Academic Reading Test 2 

(c14)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading

Passage 1 below.

 Alexander Henderson (1831-1913)

Born in Scotland, Henderson emigrated to Canada in 1855 and become a well-known

landscape photographer

Alexander Henderson was born in Scotland in 1831 and was the son of a successful

merchant. His grandfather, also called Alexander, had founded the family business, and

later became the first chairman of the National Bank of Scotland. The family had

extensive landholding in Scotland. Besides its residence in Edinburgh, it owned Press

Estate, 650 acres of farmland about 35 miles southeast of the city. The family often

stayed at Press Castle, the large mansion on the northern edge of the property, and

Alexander spent much of his childhood in the area, playing on the beach near Eyemouth

or fishing in the streams nearby.

Even after he went to school at Murcheston Academy on the outskirts of Edinburgh,

Henderson returned to Press at weekends. In 1849 he began a three-year apprenticeship

to become an accountant. Although he never liked the prospect of a business career, he

stayed with it to please his family. In October 1855, however, he emigrated to Canada

with his wife Agnes Elder Robertson and they settled in Montreal.
Henderson learned photography in Montreal around the year 1857 and quickly took it

up as a serious amateur. He became a personal friend and colleague of the Scottish –

Canadian photographer William Notman. The two men made a photographic excursion

to Niagara Falls in 1860 and they cooperated on experiments with magnesium flares as

a source of artificial light in 1865. They belonged to the same societies and were among

the founding members of the Art Association of Montreal. Henderson acted as chairman

of the association’s first meeting, which was held in Notman’s studio on 11 January

1860.

In spite of their friendship, their styles of photography were quite different. While

Notman’s landscapes were noted for their bold realism, Henderson for the first 20 years

of his career produced romantic images, showing the strong influence of the British

landscape tradition. His artistic and technical progress was rapid and in 1865 he

published his first major collection of landscape photographs. The publication had

limited circulation (only seven copies have ever been found), and was called Canadian

Views and Studies.  The contents of each copy vary significantly and have proved a useful

source for evaluating Henderson’s early work.

In 1866, he gave up his business to open a photographic studio, advertising himself as a

portrait and landscape photographer. From about 1870 he dropped portraiture to

specialize in landscape photography and other views. His numerous photographs of city

life revealed in street scenes, houses, and markets are alive with human activity, and

although his favourite subject was landscape he usually composed his scenes around

such human pursuits as farming the land, cutting ice on a river, or sailing down a
woodland stream. There was sufficient demand for these types of scenes and others he

took depicting the lumber trade, steamboats and waterfalls to enable him to make a

living. There was little competing hobby or amateur photography before the late 1880s

because of the time-consuming techniques involved and the weight of equipment.

People wanted to buy photographs as souvenirs of a trip or as gifts, and catering to this

market, Henderson had stock photographs on display at his studio for mounting,

framing, or inclusion in albums.

Henderson frequently exhibited his photographs in Montreal and abroad, in London,

Edinburgh, Dublin, Paris, New York, and Philadelphia. He met with greater success in

1877 and 1878 in New York when he won first prizes in the exhibition held by E and H T

Anthony and Company for landscapes using the Lambertype process. In 1878 his work

won second prize at the world exhibition in Paris.

In the 1890s and 1880s Henderson travelled widely throughout Quebec and Ontario, in

Canada, documenting the major cities of the two provinces and many of the villages in

Quebec. He was especially fond of the wilderness and often travelled by canoe on the

Blanche, du Lièvre, and other noted eastern rivers. He went on several occasions to the

Maritimes and in 1872 he sailed by yacht along the lower north shore of the St Lawrence

River. That same year, while in the lower St Lawrence River region, he took some

photographs of the construction of the Intercolonial Railway. This undertaking led in

1875 to a commission from the railway to record the principal structures along the

almost-completed line connecting Montreal to Halifax. Commissions from other railways

followed. In 1876 he photographed bridges on the Quebec, Montreal, Ottawa and

Occidental Railway between Montreal and Ottawa. In 1885 he went west along the

Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) as far as Rogers Pass in British Columbia, where he took

photographs of the mountains and the progress of construction.

In 1892 Henderson accepted a full-time position with the CPR as manager of a

photographic department which he was to set up and administer. His duties included

spending four months in the field each year. That summer he made his second trip west,

photographing extensively along the railway line as far as Victoria. He continued in this

post until 1897, when he retired completely from photography.

