初一英语美文欣赏
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初一英语美文篇1
The Origin of Refrigerators
By the mid-nineteenth century, the term"icebox"had entered the American language, but icewas still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice tradegrew with the growth of cities.Ice was used in hotels, taverns,and hospitals,and by someforward-looking city dealers in fresh meat,fresh fish,and butter.After the Civil War (1861-1865),as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880,half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Bostonand Chicago, went to families for their own use.
This had become possible because a new household convenience,the icebox,a precursor ofthe modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as wemight now suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the physics of heat,which was essential to a science of refrigeration,was rudimentary. The commonsense notionthat the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for itwas the melting of the ice that performed the cooling.
Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which keptthe ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventorsachieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox.Butas early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track.He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village ofGeorgetown was the market center.
When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found thatcustomers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay apremium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage ofhis icebox, more explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at nightin order to keep their produce cool.
冰箱的由来
直到 19 世纪中期，"冰箱"这个名词才进入了美国语言，但冰仅仅只是开始影响美国普通市民的饮食。 冰的买卖随着城市的发展而发展。 冰被用在旅馆、酒馆、医院以及被一些有眼光的城市商人用于肉、鱼和黄油的保鲜。 内战(1861-1865)之后，冰被用于冷藏货车，同时也进入了民用。 甚至在 1880 年前，半数在纽约、费城和巴尔的摩销售的冰，三分之一在波士顿和芝加哥销售的冰进入家庭使用，因为一种新的家庭设备，冰箱，即现代冰箱的前身，被发明了。 制造一台有效率的冰箱不像我们想象的那么简单。
19 世纪早期，关于对冷藏科学至关重要的热物理知识是很浅陋的。 认为最好的冰箱应该防止冰的融化这样一个普遍的观点显然是错误的，因为正是冰的融化起了制冷作用。 早期为节省冰的努力，包括用毯子把冰包起来，使得冰不能发挥它的作用。 直到近 19 世纪末，发明家们才成功地找到有效率的冰箱所需要的精确的隔热和循环的精确平衡。 但早在 1803 年，一位有发明天才的马里兰农场主，托马斯 ·莫尔，找到了正确方法。 他拥有一个农场，离华盛顿约20 英里，那里的乔治镇村庄是集市中心。
当他用自己设计的冰箱运送黄油去市场时，他发现顾客们会走过装在竞争者桶里那些迅速融化的黄油而给他比市价更高的价格买他仍然新鲜坚硬，整齐地切成一磅一块的黄油。 莫尔说他的冰箱的一个好处是使得农民们不必在夜里上路去市场以保持他们产品的低温。
初一英语美文篇2
The Organic Foods
Are organically grown foods the best food choices? The advantages claimed for such foods overconventionally grown and marketed food products are now being debated. Advocates oforganic foods -- a term whose meaning varies greatly -- frequently proclaim that suchproducts are safer and more nutritious than others.
The growing interest of consumers in the safety and nutritional quality of the typical NorthAmerican diet is a welcome development. However, much of this interest has been sparked bysweeping claims that the food supply is unsafe or inadequate in meeting nutritional needs.
Although most of these claims are not supported by scientific evidence, the preponderanceof written material advancing such claims makes it difficult for the general public to separatefact from fiction. As a result, claims that eating a diet consisting entirely of organically grownfoods prevents or cures disease or provides other benefits to health have become widelypublicized and form the basis for folklore.
Almost daily the public is besieged by claims for "no-aging" diets, new vitamins and otherwonder foods. There are numerous unsubstantiated reports that natural vitamins aresuperior to synthetic ones, that fertilized eggs are nutritionally superior to unfertilized eggs,that untreated grains are better than fumigated grains and the like.
One thing that most organically grown food products seem to have in common is that they costmore than conventionally grown foods. But in many cases consumers are misled if theybelieve organic foods can maintain health and provide better nutritional quality thanconventionally grown foods. So there is real cause for concern if consumers particularly thosewith limited incomes, distrust the regular food supply and buy only expensive organic foodsinstead.
