剑桥雅思5 Test 4阅读Passage 2原文翻译 Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass 钢化玻璃的问题
剑桥雅思5阅读第四套题目第二篇文章介绍了钢化玻璃破裂的问题。文章分为十段，从一次钢化玻璃破裂的事故说起，转到钢化玻璃的制作原理，然后分析其出现问题的原因，以及这一问题的解决难度。下面是具体每一段的翻译。
点击查看这篇雅思阅读中需要大家掌握的重点词汇与具体题目的答案解析：
雅思真题阅读词汇 剑桥雅思5 test 4 passage 2 钢化玻璃
剑桥雅思5 Test 4阅读Passage 2答案解析 Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass
剑桥雅思5 Test 4 Passage 2原文翻译
第1自然段
On 2nd August 1999, a particularly hot day in the town of Cirencester in the UK, a large pane of toughened glass in the roof of a shopping centre at Bishops Walk shattered without warning and fell from its frame. When fragments were analysed by experts at the giant glass manufacturer Pilkington, which had made the pane, they found that minute crystals of nickel sulphide trapped inside the glass had almost certainly caused the failure.
1999年8月2日，英国Cirencester镇正经历极其炎热的一天。在没有任何警示的情况下，一大块钢化玻璃突然破裂，并从位于主教大道的购物中心屋顶脱落。制作该窗户的大型玻璃制造商Pilkington的专家对碎片进行了分析后，发现几乎可以肯定的是，玻璃中截留的硫化镍微小晶体导致了这一故障。
第2自然段
‘The glass industry is aware of the issue,’ says Brian Waldron, chairman of the standards committee at the Glass and Glazing Federation, a British trade association, and standards development officer at Pilkington. But he insists that cases are few and far between. ‘It’s a very rare phenomenon,’ he says.
英国贸易协会玻璃联合会标准委员会主席，同时也是Pikington标准制定官员的Brian Waldron说，玻璃行业已经意识到了这个问题。但是他坚持认为案件很少而且相差不大。他说，这是一种非常罕见的现象。
第3自然段
Others disagree. ‘On average I see about one or two buildings a month suffering from nickel sulphide related failures,’ says Barrie Josie, a consultant engineer involved in the Bishops Walk investigation. Other experts tell of similar experiences. Tony Wilmott of London-based consulting engineers Sandberg, and Simon Armstrong at CladTech Associates in Hampshire both say they know of hundreds of cases. ‘What you hear is only the tip of the iceberg,’ says Trevor Ford, a glass expert at Resolve Engineering in Brisbane, Queensland. He believes the reason is simple: ‘No-one wants bad press.’
其他人不同意。参与主教大道文章来自老烤鸭雅思调查的顾问工程师巴里·乔西（Barrie Josie）表示：“平均而言，我每个月都能看到大约一两个建筑物遭受与硫化镍有关的故障。” 其他专家讲述了类似的经历。伦敦咨询工程师Sandberg的Tony Wilmott 和汉普郡的CladTech Associates的Simon Armstrong 都说他们知道数百起案件。“你听到的仅仅是冰山一角，”特雷弗·福特说。他是昆士兰州布里斯班Resolve Engineering公司的玻璃专家。他认为原因很简单：“没有人想要坏新闻。”
第4自然段
Toughened glass is found everywhere, from cars and bus shelters to the windows, walls and roofs of thousands of buildings around the world. It’s easy to see why. This glass has five times the strength of standard glass, and when it does break it shatters into tiny cubes rather than large, razor-sharp shards. Architects love it because large panels can be bolted together to make transparent walls, and turning it into ceilings and floors is almost as easy.
钢化玻璃随处可见，从轿车和公交车站到世界各地成千上万的建筑物的窗户，墙壁与屋顶。很容易明白为什么。这种玻璃的强度是标准玻璃的五倍。一旦破裂，它会碎成微小的立方体，而不是大而锋利的碎片。建筑师之所以喜欢它，是因为可以将大块的玻璃固定在一起以形成透明的墙，而将其变成天花板和地板几乎同样容易。
第5自然段
It is made by heating a sheet of ordinary glass to about 620℃ to soften it slightly, allowing its structure to expand, and then cooling it rapidly with jets of cold air. This causes the outer layer of the pane to contract and solidify before the interior. When the interior finally solidifies and shrinks, it exerts a pull on the outer layer that leaves it in permanent compression and produces a tensile force inside the glass. As cracks propagate best in materials under tension, the compressive force on the surface must be overcome before the pane will break, making it more resistant to cracking.