When Henderson died in 1913, his huge collection of glass negatives was stored in the

basement of his house. Today collections of his work are held at the National Archives

of Canada, Ottawa, and the McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal.

Questions 1-8

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 1-8 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

1   Henderson rarely visited the area around Press estate when he was younger.

2   Henderson pursued a business career because it was what his family wanted.
3   Henderson and Notman were surprised by the results of their 1865 experiment.

4   There were many similarities between Henderson’s early landscapes and those of

Notman.

5   The studio that Henderson opened in 1866 was close to his home.

6   Henderson gave up portraiture so that he could focus on taking photographs of

scenery.

7   When Henderson began work for the Intercolonial Railway, the Montreal to Halifax

line had been finished.

8   Henderson’s last work as a photographer was with the Canadian Pacific Railway.

Questions 9-13

Complete the notes below

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes  9-13  on your answer sheet.

Alexander Henderson

Early life

•     was born in Scotland in 1831 – father was a 9 …………………………

•     trained as an accountant, emigrated to Canada in 1855

Start of a photographic career

•     opened up a photographic studio in 1866

•     took photos of city life, but preferred landscape photography

•     people bought Henderson’s photos because photography took up considerable

time and the 10 ……………………… was heavy

•     the photographs Henderson sold were 11 …………………………… or souvenirs

Travelling as a professional photographer

•     travelled widely in Quebec and Ontario in 1870s and 1880s

•     took many trips along eastern rivers in a 12…………………………..

•     worked for Canadian railways between 1875 and 1897

•     worked for CPR in 1885 and photographed the 13 …………………………… and the

railway at Rogers Pass

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.

Saving bugs to find new drugs

Zoologist Ross Piper looks at the potential of insects in pharmaceutical research

More drugs than you might think are derived from, or inspired by, compounds found in
living things. Looking to nature for the soothing and curing of our ailments is nothing
new – we have been doing it for tens of thousands of years. You only have to look at
other primates – such as the capuchin monkeys who rub themselves with toxin-oozing
millipedes to deter mosquitoes, or the chimpanzees who use noxious forest plants to rid
themselves of intestinal parasites – to realise that our ancient ancestors too probably
had a basic grasp of medicine.

Pharmaceutical science and chemistry built on these ancient foundations and perfected
the extraction, characterization, modification and testing of these natural products.
Then, for a while, modern pharmaceutical science moved its focus away from nature and
into the laboratory, designing chemical compounds from scratch. The main cause of this
shift is that although there are plenty of promising chemical compounds in nature,
finding them is far from easy. Securing sufficient numbers of the organism in question,
isolating and characterizing the compounds of interest, and producing large quantities
of these compounds are all significant hurdles.

Laboratory-based drug discovery has achieved varying levels of success, something

which has now prompted the development of new approaches focusing once again on
natural products. With the ability to mine genomes for useful compounds, it is now
evident that we have barely scratched the surface of nature’s molecular diversity. This
realization, together with several looming health crises, such as antibiotic resistance, has
put bioprospecting – the search for useful compounds in nature – firmly back on the
map.

Insects are the undisputed masters of the terrestrial domain, where the occupy every
possible niche. Consequently, they have a bewildering array of interactions with other
organisms, something which has driven the evolution of an enormous range of very
interesting compounds for defensive and offensive purposes. Their remarkable diversity
exceeds that of every other group of animals on the planet combined. Yet even though
insects are far and away the most diverse animals in existence, their potential as sources
of therapeutic compounds is yet to be realised.

E
From the tiny proportion of insects that have been investigated, several promising
compounds have been identified. For example, alloferon, an antimicrobial compound
produced by blow fly larvae, is used as an antiviral and antitumor agent in South Korea
and Russia. The larvae of a few other insect species are being investigated for the potent
antimicrobial compounds they produce. Meanwhile, a compound from the venom of the
wasp Polybia paulista  has potential in cancer treatment.

Why is it that insects have received relatively little attention in bioprospecting? Firstly,
there are so many insects that, without some manner of targeted approach,
investigating this huge variety of species is a daunting task. Secondly, insects are
generally very small, and the glands inside them that secrete potentially useful
compounds are smaller still. This can make it difficult to obtain sufficient quantities of
the compound for subsequent testing. Thirdly, although we consider insects to be
everywhere, the reality of this ubiquity is vast numbers of a few extremely common
species. Many insect species are infrequently encountered and very difficult to rear in
captivity, which, again, can leave us with insufficient material to work with.

