Reading Passage 1- Science Museum

Questions 1 – 14
Read the text and answer Questions 1 – 7

A guided tour of the Challenge of Materials gallery.
Starts: 14:00
Challenge of Materials – gallery tour
Discover the history of Flight in this free tour. From mankind’s earliest dreams of flight, through the Wright brothers to the jumbo jet.
Starts: 13:00

Flight Gallery Tour
A guided tour of our Making the Modern World gallery.
Starts: 15:00

Making the Modern World – gallery tour
Events for Schools
A fast-moving and entertaining demonstration that explores forces and motion.
Starts: 11:00, 12:15, 13:30

Feel the Force
Our popular Launchpad gallery is reserved for different age groups on different days. Find out when you can request places for your Key Stage 2 group.
Starts: 10:30

Launchpad open for Key Stage 2
IMAX Films
Dive into this magical 3D adventure and swim with some of the planet’s most colourful creatures.
Starts: 13:05

Deep Blue 3D
Journey through distant galaxies on this mission to service the Hubble Telescope.
Starts: 14:20

Hubble 3D
Special Exhibitions
Explore how astronomy has changed the way we see our universe – and ourselves – through this object-rich exhibition. How astronomy has shaped our world.
Until Friday 30 December 11

Cosmos and Culture
An exciting new exhibition exploring the role played by technology in creating post-war Britain.
Until Thursday 31 March 11

Hi-tech Britain
Explore the workings of the unconscious mind through a range of modern and historical objects and contemporary artworks.
Until Saturday 02 April 11
Mind Matter

Read the text and answer Questions 8 – 14

General Safety Rules

1.No laboratory work shall be performed by a student without the direct supervision of the teacher. Under no circumstances is a student allowed to work in the laboratory alone.

2.You will be instructed at the beginning of each laboratory period, as to the potential dangers that may be encountered and the proper precautions that are required to eliminate or reduce such hazards.

3.You will become familiar with the instructions of laboratory procedure prior to the initiation of any related activity. Read all directions for the experiment at least two times. Ask questions if you don’t understand any part of the directions. No changes from the instructions will be allowed without permission from the teacher or instructor.

4.Never perform any activity that is not authorized or supervised by the teacher or instructor.

5.Do not operate equipment without operating instructions or specific permission from the teacher or instructor (i.e. Bunsen burner or centrifuge).

6.No eating, drinking or applications of cosmetics is allowed in the laboratory.

7.Always wash hands after handling chemicals, plants, animals, or dissection tools.

8.Careless behavior in a laboratory can cause accidents. Horseplay, teasing, loud talking or tossing objects are are not allowed in a laboratory.

9.All personal possessions such as books, coats, and papers, that are not related to the laboratory procedure should not be brought into the laboratory work area.

10.Each laboratory student will be made aware of the use and location of all safety equipment (i.e. goggles, gloves, apron, fume hood, eyewash, etc.)

11.Never reach over a Bunsen burner, chemical reagents or other laboratory equipment.

12.At the completion of the laboratory period or when an experiment is complete, return all equipment to proper storage and clean the work area.

 

Reading Passage 2

Questions 15 – 27
Read the text and answer Questions 15 – 21

Crime dramas such as CSI and Waking the Dead may have helped fuel a rise of nearly a third in the number of students taking degree courses in forensic and archaeological science.
The explosion in fictional and documentary screen portrayals of scientific analysis of crime scenes and cold case reviews has coincided with a 32.4% increase in undergraduates, figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency revealed yesterday.
Nearly 5,750 students were following such courses last year, and though this was lower than the 11,045 following chemistry or 9,348 doing physics, the growth dwarfed the 2% and 0.9% rise in these more traditional subjects. Overall numbers of undergraduates in the UK went up 3.3%, with only computer science and astronomy showing big drops. “We don’t know the definite cause,” said Brian Emsley, of the Royal Society of Chemistry. “But there is a rise in programmes like Waking the Dead and CSI and there is a sort of glamour involved.
“We don’t want to knock it because chemistry is part of it. But it would be useful to know how many jobs there are in forensic science. We point to the number of jobs there are out there for [people on] chemistry courses, not only in science.
Because they have a command of numeracy, mass data handling and analytic skills, they also go into banking, insurance and the City.”
But other figures suggest the television gloss of fingerprinting, blood analysis and weapons analysis is wearing off. Applications for forensic courses fell this year by just over 4%, while those for physics and chemistry went up by 12.2% and 11.3%.

