Hurricanes
1. Did you know that before 1950, hurricanes had no names? They were simply given numbers. The first names were simply Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc. But in 1953, female names were given because of the unpredictability factor of the storms. In 1979, realizing the sexist nature of such names, the lists were expanded to include both men and women.

2. Hurricanes and typhoons are the same things. If they form in the Atlantic, we call these strong storms hurricanes, from the West Indian word hurricane meaning “big wind”. And if they are pacific storms they are called typhoons from the Chinese taifun, meaning “great wind”. To be classified as a hurricane the storm must have maximum winds of at least 75 mph. These storms are big, many hundreds of miles in diameter.

3. Hurricanes get their power from water vapor as it gives out its stored-up energy. All water vapor gives out heat as it condenses from a gaseous state to a liquid state over fixed points on the equator. To make a hurricane, you must have extremely wet, warm air, the kind of air that can only be found in tropical regions.

4. Scientists have determined that the heat given out in the process of water condensation can be as high as 95 billion kilowatts per hour. In just one day alone, the storm can produce more energy than many industrialized nations need in an entire year! The problem is that we don't know how to make such great energy work for us.

5. Predicting the path of a hurricane is one of the most difficult tasks for forecasters. it moves at a typical speed of 15 mph. But not always. Some storms may race along at twice this speed, then suddenly stop and remain in the same location in the ocean for several days. It can be maddening if you live in a coastal area that may be hit.

6. The biggest advance in early detection is continuous watch from weather satellites. With these, we can see the storms form and track them fully, from birth to death. While they can still kill people and destroy property, hurricanes will never surprise any nation again.

练习：
1. Paragraph 1 ______________
2. Paragraph 2 ______________
3. Paragraph 4 ______________
4. Paragraph 5 ______________

A. A short history of naming hurricanes
B. Harnessing the hurricane energy
C. Difficulty in forecasting the course of a hurricane
D. Huge energy stored in a hurricane
E. Forecast a hurricane through satellite watching
F. No much difference between hurricane and typhoon

5. The main consideration of using males and females’ names for hurricanes is ______________
6. Using weather satellites can ensure ______________
7. From the passage we may rightly deduce that energy specialists may be interested in the hurricane’s ______________
8. Scientists cannot predict the course of a hurricane accurately due to its ______________
A. timely discovery

B. convenience
C. sex equality
D. its connection with humans
E. huge power
F. uncertainty
Carl Sagan
1. “No one has ever succeeded in conveying the wonder . . . and joy of science as widely . . . and few as well.” That praise was given on Carl Sagan when he was honoured with the Public Welfare Medal, the highest award given by the National Academy of Science. On 20 December 1996, Carl Sagan died at age 62 of pneumonia. In my experience, he was much more than a prominent populariser. He was a brilliant scientist with solid achievements.

2. I first met Sagan at a meeting of the AAAS—the American Association for the Advancement of Science—where he took part in a session on the Viking Mars Project. When Viking landed on Mars in 1976, it was at a site he had helped select. Then I interviewed him in Washington, D. C., after Mariner had sent back spectacular pictures of the Martian surface. Sagan had acted as a head of one of Mariner's imaging teams. The interview, “Close-up Photos Reveal a Turbulent Mars,” appeared in Popular Science in September 1972.

3. I had originally headlined the story “The Red Planed Isn't Dead,” but Sagan asked me to change it. “I'm in enough hot water with some of my colleagues as it is,” he said, referring to the anger felt by some scientists over his growing fame as a populariser. That fame reached a zenith during his 1980 13-part television series “Cosmos”, with an audience of 400 million people in 60 countries. Along the way, he captured Pulitzer Prize for his book The Dragons of Eden.

4. He was noted for the vigour of his logic style, especially when criticizing some piece of pseudoscience. I remembered a 1973 AAAS meeting at which he destroyed the theories of Immanuel Velikovsky, who was maintaining that only a few thousands of years ago, Venus had repeatedly collided with Earth and Mars; events well noted. Velikovsky said, in the bible.

5. Sagan was often heard observing that drawings of flying saucers never included a door. “How did those creatures of outer space get in and out?” he once asked. Once he said that pseudoscience is embraced in exact proportion as real science is misunderstood.

练习：
1. Paragraph 1 ______________
2. Paragraph 2 ______________
3. Paragraph 3 ______________
4. Paragraph 5 ______________

A. Sagan as a science populariser
B. Honour Sagan enjoyed
C. Sagan's publications
D. Description of the first meeting with Sagan
E. Sagan's criticism on pseudoscience
F. Sagan in trouble with other scientists

5. In Sagan’s opinion, Velikovsky might be ______________.
6. With Cosmos and others, Sagan enjoyed his fame as ______________.
7. From the passage we may conclude that the author of the passage may be ______________.
8. From the description we know that Sagan was ______________.

A. a member of the National Academy of Science
B. a pseudo-scientist
C. a science populariser
D. a reporter
E. an astronomer
F. a physicist