绿色食品
绿色食品是最佳食物吗?有人认为绿色食品比通过常规方式生产和销售的食品有更多的优越性，然而现在却有人对此提出异议。 绿色食品--这一词的用法非常不统一--支持者往往声称绿色食品比其它食品更安全，营养价值更高。 北美的消费者们越来越关注他们的日常饮食是否安全和有营养。 这一发展趋势是好的。 然而这种关注多半是由一些武断的说法引起的，即食物供应不安全或不能提供足够的营养。 尽管这些说法多数未被科学证实，但是由于大量文章支持这一观点，使得普通群众难辨真伪。 因此那些认为只食用绿色食品就能防治疾病或增进健康的观点便广为人知，并导致一些不科学的做法和习惯。 公众几乎每天都被"抗衰老"食品、新型维生素以及其它具有神奇功效的食物广告所包围。 声称天然维生素优于人造维生素，受精蛋比未受精蛋的营养价值更高，未经薰蒸消毒处理的谷物比经过处理的好等等诸如此类的报道屡见不鲜，但没有一篇是经过证实的。 大多数绿色食品有一共同点，即它们的价格高于以常规方式种植的食物。 但在许多情况下，如果消费者认为绿色食品能预防疾病且营养价值高于以常规方式生产的食品，那么他们被误导了。如果消费者们，尤其是那些收入有限的消费者们，怀疑传统食品而只购买更昂贵的绿色食品，那就值得担忧了。
初一英语美文篇3
The Nobel Academy
For the last 82 years, Sweden's Nobel Academy has decided who will receive the Nobel Prize inLiterature, thereby determining who will be elevated from the great and the near great to theimmortal. But today the Academy is coming under heavy criticism both from the without andfrom within. Critics contend that the selection of the winners often has less to do with truewriting ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the Academy and of Sweden itself.According to Ingmar Bjorksten, the cultural editor for one of the country's two majornewspapers, the prize continues to represent "what people call a very Swedish exercise:reflecting Swedish tastes." The Academy has defended itself against such charges ofprovincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical distance from the great literarycapitals of the world actually serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This maywell be true,but critics respond that this very distance may also be responsible for theAcademy's inability to perceive accurately authentic trends in the literary world. Regardlessof concerns over the selection process, however, it seems that the prize willcontinue to surviveboth as an indicator of the literature that we most highly praise, and as an elusive goal thatwriters seek. If for no other reason, the prize will continue to be desirable for the financialrewards that accompany it; not only is the cash prize itself considerable, but it alsodramatically increases sales of an author's books.
诺贝尔委员会
过去的 82 年里，瑞典的诺贝尔委员会决定了谁将获得诺贝尔文学奖，因此也就决定了谁将从伟大或近乎伟大荣升为不朽。 但在今天，该委员会却遭到了评选委员会内外的猛烈批评。 批评者们争论说："评选获奖者时，起作用更大的不是真实的写作能力，而是该委员会以及瑞典特有的内部政治。 按照瑞典两家主要报纸之一的文化版编辑 Ingmar Bjorksten 的说法，该文学奖仍然是"人们所说的一种非常瑞典式的做为：反映瑞典口味"。对于其评选过程中目光短浅的指责，该委员会辩护说，该委员会与世界几大文学之都相距遥远，实际上使该委员会免受外来的干扰。 这也许是对的，但批评者们反驳说，也正因为相距如此遥远，该委员会才不能准确地把握文学界的真正趋势。尽管对评选程序存在着关注，该文学奖将继续作为世人最为推崇的文学的标志而存在，并将继续是作家们难以达到却又会不断追逐的目标。 如果不考虑其他因素，而仅仅考虑与之俱来的经济利益，该奖也将继续为人所渴求：这不仅因为该奖本身就是一笔可观的现金收入，而且该奖还将极大地增加一个作家的著作的销量。