G
My colleagues and I at Aberystwyth University in the UK have developed an approach in
which we use our knowledge of ecology as a guide to target our efforts. The creatures
that particularly interest us are the many insects that secrete powerful poison for
subduing prey and keeping it fresh for future consumption. There are even more insects
that are masters of exploiting filthy habitats, such as faeces and carcasses, where they
are regularly challenged by thousands of micro-organisms. These insects have many
antimicrobial compounds for dealing with pathogenic bacteria and fungi, suggesting
that there is certainly potential to find many compounds that can serve as or inspire new
antibiotics.

H
Although natural history knowledge points us in the right direction, it doesn’t solve the
problems associated with obtaining useful compounds from insects. Fortunately, it is
now possible to snip out the stretches of the insect’s DNA that carry the codes for the
interesting compounds and insert them into cell lines that allow larger quantities to be
produced. And although the road from isolating and characterizing compounds with
desirable qualities to developing a commercial product is very long and full of pitfalls,
the variety of successful animal-derived pharmaceuticals on the market demonstrates
there is a precedent here that is worth exploring.

I
With every bit of wilderness that disappears, we deprive ourselves of potential
medicines. As much as I’d love to help develop a groundbreaking insect-derived
medicine, my main motivation for looking at insects in this way is conservation. I
sincerely believe that all species, however small and seemingly insignificant, have a right
to exist for their own sake. If we can shine a light on the darker recesses of nature’s
medicine cabinet, exploring the useful chemistry of the most diverse animals on the
planet, I believe we can make people think differently about the value of nature.
 

Questions 14-20

Reading Passage 2 has nine paragraphs, A-I

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter,  A-I, in boxes  14-20  on your answer sheet.
14   mention of factors driving a renewed interest in natural medicinal compounds.

15   how recent technological advances have made insect research easier

16   examples of animals which use medicinal substances from nature

17   reasons why it is challenging to use insects in drug research

18   reference to how interest in drug research may benefit wildlife

19   a reason why nature-based medicines fell out of favour for a period

20   an example of an insect-derived medicine in use at the moment

 Questions 21-22

Choose TWO letters, A-E

Write the correct letters in boxes  21  and  22  on your answer sheet.

Which TWO of the following make insects interesting for drug research?

A   the huge number of individual insects in the world

B   the variety of substances insects have developed to protect themselves

C   the potential to extract and make use of insects’ genetic codes

D   the similarities between different species of insect

E   the manageable size of most insects

 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.

Research at Aberystwyth University

Ross Piper and fellow zoologists at Aberystwyth University are using their expertise

in 23………………………… when undertaking bioprospecting with insects. They are especially

interested in the compounds that insects produce to overpower and preserve

their 24…………………………. They are also interested in compounds which insects use to

protect themselves from pathogenic bacteria and fungi found in

their 25………………………… Piper hopes that these substances will be useful in the

development of drugs such as 26……………………………..

Academic Reading Test 3 (c15)

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading

Passage 1 below.
Henry Moore (1898-1986)

The British sculptor Henry Moore was a leading figure in the 20th-century art world

Henry Moore was born in Castleford, a small town near Leeds in the north of England.

He was the seventh child of Raymond Moore and his wife Mary Baker. He studied at

Castleford Grammar School from 1909 to 1915, where his early interest in art was

encouraged by his teacher Alice Gostick. After leaving school, Moore hoped to become

a sculptor, but instead he complied with his father’s wish that he train as a

schoolteacher. He had to abandon his training in 1917 when he was sent to France to

fight in the First World War.

After the war, Moore enrolled at the Leeds School of Art, where he studied for two

years. In his first year, he spent most of his time drawing. Although he wanted to study

sculpture, no teacher was appointed until his second year. At the end of that year, he

passed the sculpture examination and was awarded a scholarship to the Royal College

of Art in London. In September 1921, he moved to London and began three years of

advanced study in sculpture.

