Unit 2 Out of This World 单元话题阅读理解练习-2023-2024学年高二英语选择性必修第三册单元重难点易错题精练（译林版2020）

Unit 2 Out of This World 单元话题阅读理解练习 （2023秋·江苏盐城·高二盐城市第一中学校联考阶段练习）For the Romans it looked like what would be their easiest battle. They came to invade Syracuse — and found soldiers with mirrors. As their boats approached the coast of Sicily the sun came out, a ray of light leapt (跳出) from the shore and their boats burst into flames (突然起火). They had become victims of the first ‘death ray’. For centuries archaeologists (考古学家) have argued over descriptions of how Archimedes  (阿基米德), the greatest inventor in ancient times, used concentrated solar energy to destroy the Roman fleet (舰队) in 212 BCE. Historians have said nobody then knew enough about optics (光学) and mirrors. This month, however, a study shows that some ancient civilizations including that of the Ancient Greeks, had such advanced scientific knowledge that they may even have made the telescope — and that ‘burning mirrors’ would have been within their reach. Archimedes, a Greek born around 280 BCE, was famed for his mathematical skills and his ability to use them for building war machines. These included catapults (石弩) that threw rocks at the enemy, long chutes that could be projected from the city walls for rocks to be rolled down, and cranes that could lift ships and shake the sailors into the water. Archimedes is best known for running through Syracuse shouting ‘Eureka’ after realizing, while in the bath, that he could work out the purity of gold by measuring the volume of water it displaced. For his fellow citizens, however, that would have been trivial compared to a death ray able to burn the frightening Romans. There were later examples of the use of the death ray, the first being in 6th-century Constantinople; when the Byzantine capital was surrounded by enemy ships, dozens of men holding mirrors set fire to them. Modern scientists have recreated such events under controlled conditions. In 1973, a Greek scientist lined up 60 sailors on a port with large mirrors, from which they reflected light onto a