suggest that
37 Alan P Boss discovered that

A gaseous planets form before smaller rocky planets.

B large planets take millions of years to form.
C large planets must form fast or not at all.
D large planets had the potential to develop relatively fast.
E gravity could cause planet-sized pieces to break off quickly.
F hot clumps of gas, dust and ice were destroyed relatively quickly.
G computer studies of planets are too mathematically complex.

Questions 38-40
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-F, below
Write the correct letter, A-F, in boxes 38-40 on your answer sheet.
The core-accretion model
A hard centre becomes larger and this produces enough gravity to draw gas from the
38 _____ around it.
The gravitational-instability model
Stars can break up the outer gaseous parts which surround objects in the sky because
the attraction of the 39 _____ from stars is very powerful. Heat caused by 40 _____ can
also destroy the material surrounding the objects in a relatively short time. Planet-
sized segments may split away from the main body following several orbits of the
parent star.
A gravitational pull
B ice
C solid core
D ultraviolet light
E Milky Way
F disk

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