PRACTICE TEST
ACADEMIC READING,
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 on pages
88 and 89.
WATER ON TAP
A Early people had no need for
engineering works to supply their
water. Hunters and nomads camped
near natural sources and populations
were so sparse that pollution of the
water supply did not pose a serious
problem, But as civilised life developed
and small settlements grew into cities,
water management became a major
concern, not only to supply the urban
centres but also to irrigate the farms
surrounding them. The solution was to
find a way to raise water up from the
rivers,
B Around 5000 BC, primitive attempts
were made by the Egyptians, They
used the Perian Wheel, a water-wheel
that dipped containers into a river,
lifting up water as it revolved. Another
method was a simple lever-and-bucket
system called the shadoof. The
invention of the lever, as well as a
screw, to lift water is often attributed
to Archimedes (287-213 BC) but both
devices were without doubt in use
thousands of years before his time. A
more accurate explanation is that
Archimedes was the first to try to
describe in mathematical terms the
way these devices worked
€ By 2000 BC, the rulers of
Mesopotamia, Babylonia and Egypt
had constructed systems of dams and
canals to control the flood waters of
the Tigris, Euphrates and the Nile
Such canals not only irrigated crops
but also supplied water for domestic
purposes, the water being stored in
large pottery jars, hand-carried from
the river by household slaves. The
remains of the earliest aqueduct on
record have been pinpointed to the
works of the Assyrian king and master
builder Sennacherib (705-681 BC),
who developed a 10-mile canal in
three stages, including 18 fresh-water
courses from the mountains
D But we can thank the Romans for
being the first to consider seriously the
sanitation of their water supply. Faced
with the problem of directing enough
water towards Rome ~ water from the
Tiber, a muddy, smelly river, was out
of the question — they set about
constructing the most extensive system
of aqueducts in the ancient world,
These brought the pure waters of the
Apennine Mountains into the city,
with settling basins and filters along
the way, to ensure the water's clarity
and cleanliness. The first, built around
312 BC during Appius Claudius
Caecus's administration, was Aqua
Appia, an underground aqueduct
about 10 miles in length.
E The arch revolutionised water supply.
88 _ Practice test> READING PASSAGE 1
By using it, Roman architects could
raise aqueducts to the height needed
to span valleys. The Aqua Marcian in
Rome — around 56 miles long with a
10-mile bridged section ~ was built by
the praetor Marcius in 144 BC, and
was the first to carry water above
ground. Eventually, Rome was served
by eleven linked aqueducts. These kept
the city’s taps and fountains running —
providing an astonishing 38 million
gallons of water each day. Parts of
several of these are still in use,
although the construction of such
massive water-supply systems declined
with the fall of the Roman Empire, For
several centuries afterwards, springs
and wells provided the main source of
domestic and industrial water.
The introduction of the force pump in
England in the middle of the 16"
century greatly extended the
possibilities of development of water-
supply systems. This pump was by no
means a new invention. It was in fact
the brainchild of Ctesibius” of
Alexandria and it dates to the 3"
century BC. Like all great engineers,
Ctesibius took his inspiration from his
surroundings. While working on a way
to raise and lower a mirror in his
father’s barber shop by
counterbolancing it with a lead
weight, he stumbled on a method of
automatically closing the shop's door
without it slamming, He ran a
weighted line from the door over a
pulley and into a pipe, which slowed
the speed at which the weight
dropped. As the door hissed away,
opening and closing, he realised the
weight was displacing air and acting
as a piston. This realisation led
Ctesibius to investigate methods of
moving fluids along a pipe using a
piston, and to the founding principle
of hydraulics. Ctesibius's force pump
was not capable of pumping high
volumes of water but it played a vital
part in ancient Greek culture. Among
other uses, force pumps drained the
bilges of the trading ships of the time
They were used to extinguish fires and
they brought to life the fountains that
graced Alexandria.
Gin London, the first pumping
waterworks were completed in 1562
This pumped river water to a reservoir
suspended 120ft above the Thames. It
was then distributed by gravity vio
lead pipes to surrounding buildings. In
more recent times, many aqueducts
have been built worldwide, Among
them are the aqueducts supplying
water to Glasgow (35 miles long),
Marseilles (60 miles), Manchester (96
miles), Liverpool (68 miles) and Vienna
(144 miles). California now has the
most extensive aqueduct system in the
world. Water drawn from the
Colorado River's Parker Dam is carried
242 miles over the San Bernadino
Mountains, supplying more than o
billion gallons a day, In addition, the
338-mile Los Angeles aqueduct draws
water from the Owens River in the
Sierra Nevada, giving a daily supply of
around 4 billion gallons
Practice test
PRACTICE TEST