Alongside the instruction he received at the Royal College, Moore visited many of the
London museums, particularly the British Museum, which had a wide-ranging collection
of ancient sculpture. During these visits, he discovered the power and beauty of ancient
Egyptian and African sculpture. As he became increasingly interested in these ‘primitive’
forms of art, he turned away from European sculptural traditions.
After graduating, Moore spent the first six months of 1925 travelling in France. When he

visited the Trocadero Museum in Paris, he was impressed by a cast of a Mayan*

sculpture of the rain spirit. It was a male reclining figure with its knees drawn up

together, and its head at a right angle to its body. Moore became fascinated with this

stone sculpture, which he thought had a power and originality that no other stone

sculpture possessed. He himself started carving a variety of subjects in stone, including

depiction of reclining women, mother-and-child groups, and masks.

Moore’s exceptional talent soon gained recognition, and in 1926 he started work as a

sculpture instructor at the Royal College. In 1933, he became a member of a group of

young artists called Unit One. The aim of the group was to convince the English public

of the merits of the emerging international movement in modern art and architecture.

Around this time, Moore moved away from the human figure to experiment with

abstract shapes. In 1931, he held an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London. His

work was enthusiastically welcomed by fellow sculptors, but the reviews in the press

were extremely negative and turned Moore into a notorious figure. There were calls for

his resignation from the Royal College, and the following year, when his contract

expired, he left to start a sculpture department at the Chelsea School of Art in London.

Throughout the 1930s, Moore did not show any inclination to please the British public.

He became interested in the paintings of the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, whose work

inspired him to distort the human body in a radical way. At times, he seemed to

abandon the human figure altogether. The pages of his sketchbooks from this period

show his ideas for abstract sculptures that bore little resemblance to the human form.
In 1940, during the Second World War, Moore stopped teaching at the Chelsea School

and moved to a farmhouse about 20 miles north of London. A shortage of materials

forced him to focus on drawing. He did numerous small sketches of Londoners, later

turning these ideas into large coloured drawings in his studio. In 1942, he returned to

Castleford to make a series of sketches of the miners who worked there.

In 1944, Harlow, a town near London, offered Moore a commission for a sculpture

depicting a family. The resulting work signifies a dramatic change in Moore’s style, away

from the experimentation of the 1930s towards a more natural and humanistic subject

matter. He did dozens of studies in clay for the sculpture, and these were cast in bronze

and issued in editions of seven to nine copies each. In this way, Moore’s work became

available to collectors all over the world. The boost to his income enabled him to take

on ambitious projects and start working on the scale he felt his sculpture demanded.

Critics who had begun to think that Moore had become less revolutionary were proven

wrong by the appearance, in 1950, of the first of Moore’s series of standing figures in

bronze, with their harsh and angular pierced forms and distinct impression of menace.

Moore also varied his subject matter in the 1950s with such works as Warrior with

Shield  and Falling Warrior. These were rare examples of Moore’s use of the male figure

and owe something to his visit to Greece in 1951, when he had the opportunity to study

ancient works of art.

In his final years, Moore created the Henry Moore Foundation to promote art

appreciation and to display his work. Moore was the first modern English sculptor to

achieve international critical acclaim and he is still regarded as one of the most

important sculptors of the 20th century.

*Mayan: belonging to an ancient civilisation that inhabited parts of current-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador
and Honduras.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading Passage 1?
In boxes  1-7  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
1   On leaving school, Moore did what his father wanted him to do.
2   Moore began studying sculpture in his first term at the Leeds School of Art.
3   When Moore started at the Royal College of Art, its reputation for teaching sculpture
was excellent.
4   Moore became aware of ancient sculpture as a result of visiting London Museums.
5   The Trocadero Museum’s Mayan sculpture attracted a lot of public interest.
6   Moore thought the Mayan sculpture was similar in certain respects to other stone
sculptures.
7   The artists who belonged to Unit One wanted to make modern art and architecture
more popular.
 
Questions 8-13
Complete the notes below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes  8-13  on your answer sheet.
Moore’s career as an artist
1930s
●   Moore’s exhibition at the Leicester Galleries is criticised by the press
●   Moore is urged to offer his 8………………… and leave the Royal College.
1940s
●   Moore turns to drawing because 9…………………. for sculpting are not readily available
●   While visiting his hometown, Moore does some drawings of 10………………….
●   Moore is employed to produce a sculpture of a 11…………………
●   12………………. start to buy Moore’s work
●   Moore’s increased 13……………. makes it possible for him to do more ambitious
sculptures
1950s
●   Moore’s series of bronze figures marks a further change in his style
READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26 which are based on Reading
Passage 2 below.
The Desolenator: producing clean water
A
Travelling around Thailand in the 1990s, William Janssen was impressed with the basic
rooftop solar heating systems that were on many homes, where energy from the sun
was absorbed by a plate and then used to heat water for domestic use. Two decades
later Janssen developed that basic idea he saw in Southeast Asia into a portable device
that uses the power from the sun to purify water.
B
The Desolenator operates as a mobile desalination unit that can take water from
different places, such as the sea, rivers, boreholes and rain, and purify it for human
consumption. It is particularly valuable in regions where natural groundwater reserves
have been polluted, or where seawater is the only water source available.

