Unit 3 Sea Exploration 单元阅读与写作配套练习 -2024-2025学年高中英语人教版选择性必修第四册

Unit 3 Sea Exploration-单元阅读与写作配套练习

Part1 阅读过关

一、阅读理解。

A

 Microplastics have become a common source of pollution across the Earth—they have settled in the deep sea and on the Himalayas, stuck inside volcanic rocks, filled the stomachs of seabirds and even fallen in fresh Antarctic snow. They are even appearing inside humans.

 Now, new research suggests that a simple, cheap measure may significantly reduce the level of microplastics in water from your tap(水龙头): boiling and filtering(过滤)it. In a study published Wednesday in Environmental Science & Technology Letters, researchers from China found that boiling tap water for just five minutes—then filtering it after it cools—could remove at least 80 percent of its microplastics.

 Crucially, this process relies on the water containing enough calcium carbonate(碳酸钙) to trap the plastics. In the study, boiling hard water containing 300 milligrams of calcium carbonate led to an almost 90 percent drop in plastics. But in samples with less than 60 milligrams of calcium carbonate, boiling reduced the level of plastics by just 25 percent. Additionally, the research didn't include all types of plastics. The team focused only on three common types—polystyrene, polyethylene and polypropylene—and they didn't study other chemicals previously found in water such as vinyl chloride.

 Still, the findings show a potential path forward for reducing microplastic exposure—a task that's becoming increasingly difficult. Even bottled water, scientists found earlier this year, contains 10 to 1,000 times more microplastics than originally thought.

 Scientists are still trying to determine how harmful microplastics are—but what they do know has raised concerns. The new study suggests boiling tap water could be a tool to limit intake. “The way they demonstrated how microplastics were trapped through the boiling process was nice,” Caroline Gauchotte-Lindsay, an environmental engineer at the University of Glasgow in Scotland who was not involved in the research, tells New Scientist. “We should be looking into upgrading drinking water treatment plants so they remove microplastics.”

1.How does the author present the issue in the first paragraph?(     )

A.By quoting an expert.  B.By defining a concept.

C.By giving examples.  D.By providing statistics.

2.What determines the effectiveness of trapping microplastics in water?(     )

A.The hardness of water.  B.The length of cooling time.

C.The frequency of filtering. D.The type of plastic in water.

3.What does the author try to illustrate by mentioning bottled water in paragraph 4?(     )

A.The importance of plastic recycling.

B.The severity of the microplastic problem.

C.The danger in overusing pure water.

D.The difficulty in treating polluted water.

4.What is Gauchotte-Lindsay's suggestion about?(     )

A.Choice of new research methods. B.Possible direction for further study.

C.Need to involve more researchers. D.Potential application of the findings.

B篇

You've heard that plastic is polluting the oceans — between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes enter ocean ecosystems every year. But does one plastic straw or cup really make a difference? Artist Benjamin Von Wong wants you to know that it does. He builds massive sculptures out of plastic garbage, forcing viewers to re-examine their relationship to single-use plastic products.

 At the beginning of the year, the artist built a piece called “Strawpocalypse,” a pair of 10-foot-tall plastic waves, frozen mid-crash. Made of 168,000 plastic straws collected from several volunteer beach cleanups, the sculpture made its first appearance at the Estella Place shopping center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

 Just 9% of global plastic waste is recycled. Plastic straws are by no means the biggest source(来源) of plastic pollution, but they've recently come under fire because most people don't need them to drink with and, because of their small size and weight, they cannot be recycled. Every straw that's part of Von Wong's artwork likely came from a drink that someone used for only a few minutes. Once the drink is gone, the straw will take centuries to disappear.

 In a piece from 2018, Von Wong wanted to illustrate(说明) a specific statistic: Every 60 seconds, a truckload's worth of plastic enters the ocean. For this work, titled “Truckload of Plastic,” Von Wong and a group of volunteers collected more than 10,000 pieces of plastic, which were then tied together to look like they'd been dumped(倾倒) from a truck all at once.