UNIT 2: PLACES AND BUILDINGS

PASSAGE 1

Why pagodas don't fall down

In a land swept by typhoons
and shaken by earthquakes,
how have Japan's tallest and
seemingly flimsiest old
buildings - 500 or so
wooden pagodas - remained
standing for centuries?
Records show that only two
have collapsed during the
past 1400 years. Those that
have disappeared were
destroyed by fire as a result
of lightning or civil war. The
disastrous Hanshin
earthquake in 1995 killed
6,400 people, toppled
elevated highways,
flattened office blocks and
devastated the port area of
Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in
nearby Kyoto unscathed, though it leveled a number of buildings in the
neighborhood.
Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender
buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building
industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced
concrete that had more than a dozen floors. With its special shock absorbers
to dampen the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake,
the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo - Japan's first
skyscraper - was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it
was built in 1968.
Yet in 826, with only pegs and wedges to keep his wooden structure upright,
the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic Toji
pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky - nearly half as high as the
Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly,
Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building
to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature's forces. But what sort of
tricks?
The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As
in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to
important temples. The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with
inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtowers.
When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely
adapted to local conditions - they were built less high, typically five rather
than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed
with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became
more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter Japan in the
summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves of buildings further
beyond the walls. This prevents rainwater gushing down the walls. Pagodas
in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas
in Japan.
The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of
the structure by fifty per cent or more of the building's overall width. For
the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further
increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with
the porcelain tiles of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier
earthenware tiles.
Question 1 - 4
Do the following statements agree with the claims of the writer in Reading
Passage?
In boxes 1-4 on your answer sheet, write
YES if the statement agrees with the claims of the writer
NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1 Only two Japanese pagodas have collapsed in 1400 years.
2 The Hanshin earthquake of 1995 destroyed the pagoda at the Toji temple.
3 The other buildings near the Toji pagoda had been built in the last 30
years.
4 The builders of pagodas knew how to absorb some of the power produced
by severe weather conditions.
Question 5-9
Classify the following as typical of
A both Chinese and Japanese pagodas
B only Chinese pagodas
C only Japanese pagodas
Write the correct letter, A, B or C, in boxes 5-10 on your answer sheet.
5 easy interior access to top
6 tiles on eaves
7 use as observation post
8 size of eaves up to half the width of the building
9 original religious purpose

PASSAGE 2

The Falkirk Wheel

A unique engineering achievement

The Falkirk Wheel in Scotland is the world's first and only rotating boat lift.
Opened in 2002, it is central to the ambitious £84.5m Millennium Link
project to restore navigability across Scotland by reconnecting the historic
waterways of the Forth & Clyde and Union Canals.
The major challenge of the project lies in the fact that the Forth & Clyde
Canal is situated 35 meters below the level of the Union Canal. Historically,
the two canals had been joined near the town of Falkirk by a sequence of 11
locks - enclosed sections of canal in which the water level could be raised or
lowered - that stepped down across a distance of 1.5 km. This had been
dismantled in 1933, thereby breaking the link.
The various parts of The Falkirk Wheel were all constructed and assembled,
like one giant toy building set, at Butterley Engineering's Steelworks in
Derbyshire, some 400 km from Falkirk.
A team there carefully assembled the 1,200 tonnes of steel, painstakingly
fitting the pieces together to an accuracy of just 10 mm to ensure a perfect
final fit. In the summer of 2001, the structure was then dismantled and
transported on 35 lorries to Falkirk, before all being bolted back together
again on the ground, and finally lifted into position in five large sections by
crane. The Wheel would need to withstand immense and constantly
changing stresses as it rotated, so to make the structure more robust, the
steel sections were bolted rather than welded together. Over 45,000 bolt
holes were matched with their bolts, and each bolt was hand-tightened.
The Wheel consists of two sets of opposing axe-shaped arms, attached
about 25 metres apart to a fixed central spine.
Two diametrically opposed water-filled 'gondolas', each with a capacity of
360,000 litres, are fitted between the ends of the arms. These gondolas
always weigh the same, whether or not they are carrying boats.
This is because, according to Archimedes' principle of displacement,
floating objects displace their own weight in water. So when a boat enters a
gondola, the amount of water leaving the gondola weighs exactly the same
as the boat. This keeps the Wheel balanced and so, despite its enormous
mass, it rotates through 180° in five and a half minutes while using very
little power. It takes just 1.5 kilowatt-hours (5.4 MJ) of energy to rotate the
Wheel -roughly the same as boiling eight small domestic kettles of water.
Boats needing to be lifted up enter the canal basin at the level of the Forth &
Clyde Canal and then enter the lower gondola of the Wheel. Two hydraulic
steel gates are raised, so as to seal the gondola off from the water in the
canal basin. The water between the gates is then pumped out. A hydraulic
clamp, which prevents the arms of the Wheel moving while the gondola is
docked, is removed, allowing the Wheel to turn. In the central machine
room an array of ten hydraulic motors then begins to rotate the central axle.
The axle connects to the outer arms of the Wheel, which begin to rotate at a
speed of 1/8 of a revolution per minute. As the wheel rotates, the gondolas
are kept in the upright position by a simple gearing system. Two eight-
meter-wide cogs orbit a fixed inner cog of the same width, connected by
two smaller cogs traveling in the opposite direction to the outer cogs - so
ensuring that the gondolas always remain level. When the gondola reaches
the top, the boat passes straight onto the aqueduct situated 24 meters above
the canal basin.
The remaining 11 meters of lift needed to reach the Union Canal is achieved
by means of a pair of locks. The Wheel could not be constructed to elevate
boats over the full 35-meter difference between the two canals, owing to the
presence of the historically important Antonine Wall, which was built by the
Romans in the second century AD.
Boats travel under this wall via a tunnel, then through the locks, and finally
on to the Union Canal.

Questions 1-6

Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading

Passage?
in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this
1 The Falkirk Wheel has linked the Forth & Clyde Canal with the Union Canal
for the first time in their history.
2 There was some opposition to the design of the Falkirk Wheel at first.
3 The Falkirk Wheel was initially put together at the location where its
components were manufactured.
4 The Falkirk Wheel is the only boat lift in the world which has steel sections
bolted together by hand.
5 The weight of the gondolas varies according to the size of boat being
carried.
6 The construction of the Falkirk Wheel site took into account the presence
of a nearby ancient monument.

Questions 7-13

Label the diagram below.

Choose ONE WORD from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 7-13 on your answer sheet.