Information technology
1982 was the year of information technology in Great Britain. But what exactly is infotech? 85% of people polled recently had not clue what is meant, although 53% of those polled say they thought it sounded pretty important. They were right. It is. So what is it? Well, put simply, it is the “marrying-up” of products from several key industries: computers, telephones, television, satellites. It means using micro-electronics, telecommunication networks, and fiber optics to help produce, store, obtain and send information by way of words, numbers, pictures and sound more quickly and efficiently than ever before. The impact infotech is having and is going to have on our lives and works is tremendous. It is already linking the skills of the space industry with those of cable television so programmes can be beamed directly into our homes from all over the world. Armies of “steel collar” workers, the robots, will soon be working in factories doing the boring, complex and unpleasant jobs which are at present still done by man. In some areas such as the car industries this has already started. Television will also be used to enable customers to shop from the comfort of their homes by simply ordering via TV screen, payment being made by direct debits of their credit cards. Home banking and the automatic booking of the tickets will also be done through the television screen. Cable television which in many countries now gives a choice of dozens of channels will soon be used to protect our homes by operating burglar and fire alarms linked to police and fire stations. Computers will run our homes, controlling the heating, air conditioning and cooking systems while robots will cope with the house work. The friendly postman will be a thing of the past as the postal service and letters disappear with the electronic mail received via view data screens. All the things are coming very fast and their effects will be as far-reaching as those of the industrial revolution. Infotech is the part of the technological revolution and that is with us now.
TEXT #24 1. Read and translate the text 2. Vocabulary exercises 3. Grammar exercises 4. Speaking tasks
Properties of materials Materials we can see around us and those used in civil engineering have various properties. The word ‘property’ can be used in many different ways. We are going to use it with the meaning of a quality or feature of something. All the things we can see around us are made of some kind of materials or, in most cases, of a combination of various materials. We use particular materials to produce certain objects because of their properties. How do we find out what the properties of some materials are? The answer is very simple. We can see the materials or touch them; we can try lifting them or applying force to them. The materials will perform in a certain way. When we touch the material, we can feel if it is smooth or rough. Some vandals take a nail or other sharp object and scratch walls or elevator booths to find out if the material they are made of is soft or hard. We need a crane to lift a concrete block as it is really heavy, but things we can lift with our hands are obviously light. We use concrete blocks for building constructions because they are rigid. But car wheels should be flexible therefore, we use rubber for their production. We want to see through windows, so we use glass to make them. Glass is transparent, but brittle, so it can be easily broken. Glass is not tough at all. Plastics are tough, but they are either translucent or opaque, so we cannot so clearly through objects made from them. There are fire-resistance doors in office or residential buildings. They are make off non-combustible materials. Unfortunately, most of the materials we have in our household or offices are combustible, and in the case of fire, we can hardly save anything but our lives.
TEXT #25 1. Read and translate the text 2. Vocabulary exercises 3. Grammar exercises 4. Speaking tasks
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