Janssen saw that there was a need for a sustainable way to clean water is both the
developing and the developed countries when he moved to the United Arab Emirates
and saw large-scale water processing. ‘I was confronted with the enormous carbon
footprint that the Gulf nations have because of all of the desalination that they do,’ he
says.
C
The Desolenator can produce 15 litres of drinking water per day, enough to sustain a
family for cooking and drinking. Its main selling point is that unlike standard
desalination techniques, it doesn’t require a generated power supply: just sunlight. It
measures 120 cm by 90 cm, and it easy to transport, thanks to its two wheels. Water
enters through a pipe, and flows as a thin film between a sheet of double glazing and
the surface of a solar panel, where it is heated by the sun. the warm water flows into a
small boiler (heated by a solar-powered battery) where it is converted to steam. When
the steam cools, it becomes distilled water. The device has a very simple filter to trap
particles, and this can easily be shaken to remove them. There are two tubes for liquid
coming out: one for the waste – salt from seawater, fluoride, etc. – and another for the
distilled water. The performance of the unit is shown on an LCD screen and transmitted
to the company which provides servicing when necessary.
D
A recent analysis found that at least two-thirds of the world’s population lives with
severe water scarcity for at least a month every year. Janssen says that be 2030 half of
the world’s population will be living with water stress – where the demand exceeds the
supply over a certain period of time. ‘It is really important that a sustainable solution is
brought to the market that is able to help these people,’ he says. Many countries ‘don’t
have the money for desalination plants, which are very expensive to build. They don’t
have the money to operate them, they are very maintenance intensive, and they don’t
have the money to buy the diesel to run the desalination plants, so it is a really bad
situation.’
E
The device is aimed at a wide variety of users – from homeowners in the developing
world who do not have a constant supply of water to people living off the grid in rural
parts of the US. The first commercial versions of the Desolenator are expected to be in
operation in India early next year, after field tests are carried out. The market for the
self-sufficient devices in developing countries is twofold – those who cannot afford the
money for the device outright and pay through microfinance, and middle-income
homes that can lease their own equipment. ‘People in India don’t pay for a fridge
outright; they pay for it over six months. They would put the Desolenator on their roof
and hook it up to their municipal supply and they would get very reliable drinking water
on a daily basis,’ Janssen says. In the developed world, it is aimed at niche markets
where tap water is unavailable – for camping, on boats, or for the military, for instance.
F
Prices will vary according to where it is bought. In the developing world, the price will
depend on what deal aid organisations can negotiate. In developed countries, it is likely
to come in at $1,000 (£685) a unit, said Janssen. ‘We are a venture with a social mission.
We are aware that the product we have envisioned is mainly finding application in the
developing world and humanitarian sector and that this is the way we will proceed. We
do realise, though, that to be a viable company there is a bottom line to keep in mind,’
he says.
G
The company itself is based at Imperial College London, although Janssen, its chief
executive, still lives in the UAE. It has raised £340,000 in funding so far. Within two years,
he says, the company aims to be selling 1,000 units a month, mainly in the humanitarian
field. They are expected to be sold in areas such as Australia, northern Chile, Peru, Texas
and California.
 

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

List of Headings

i           Getting the finance for production

ii          An unexpected benefit
iii         From initial inspiration to new product
iv         The range of potential customers for the device
v          What makes the device different from alternatives
vi         Cleaning water from a range of sources
vii        Overcoming production difficulties
viii       Profit not the primary goal
ix         A warm welcome for the device
x          The number of people affected by water shortages

14   Section A
15   Section B
16   Section C
17   Section D
18   Section E
19   Section F
20   Section G
 

Questions 21-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes  21-26  on your answer sheet.

