Hybrid cars are cars that run on both petrol and electricity. They have a small standard petrol engine and a battery and electric motor to provide electric power.
There are some differences between different models of hybrid cars, but the general principle is that the car runs on petrol, and the electric motor kicks in when additional power is required, for example when going uphill or accelerating. In some hybrid cars the petrol engine turns itself off when not needed, for example when the car has stopped at traffic lights, keeping only the electric engine running.
Conventional cars have large engines to cope with driving uphill and accelerating. Most of the time, this high engine capacity is not needed, but the engine continues burning up fuel. Hybrid cars have much smaller petrol engines, boosted by electric motors when needed, so they use less petrol. Hybrid cars are also lighter and aerodynamically designed for greater fuel efficiency. Another way that fuel consumption is cut is by a system of ‘regenerative braking’.
The electric motor is used to slow down the car, rather than conventional brakes. The energy produced by the slowing car is converted into electrical power, which is automatically stored in the battery. In effect, the battery recharges when you brake. In conventional cars the energy produced when braking is wasted.
Car manufacturers and engineers have been experimenting with electric and hybrid cars since the late 19th century. In 1928 Ferdinand Porsche built an experimental hybrid car which used both an internal combustion engine and electric motors. The first mass-produced hybrid car, the Toyota Prius, came out in Japan at the end of 1997. However, hybrid cars only became available in the USA in 1999, when the Honda Insight went on sale.
As they use less fuel, hybrid cars are cheaper to run. There are also many initiatives in place to encourage people to buy them. In some countries, hybrid car owners pay a lower rate of tax, and don’t have to pay on certain toll roads. In some cities around the world, hybrid cars are allowed to park for free.
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UNIT XXIV
1. Read and translate the article.
From British Council
Nuclear Fusion
Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, winner of the Nobel prize for Physics, famously declared ‘We say that we will put the sun into a box. The idea is pretty. The problem is, we don't know how to make the box.’ He was talking about nuclear fusion reactors, and the ‘box’ is the casing of the reactor. But what should the box be made of? This is the problem that materials scientists around the world are working on in preparation for the construction of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor).
ITER will be the next stage of research into nuclear fusion, and aims to pave the way for commercial fusion reactors by developing the necessary technologies and processes. The reactor will reproduce the nuclear reactions that occur in the sun using super-heated gas, or plasma, in a tokamak. The tokamak generates an intense doughnut-shaped magnetic field which confines the plasma and allows fusion to take place.
ITER will use two isotopes of hydrogen: deuterium and tritium. When these isotopes fuse, they produce helium nuclei and high energy neutrons. The problem is that the resulting severe neutron irradiation turns many elements into dangerously radioactive isotopes. The challenge is to find materials for the reactor walls that will withstand this bombardment and remain stable.
Researchers have already discovered that iron, carbon and chromium remain relatively stable, and are looking into the possibility of using special steels. It is not, however, possible to recreate the conditions inside a nuclear fusion reactor in the lab, so researchers are having to infer the behaviour of materials, using data from lightly irradiated samples and a variety of modelling techniques.
ITER will be located in Caderache, in southern France. Construction of the site is due to begin in 2008, and the tokamak itself is scheduled to be built in 2011. Scientists will need to be confident that the materials chosen to build the reactor can indeed withstand the extraordinary conditions needed for nuclear fusion.
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UNIT XXV
1. Read and translate the article.
From British Council
Sources of Energy
Most respected scientists agree – we need to find another source of energy – and quickly. Oil is running out and anyway, if we continue to burn oil and pump carbon into the atmosphere then the effects on global climate will lead to global catastrophe even before the oil disappears.
The British government has set a target of a 20% reduction in carbon emissions by 2010. Central to this policy is the search for alternative, renewable forms of energy production – and this is where the serious disagreement among scientists begins. Is there truly a source of energy that is clean, safe, and most importantly, renewable (it will never run out) that can replace our current reliance on fossil fuels?
Controversially, the government plans to build a number of wind farms around the UK. Supporters of wind power say that this is a safe, efficient and clean way of meeting the demand for electricity. Opponents of wind farms however say that the schemes will disfigure the British countryside while doing little to meet the nation’s energy needs.
Here, 2 people active in the debate about wind farms give their points of view:
Simon Shearman (British Wind Power Group)
Firstly, a few facts about wind power. Wind is one of the cheapest of the new, renewable forms of energy. A typical wind farm will produce enough energy to meet the annual electricity needs of 1500 homes. It is extremely safe – no member of the public has ever been injured at a wind farm. The shallow waters around Britain are the windiest in Europe – ideal locations for wind farms and by 2010 up to 10% of the electricity used in the UK could be produced by wind power.
I find it annoying and frustrating that the biggest objection that opponents of wind farms can come up with is that wind farms don’t look very nice. Don’t they realise that the crisis of global warming is real and something must be done urgently?
