Cambridge IELTS Academic 8 Reading Test 2 Answers with Explanation / IELTS Academic Reading: Sheet glass manufacturing process , The little ice age , The meaning and power of smell

READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1.

Sheet glass manufacturing process

Question No.	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
1	spinning	early, method	Paragraph 1, Lines 3-6	"The first successful method for making clear, flat glass involved spinning."
2	(perfectly) unblemished	early, method	Paragraph 1, Lines 3-6	"This method was very effective as the glass had not touched any surfaces between being soft and becoming hard, so it stayed perfectly unblemished, with a 'fire finish'."
3	labour intensive	disadvantages, slow	Paragraph 1, Line 6	"However, the process took a long time, and was labour intensive."
4	thickness	Ribbon, advantages, produce glass sheets, varying, non-stop process	Paragraph 2, Lines 2-4	"The first continuous ribbon process involved squeezing molten glass through two hot rollers, similar to an old mangle. This allowed glass of virtually any thickness to be made non-stop."
5	marked	disadvantages, 20, rubbed away, machines, expensive	Paragraph 2, Lines 4-6	"but the rollers would leave both sides of the glass marked, and these would then need to be ground and polished. This part of the process rubbed away around 20 percent of the glass, and the machines were very expensive."
6	(molten) glass	Pilkington's float process	Paragraph 4, Lines 2-6	"Consequently, when pouring molten glass onto the molten tin, the underside of the glass would also be perfectly flat. If the glass were kept hot enough, it would flow over the molten tin until the top surface was also flat, horizontal and perfectly parallel to the bottom surface."
7	(molten) metal/tin	Pilkington's float process	Paragraph 4, Lines 2-6	"Consequently, when pouring molten glass onto the molten tin, the underside of the glass would also be perfectly flat. If the glass were kept hot enough, it would flow over the molten tin until the top surface was also flat, horizontal and perfectly parallel to the bottom surface."
8	rollers	Pilkington's float process	Paragraph 4, Lines 2-6	"Once the glass cooled to 604°C or less it was too hard to mark and could be transported out of the cooling zone by rollers."
9	TRUE	metal, float process, specific properties	Paragraph 3, Lines 5-7	"The metal had to melt at a temperature less than the hardening point of glass (about 600°C), but could not boil at a temperature below the temperature of the molten glass (about 1500°C). The best metal for the job was tin."
10	NOT GIVEN	Pilkington, invested, own money, float plant	Not found	No information is given about Pilkington investing his own money in the float plant.
11	FALSE	first full-scale plant, instant commercial success	Paragraph 5	"However, it took 14 months of non-stop production, costing the company £100,000 a month, before the plant produced any usable glass. Furthermore, once they succeeded in making marketable flat glass, the machine was turned off for a service to prepare it for years of continuous production. When it started up again it took another four months to get the process right again. They finally succeeded in 1959."
12	TRUE	process, invented by Pilkington, improved	Paragraph 6	"The modern Pilkington process includes refining the molten glass, homogenizing it, and feeding it continuously into a melting furnace."

Question No.	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
13	TRUE	Computers, better, humans, detecting, faults in glass	Paragraph 7	"Inspection technology allows more than 100 million measurements a second to be made across the ribbon, locating flaws the unaided eye would be unable to see. Secondly, it enables computers downstream to steer cutters around flaws."

 

 

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14–26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 .