How the Desolenator works

The energy required to operate the Desolenator comes from sunlight. The device can be

used in different locations, as it has 21………………… . Water is fed into a pipe, and

a 22………………….. of water flows over a solar panel. The water then enters a boiler, where

it turns into steam. Any particles in the water are caught in a 23………………… . The

purified water comes out through one tube, and all types of 24………………… come out

through another. A screen displays the 25………………… of the device, and transmits the
information to the company so that they know when the Desolenator

requires 26…………………. .

Academic Reading Test4 c7

Reading Passage 1 Pulling Strings to Build Pyramids

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. 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. 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 Clemmons’s 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 from
horizontal to vertical, using no source of energy except the wind. Their initial
calculations and scale-model wind-tunnel experiments convinced them they wouldn’t
need a strong wind to lift the 33.5-tonne column. Even a modest force, if sustained over
a long time, would do. The key was to use a pulley system that would magnify the
applied force. So they rigged up a tent-shaped scaffold directly above the tip of the
horizontal column, with pulleys suspended from the scaffold’s apex. The idea was that as
one end of the column rose, the base would roll across the ground on a trolley.

Earlier this year, the team put Clemmons’s unlikely theory to the test, using a 40-square-
metre rectangular nylon sail. The kite lifted the column clean off the ground. ‘We were
absolutely stunned,’ Gharib says. The instant the sail opened into the wind, a huge force
was generated and the column was raised to the vertical in a mere 40 seconds.’

The wind was blowing at a gentle 16 to 20 kilometres an hour, little more than half what
they thought would be needed. What they had failed to reckon with was what
happened when the kite was opened. There was a huge initial force – five times larger
than the steady state force,’ Gharib says. This jerk meant that kites could lift huge
weights, Gharib realised. Even a 300-tonne column could have been lifted to the vertical
with 40 or so men and four or five sails. So Clemmons was right: the pyramid, builders
could have used kites to lift massive stones into place. Whether they actually did is
another matter,’ Gharib says.

There are no pictures showing the construction of the pyramids, so there is no way to
tell what really happened. The evidence for using kites to move large stones is no better
or worse than the evidence for the brute force method,’ Gharib says.

Indeed, the experiments have left many specialists unconvinced. The evidence for kite-
lifting is non-existent,’ says Willeke Wendrich, an associate professor of Egyptology at
the University of California, Los Angeles. Others feel there is more of a case for the
theory. Harnessing the wind would not have been a problem for accomplished sailors
like the Egyptians. And they are known to have used wooden pulleys, which could have
been made strong enough to bear the weight of massive blocks of stone. In addition,
there is some physical evidence that the ancient Egyptians were interested in flight. A
wooden artefact found on the step pyramid at Saqqara looks uncannily like a modem
glider. Although it dates from several hundred years after the building of the pyramids,
its sophistication suggests that the Egyptians might have been developing ideas of flight
for a long time. And other ancient civilisations certainly knew about kites; as early as
1250 BC, the Chinese were using them to deliver messages and dump flaming debris on
their foes.

The experiments might even have practical uses nowadays. There are plenty of places
around the globe where people have no access to heavy machinery, but do know how
to deal with wind, sailing and basic mechanical principles. Gharib has already been
contacted by a civil engineer in Nicaragua, who wants to put up buildings with adobe
roofs supported by concrete arches on a site that heavy equipment can’t reach. His idea
is to build the arcnes horizontally, then lift them into place using kites. We’ve given him
some design hints,’ says Gharib. We’re just waiting for him to report back.’ So whether
they were actually used to build the pyramids or not, it seems that kites may make
sensible construction tools in the 21st century AD.

Questions 1-7
Do the following statement with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes
1-7 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

1 It is generally believed that large numbers of people were needed to build the
pyramids.
2 Clemmons found a strange hieroglyph on the wall of an Egyptian monument.
3 Gharib had previously done experiments on bird flight.
4 Gharib and Graff tested their theory before applying it.
5 The success of the actual experiment was due to the high speed of the wind.
6 They found that, as the kite flew higher, the wind force got stronger.
7 The team decided that it was possible to use kites to raise very heavy stones.

Questions 8-13
Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the
passage for each answer.

Addition evidence for theory of kite lifting

The Egyptians had (8)………………, which could lift large pieces of (9)……………….., and

they knew how to use the energy of the wind from their skill as (10)………………. The

discovery on one pyramid of an object which resembled a (11)…………….. suggests

they may have experimented with (12) …………… In addition, over two thousand years

ago kites used in china as weapons, as well as for sending (13)………………