Alice Evans (Protect the Countryside Association)
The simple, obvious fact is that wind turbines cannot generate electricity if the wind is too light or too strong and it often is. Many scientists estimate that wind turbines generally produce only 30% of their capacity. This is not a reliable enough supply to enable us to close down conventional power stations. In fact, demand for electricity is growing and may increase by 20% in the next 10 years. Wind power can’t keep up with this growth, let alone replace other sources of power.
These arguments do not justify the destruction and disfigurement of the British countryside.
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UNIT XXVI
1. Read and translate the article.
From British Council
Car Industry
As every good student of history or economics knows, the industrial revolution began in the early nineteenth century, in the north of England, when spinning machines were invented. These machines made it possible to manufacture textiles much more quickly, and using a smaller workforce. Factories were built, and some people made fortunes by owning or investing in the factories, or by developing markets across the newly-accessible world.
There is another version of the story, however. The textile mills of Victorian Britain were very different places from modern-day factories. The people who owned them and who worked in them would not recognise today’s industrial landscape. The other version of the story goes like this: modern day industrial capitalism began with the car industry.
Nobody really knows exactly who invented the automobile: it appeared towards the end of the 1800s after numerous prototypes and experiments. What is certain however, is that it was the Ford Motor Company who pioneered its modern manufacture.
The huge factories that Henry Ford built, and the invention of the production line process (and the philosophy of “Fordism” which followed it) were the real beginning of mass industry as we know it today. The same model being churned out over and again, workers in huge factories having one simple job to do repetitively: modern industry has – in many ways – not changed very much since the first Ford factory was opened at the beginning of the twentieth century.
That said, however, the car industry has changed a lot. These days, the massive factories are no longer in the United States or Western Europe, but in South America, India and China. The car companies themselves are no longer owned by a few rich men sitting in boardrooms in Detroit but are owned by multinational conglomerates. Most car factories are now clean, quiet places, where the chatter of human workers has been replaced by the quiet hum of robots efficiently going about their business, never threatening to take industrial action.
Japan, not America, has long been the world’s largest producer of automobiles. Changing global wealth means that the image of millions of bicycles in Chinese cities is now very outdated. The recent launch of the Tata Nano in India shows that a small, fuel-efficient and very cheap car is now a global product, not one just for European consumers.
If you watch the traffic passing on any highway, almost anywhere in the world, the cars all look the same. In Italy you may see more Fiats, in Germany more Audis, in France more Citroens, but the cars themselves – now all designed by computers, engineers and technicians rather than by inspired artists or designers - resemble each other.
The car industry, more than being just the starting point of modern industrial capitalism, is in fact a paradigm of that system’s development.
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UNIT XXVII
1. Read and translate the article.
From British Council
Industrial Design
Everyday we use our laptops for work or study, relax by listening to music on an iPod or watching TV, cook with ovens or microwaves, travel by car, bus or train. The objects we use are so common, many of us probably never stop to think about how these objects were made, or who actually designed them.
Designing everyday objects is not a modern activity. The first cavemen who sharpened pieces of stone to make knives or arrowheads were designers. Industrial design, however, is a modern process – designing objects for mass production. Industrial design is not the individual craftsman or artisan working alone to produce a single object, something which will never be repeated. Industrial design is the process of producing the things we all have and use in our homes and places of work every day.
The industrial designer, therefore, is not an artist, but a person who also has to know about engineering, usability, aesthetics, marketing, brand development and sales. Consequently, the industrial designer is now usually part of a team of people. While famous designers like Phillippe Starck are often credited with having produced an object, their work is often little more than putting the finishing touches to a long process.
According to the Industrial Design Society of America, a professional organisation of industrial designers, "Industrial Design is the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer." This means that design is a process, rather than a one-off activity. The designer and his or her team are responsible for comparative product research, model making, prototyping and testing.
One example of this is the Coca-Cola bottle. It has a shape which is often described as “iconic” – instantly recognisable even without the Coca-Cola logo on it. But the bottle we know today was not the original one, but the result of many similar early versions. Indeed, recent marketing developments mean that the bottle is now available in many different sizes, and made of either glass or plastic. Yet it is still always immediately recognisable. The iPod has a similar story – even though it is a much more recent invention, the iPod has developed from the bulky early versions through to the various models and sizes available today. A car like the Mini, too, is still in production today, and still instantly recognisable, even though the 2008 model is very different to the car first produced in the 1950s. These objects have evolved, their shape changing in response to new technological possibilities and user demands.
Next time you boil water in a kettle, steam rice in a rice cooker, turn the ignition key in your car, switch on your radio or type an email on your laptop, stop to think how easy or difficult it is to use, how its form follows its function, how good it looks, and think of the work of the industrial designers that went into it!
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Supplement I