高考英语说明文4篇
1
Here is an astonishing and significant fact: Mental work alone can’t make
us tire. It sounds absurd/əb'sɜːd/ 荒谬的. But a years ago, scientists tried to find out
how long the human brain could labor without reaching a stage  阶段
of fatigue /fə'tiːg/ (疲劳). To the amazement of these scientists, they discovered that blood passing through the brain, when it is active, shows no fatigue at all! If we took
        a drop of blood from a day laborer 劳动者, we would find it full of   fatigue   toxins /'tɒksɪn/ (毒素) and fatigue products. But if we took blood from the brain of an Albert Einstein, it would show no fatigue toxins at the end of the day.
So far as the brain is concerned, it can work as well and swiftly很快地
at the end of eight or even twelve hours of effort as at the beginning. The brain is
totally tireless. So what makes us tired?
Some scientists declare that most of our fatigue comes from our mental
and emotional(情绪的) attitudes. One of England’s most outstanding
scientists, J.A. Hadfield, says, “The greater part of the fatigue from which we
suffer is of mental origin /'ɒrɪdʒɪn/起源. In fact, fatigue of purely physical origin is
rare.”Dr. Brill, a famous American scientist, goes even further. He declares, “One
hundred percent of the fatigue of sitting worker in good health is due to
emotional problems.”
What kinds of emotions make sitting workers tired? Joy? Satisfaction?
No! A feeling of being bored, anger, anxiety /æŋ'zaɪətɪ/焦虑, tenseness紧张
,
worry, a feeling of not being appreciated---those are the emotions that tire sitting workers. Hard work by itself seldom causes fatigue. We get tired because our emotions produce nervousness in the body.
1. What surprised the scientists a few years ago?
A. Fatigue toxins could hardly be found in a laborer’s blood.
B. Albert Einstein didn’t feel worn after a day’s work.
C. The brain could work for many hours without fatigue.
D. A mental worker’s blood was filled with fatigue toxins.
2. According to the author, which of the following can make sitting workers
tired?
A. Challenging mental work. B. Unpleasant emotions.
C. Endless tasks.                     D. Physical labo
3. What’s the author’s attitude towards the scientists’ idea?
A. He agrees with them.     B. He doubts them.
C. He argues against them. D. He hesitates to accept them.
4. We can infer from the passage that in order to stay energetic, sitting
workers need to ________.
A. have some good food. B. enjoy their work
C. exercise regularly       D. discover fatigue toxins
2
They baby is just one day old and has not yet left hospital. She is quiet
but alert  /ə'lɜːt/ （警觉）. Twenty centimeters 厘 from her face researchers
have placed a white faster怎么读?card with two black spots on it. She stares at it carefully.
A researcher removes the card and replaces it by another, this time with the
spots differently spaced. As the cards change from one to the other, her
gaze（凝视） starts to lose its focus — until a third, with three black spots,
is presented. Her gaze returns: she looks at it for twice as long as she did at
the previous card. Can she tell that the number two is different from three,
just 24 hours after coming into the world?
Or do newborns simply prefer more to fewer? The same experiment, but
with three spots shown before two, shows the same return of interest when
the number of spots changes. Perhaps it is just the newness 名，新奇? When
slightly older babies were shown cards with pictures of objects (a comb, a key,
an orange and so on), changing the number of objects had an effect separate
from changing the objects themselves. Could it be the pattern that two things
make, as opposed to three? No again. Babies paid more attention to squares
moving randomly on a screen when their number changed from two to three,
or three to two. The effect even crosses between senses. Babies who were
repeatedly shown two spots became more excited when they then heard three
drumbeats than when they heard just two; likewise （同样地） when the
researchers started with drumbeats and moved to spots.
5. The experiment described in Paragraph 1 is related to the baby’s__.
A. sense of hearing B. sense of sight C. sense of touch D sense of smell
6. Babies are sensitive to the change in______.