The little ice age

Question No.	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
14	ii	relevance, Little Ice Age, current state of global warming	Paragraph B, Lines 3-5	"The climate events of the Little Ice Age did more than help shape the modern world. They are the deeply important context for the current unprecedented global warming."
15	vii	study, thousand years	Paragraph D, First sentence	"This book is a narrative history of climate shifts during the past ten centuries."
16	ix	enough food, productivity from farmland	Paragraph E, Last sentence	"The increased productivity from farmland made some countries self-sufficient in grain and livestock and offered effective protection against famine."
17	iv	human impact on the climate	Paragraph F	"In general, paragraph F deals with how present human civilization is responsible for different types of problems that have affected our climate."
18	C	documentation, past weather conditions, limited	Paragraph C, Lines 1-2	"Reconstructing the climate changes of the past is extremely difficult, because systematic weather observations began only a few centuries ago..."
19	B	documentation, past weather conditions, limited	Paragraph C, Lines 4-5	"For the time before records began, we have only ‘proxy records’ reconstructed largely from tree rings and ice cores..."
20	A	Little Ice Age, time of, climatic shifts	Paragraph B, Lines 6-7	"The little Ice Age was far from a deep freeze, however; rather an irregular seesaw of rapid climatic shifts, few lasting more than a quarter-century..."
21	H	periods, very cold winters, storms	Paragraph B, Lines 9-13	"The seesaw brought cycles of intensely cold winters and easterly winds; then switched abruptly to years of heavy spring and early summer rains, mild winters, and frequent Atlantic storms..."
22	G	periods, heavy rain, heat waves	Paragraph B, Lines 9-13	"The seesaw brought cycles of intensely cold winters and easterly winds; then switched abruptly to years of heavy spring and early summer rains, mild winters, and frequent Atlantic storms, or to periods of droughts, light northeasterly winds, and summer heat waves..."
23	C	Europeans, farming, abroad	Paragraph F	"Global temperature began to rise slowly after 1850, with the beginning of the Modern Warm Period. There was a vast migration from Europe by land-hungry farmers and others..."
24	C	cutting down of trees, affect the climate	Paragraph F	"Millions of hectares of forest and woodland fell before the newcomers’ axes between 1850 and 1890, as intensive European farming methods expanded across the world..."
25	A	Europeans, discovered, other lands	Paragraph D	"Part one describes the Medieval Warm Period, roughly 900 to 1200. During these three centuries, Norse voyagers from Northern Europe explored northern seas, settled Greenland, and visited North America."
26	B	changes, fishing patterns	Paragraph E	"Dried cod and herring were already staples of the European fish trade, but changes in water temperature forced fishing fleets to work further offshore. The Basques, Dutch and English developed the first offshore fishing boats adapted to a colder and stormier Atlantic..."

READING PASSAGE 3

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27–40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 .

The meaning and power of smell

Question	Answer	Keywords	Location	Text
27	viii	relationship between smell and feelings	Paragraph A, last lines	". . . The perception of smell, therefore, consists not only of the sensation of the odours themselves, but of the experiences and emotions associated with them."
28	ii	role of smell in personal relationship	Paragraph B, lines 1-4	"Odours are also essential cues in social bonding. . . . infants recognise the odours of their mothers soon after birth and adults can often identify their children or spouses by scent."
29	vi	why our sense of smell is not appreciated	Paragraph C, first few lines	"In spite of its importance to our emotional and sensory lives, smell is probably the most undervalued sense in many cultures."
30	i	difficulties of talking about smells	Paragraph D, first few lines	"Odours, unlike colours, for instance, cannot be named in many languages because the specific vocabulary simply doesn’t exist."
31	iii	future studies into smell	Paragraph E, lines 3-5	"Researchers have still to decide whether smell is one sense or two – one responding to odours proper and the other registering odourless chemicals in the air."
32	v	interpretation of smells as a factor in defining groups	Paragraph F, lines 8-9	"Importantly, our commonly held feelings about smells can help distinguish us from other cultures."
33	C	our ability to smell is damaged	Introduction, last lines	"It is only when the faculty of smell is impaired for some reason that we begin to realise the essential role the sense of smell plays in our sense of well-being."
34	A	shows how we make use of smell without realizing it	Paragraph B, last half part	"In one well-known test, women and men were able to distinguish by smell alone clothing worn by their marriage partners from similar clothing worn by other people."
35	C	rejecting a common belief	Paragraph C, lines 1-4	"smell is probably the most undervalued sense in many cultures. . . . the human sense of smell is feeble and undeveloped."
36	D	smell is yet to be defined	Paragraph E, lines 3-4	"Researchers have still to decide whether smell is one sense or two – . . ."
37	clothing	can help, recognize, belonging to, husbands and wives	Paragraph B	"In one well-known test, women and men were able to distinguish by smell alone clothing worn by their marriage partners from similar clothing worn by other people."
38	vocabulary	certain linguistic groups, have difficulty, describing smell, lack, appropriate	Paragraph D	"Odours, unlike colors, for instance, cannot be named in many languages because the specific vocabulary simply does not exist."
39	chemicals	sense of smell, involve, and do not smell	Paragraph E	"Researchers have still to decide whether smell is one sense or two – one responding to odours proper and the other registering odourless chemicals in the air."
40	cultures	unpleasant, regarded as, not unpleasant in others	Paragraph F	"Odours are invested with cultural values: smells that are considered to be offensive in some cultures may be perfectly acceptable in others."