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Museums in the Modern World
1. Museums have changed. They are no longer places for the privileged few or for bored vacationers to visit on rainy days. Action and democracy are words used in descriptions of museums now.

2. At a science museum in Ontario, Canada, you can feel your hair stand on end as harmless electricity passes through your body. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, you can look at 17th century instruments while listening to their music. At the modern Museum in Sweden, you can put on costumes provided by the Stockholm Opera. As these examples show, museums are reaching out to new audiences, particularly the young, the poor, and the less educated members of the population. As a result, attendance is increasing.

3. More and more, museums directors are realizing that people learn best when they can somehow become part of what they are seeing.  In many science museums, for example, there are no guided tours. The visitor is encouraged to touch, listen, operate, and experiment so as to discover scientific principles for himself.  He can have the experience of operating a spaceship or a computer.  He can experiment with glass blowing and paper making. The purpose is not only to provide fun but also to help people feel at home in the world of science. The theory is that people who do not understand science will probably fear it, and those who fear science will not use it to best advantage. Many museums now provide educational services and children's departments. In addition to the usual displays, they also offer film showings and dance programs. Instead of being places that one ¡°should¡± visit, they are places to enjoy.

4. On cause of all these changes is the increase in wealth and leisure time. Another cause is the rising percentage of young people in the population. Many of these young people are college students or college graduates. They are better educated than their parents. They see things in a new and different way. They are not content to stand and look at works of art; they want art they can participate in. The same is true of science and history. In the US, certain groups who formerly were too poor to care about anything beyond the basic needs of daily life are now becoming curious about the world around them. The young people in these groups, like young people in general, have benefited from a better education than their parents received. All these groups, and the rest of the population as well, have been influenced by television, which has taught them about other places and other times.

5. The effect of all this has been to change existing museums and to encourage the building of new ones. In the US and Canada alone, there are now more than 6, 000 museums, almost twice as many as there were 25 years ago. About half of them are devoted to history, and the rest are evenly divided between the arts and sciences. The number of visitors, according to the American Association of museums, has risen to more than 700 million a year.

6. In fact, the crowds of visitors at some museums are creating a major problem. Admission to museums has always been either free or very inexpensive, but now some museums are charging entrance fees for the first time or raising their prices. Even when raised, however, entrance fees are generally too low to support a museum, with its usually large building and its highly trained staff.

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

A. Causes of changes
B. Increasing number of museums and visitors
C. Museums getting closer to more spectators
D. Movies shown in museums
E. New notions about the management of museums
F. Places to visit

5. Now museums are no longer restricted to the privileged few, but _______________________.
6. With the development of society, people, especially the young people, __________________.
7. To meet the needs of society, more museums _______________________.
8. Two major problems for museums are that they have too many visitors and they _______________________.

A. have higher demands of museums
B. are open to more people with different social background
C. to lengthen their opening hours
D. charge too little for admission
E. have been built and open to public
Volts from the Sky
1. Lightning has caused awe and wonder since old times. Although Benjamin Franklin demonstrated lightning as an enormous electrical discharge more than 200 years ago, many puzzles still surround this powerful phenomenon.

2. Lightning is generated when electrical charges separate in rain clouds, though processes are still not fully understood. Typically, positive charges build at the cloud top, while the bottom becomes negatively charged. In most instances of cloud-to-ground lightning, the negatively charged lower portion of the cloud repels negatively charged particles on the ground's surfaces, making it become positively charged. The positive charge on the ground gathers at elevated points.

3. A flow of electrons begins between the cloud and earth. When the voltage charge becomes large enough, it breaks through the insulating barrier of air, and electrons zigzag earthward. We see the discharge as lightning.

4. Lightning can occur within a cloud, between clouds, or between clouds and the ground. The first variety, intra-cloud lightning, is the most frequent but is often hidden from our view. Cloud-to-ground lightning, making up about 20 percent of lightning discharges, is what we usually see Lightning comes in several forms, including sheet, ribbon, and ball, Intra-cloud lightning can illuminate a cloud so it looks like a white sheet, hence its name. When cloud-to-ground lightning occurs during strong winds, they can shift the lightning channel sideways, so it looks like a ribbon. The average lightning strike is more than 3 miles long and can travel at a tenth of the speed of light. Ball lightning, the rarest and most mysterious form, derives its name from the small luminous ball that appears near the impact point, moves horizontally, and lasts for several seconds.

5. Thunder is generated by the tremendous heat released in a lightning discharge. Temperatures near the discharge can reach as high as 50,000¡æ within thousandths of a second. This sudden heating acts as an explosion, generating shock waves we hear as thunder.

6. About 2,000 thunderstorms are occurring in the world at any time, generating about 100 lightning strikes every second, or 8 million daily.  Within the United States, lightning strikes are estimated at 20 million a year, or about 22,000 per day. You have a 1-in-600, 000 chance of being struck by lightning during your lifetime. Lightning can strike twice or more in the same spot. The Empire State Building in New York is struck by lightning about two dozen times annually.

7. You can measure how far you are from a lightning strike by counting the seconds between viewing the flash and hearing the bang, and then dividing by five. This approximates the mileage.

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1. Paragraphs 2 and 3 _________
2. Paragraph 4 ______________
3. Paragraph 5 ______________
4. Paragraph 6 ______________

A. Cloud-to-ground lightning occurring in the U. S.
B. Types of lightning
C. Cause of lightning
D. Differences between thunder and thunderstorm
E. Frequencies of thunderstorms occurring in the world and the U. S.
F. Shock waves as thunder

5. In most cases of cloud-to-ground lightning the ground¡¯s surface ______________.
6. One form of lightning that ______________ is ball lightning.
7. Cloud lightning looks like a ribbon when its lightning channel ______________.
8. Although not fully understanding processes of lightning man ______________.

A. occurs most infrequently.
B. is shifted sideways by strong winds.
C. is often hidden from our view.
D. is equipped with a good knowledge of various forms of lightning.
E. is estimated at 20 millions a year.
F. is positively charged.