 

Read the text and answer Questions 22 – 27

Program meals to be ready when you arrive home. TMIO brings you the Internet, cell phone, and telephone controlled IO professional series intelligent oven. TMIO creates unprecedented mobility for your household, and revolutionizes your lifestyle and cooking experience with the 30-inch dual oven, refrigerated, internet-controlled, connect io. A true dream appliance for those with busy lifestyles; dinner is ready when you are. This stainless-steel beauty lets you refrigerate your meal before you leave for work. You can then set cooking times with your cellphone, PDA or computer.
Features:
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· Six Convenient Oven Racks, three ergonomically-designed racks per oven, with custom flared handles for easy handling even while wearing thick oven mitts.
· 3M ClearTekTM Glass Touch Screen Control Panel is a TMIOTM exclusive, an industry first, and based on advanced NASA space technology.
· Dual-Oven Advanced Refrigeration System for accurate and precision refrigeration control in both upper and lower ovens.
· Refrigerates Prior to Cooking Cycle or after cooking completed to keep food fresh.
· 10-Pass 3300W Broil / 2000W Bake Hidden (Concealed) Elements far superior to the 8-pass system found in most high-end professional ovens, TMIO’s professional 10-pass method covers much more of the oven’s entire usable area, and is able to cook larger sized dishes evenly, thoroughly, and precisely to your taste. A perfect solution for larger meats, fish, and poultry. 3300W Power delivered for fast preheat for beautifully broiled meats. Concealed elements present a smooth and even surface for effortless cleaning.
· True European Third-Element Convection with Two-Speed Convection Fans in both ovens for beautiful results in either baking or roasting modes. Solid perforated metal convection fan cover standard for your safety.
· Full-Rack Broiler Pan allows you to take true advantage of the full usable width of the oven for large enters. Only TMIO offers this exclusive full-rack broiler pan feature.
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· Full Probe Dual Oven Cooking top or bottom ovens for precision cooking temperature and event control.
· Proofing, Defrosting, Dehydrating, Refrigeration modes in addition to standard bake, broil, roast, convection.

Reading Passage 3 – Thin-film solar power

Questions 28 – 40
Read the text and answer Questions 28 – 40

The modernist box that won this year’s Solar Decathlon, a contest for solar-powered houses sponsored by America’s Department of Energy, had solar panels of the conventional, crystalline sort on its roof. But the walls were covered in solar cells made with thin coatings of silicon and other materials in the place of expensive slices of crystal. Thin film, as this technology is known, is still less popular than crystalline cells and its move to the mainstream has been a year or two away for a decade. But its time may have come at last.
There are many exotic ideas involving thin film, from the solar shingles recently unveiled by Dow, a big chemical company, a roof ’s worth costs $27,000, to experimental prototypes of power-generating clothes, roads and cars. However, most thin film comes in the form of panels that resemble crystalline ones. They are roughly half as efficient, meaning that a panel must be twice as big to generate the same amount of power, but a third cheaper, watt for watt. So in places where there is no shortage of space, they are the natural option.
Thin-film cells are also more versatile, since they can be mounted on a variety of materials including flexible plastics and fabrics. Like all solar cells, they are becoming more efficient: the decathletes of Team Germany, who designed the winning house, bragged that its north façade was covered in panels that could convert even indirect sunlight into electricity.
Over the past year or so, thanks to a crash in demand tied to the recession and falling subsidies in big markets, the price of crystalline panels has fallen by 30-40%, undermining thin film’s relative advantage. Nonetheless, thin film’s share of the market has continued to rise: it is now almost half, compared with just 10% in 2004.
The biggest force in the industry is a firm called First Solar, based in Arizona, a sunny American state. Like that of virtually all alternative-energy firms, its share price has suffered in the recession. But it has nonetheless performed considerably better than Standard & Poor’s clean-energy index over the past three years. Its gross margins in the first half of the year were over 50%, on sales of $944m. This month the firm was added to the S&P 500 stockmarket index of America’s biggest firms.
First Solar looks likely to continue to grow. Last month it signed a memorandum of understanding with China to install two gigawatts’ worth of panels in Inner Mongolia-a place with plenty of space. That is enough to power 3 million homes. Installation is due to begin next year and finish in 2019. That and other projects should consume all its output for several years to come. First Solar’s rivals are much smaller. But technological advances may yet catapult one to the fore, says Steve
Milunovich, an analyst at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. First Solar makes its cells from a chemical called cadmium telluride. But firms such as Nanosolar, which is building factories in California and Germany, believe that a combination of copper, indium, gallium and selenium known as CIGS will prove cheaper to produce on a mass scale. Researchers at the University of California, meanwhile, hold out great hopes for cells made of organic chemicals.
For the moment, however, the cheapest form of solar power is none of these, but the less glamorous solar-thermal power, which involves heating water with sunlight to make steam. Utilities are also keen to use lenses to increase the amount of sunlight hitting solar panels-a technique known as concentrating solar power. They still need subsidies or a high price on carbon emissions to make investments in any sort of solar power profitable. But the gap between solar and conventional power sources is becoming, well, thinner.