第12讲 自然科技主题阅读 导学案-2022-2023学年上海市暑期初升高一衔接英语

教学内容 The fight is on to get rid of air pollution in our cities. While the best solution in the long-term would be to ban fossil-fueled cars, that won’t help the millions who are dying in the meantime, and so some high-tech solutions are now on the cards. In March 2016, 10 London pigeons became famous. These pigeons took to the sky from Primrose Hill in north London, wearing backpacks monitoring air pollution. Once in the air, the backpacks sent live air-quality updates to the smartphones of the Londoners below. The pigeons and their backpacks were just the latest in a series of increasingly desperate attempts to monitor and control air pollution. London’s air pollution problem has been getting worse for years, and it often rises to more than three times the European Union’s legal limit. Another promising approach can be found in Beijing, after China declared a “war against pollution” in 2014. A seven-metre-high “Smog Free Tower”, designed by a Dutch scientist, Daan Roosegaarde, opened in Beijing’s 751 D Park in September 2016. It is a huge, outdoor air purifier. Airborne particles（颗粒）are sucked into the tower where they receive a positive charge. The particles are then caught by a negatively charged dust-removal plate and clean air is blown out of the other end. “Changing smog particles does not take much current.” Roosegaarde said. As for what to do with the collected PM waste, he has currently set up a business making jewelry out of the waste. Prince Charles owns a set of “smog free” cufflinks(袖扣). If PM waste was collected on at a big scale, Roosegaarde believes it could even be used as a building material. Mexico City has an alternative solution. Looking to Nature to maximize the surface area of a building, Allison Dring, a Berlin-based architect, managed to catch light and wind from all sides. She is now making a building material by burning agricultural crop by-products in the absence of oxygen. “It means that you ar