它是通过将一片普通玻璃加热到620 ℃ 使其略微软化，结构膨胀，然后用冷空气迅速冷却而制成的。这导致窗格玻璃的外层在内部之前收缩和固化。当内部最终固化并收缩时，它会在外层上施加拉力，使它处于永久压缩状态，并在玻璃内部产生张力。由于裂纹在张力下在材料中传播最好，因此必须在玻璃破裂之前克服表面上的压缩力，以使其更抗破裂。、
第6自然段
The problem starts when glass contains nickel sulphide impurities. Trace amounts of nickel and sulphur are usually present in the raw materials used to make glass, and nickel can also be introduced by fragments of nickel alloys falling into the molten glass. As the glass is heated, these atoms react to form tiny crystals of nickel sulphide. Just a tenth of a gram of nickel in the furnace can create up to 50,000 crystals.
当玻璃中含有硫化镍杂质时，问题就开始了。微量的镍和硫通常存在于制造玻璃的原材料中，而且镍也可以通过落入熔融玻璃中的镍合金碎片进入其中。随着玻璃的加热，这些原子反应形成硫化镍的微小晶体。熔炉中仅十分之一克的镍就能产生多达50,000个晶体。
第7自然段
These crystals can exist in two forms: a dense form called the alpha phase, which is stable at high temperatures, and a less dense form called the beta phase, which is stable at room temperatures. The high temperatures used in the toughening process convert all the crystals to the dense, compact alpha form. But the subsequent cooling is so rapid that the crystals don’t have time to change back to the beta phase. This leaves unstable alpha crystals in the glass, primed like a coiled spring, ready to revert to the beta phase without warning.
这些晶体可以以两种形式存在：一种称为α相的致密形式，在高温下稳定；一种称为β相的致密性较低的形式，在室温下稳定。硬化过程中使用的高温将所有晶体转化为紧缩、致密的α形式。但是随后的冷却如此之快，以至于晶体没有时间变回β相。这会在玻璃中留下不稳定的α晶体，就像盘绕的弹簧一样随时会恢复到β相，而不会发出警告。
第8自然段
When this happens, the crystals expand by up to 4%. And if they are within the central, tensile region of the pane, the stresses this unleashes can shatter the whole sheet. The time that elapses before failure occurs is unpredictable. It could happen just months after manufacture, or decades later, although if the glass is heated – by sunlight, for example – the process is speeded up. Ironically, says Graham Dodd, of consulting engineers Arup in London, the oldest pane of toughened glass known to have failed due to nickel sulphide inclusions was in Pilkington’s glass research building in Lathom, Lancashire. The pane was 27 years old.
发生这种情况时，晶体最多会膨胀4％。如果它们在玻璃板的中央张力区域内，释放出来的应力会破坏整块玻璃板。故障发生之前的时间长短是无法预测的。它可能在制造后的几个月内发生，也可能在几十年后发生，尽管玻璃被加热的话，过程会加快（比如在阳光照射下升温）。具有讽刺意味的是，伦敦咨询公司Arup的格雷厄姆·多德（Graham Dodd）表示，最古老的因硫化镍夹杂而失效的钢化玻璃窗格，位于Lancashire，Lathom，Pikington的玻璃研究中心。当时它已经有27年的历史
第9自然段
Data showing the scale of the nickel sulphide problem is almost impossible to find. The picture is made more complicated by the fact that these crystals occur in batches. So even if, on average, there is only one inclusion in 7 tonnes of glass, if you experience one nickel sulphide failure in your building, that probably means you’ve got a problem in more than one pane. Josie says that in the last decade he has worked on over 15 buildings with the number of failures into double figures.
几乎不可能找到硫化镍问题规模的相关数据。这些晶体成批出现，使情况变得更加复杂。因此，即使平均而言，在7 吨玻璃中只有一块包含一杂质，如果你在建筑物中遇到一次硫化镍失效的情况，那可能意味着在不止一块玻璃存在问题。乔西说，在过去的十年中，他对超过15座建筑进行研究，失败的数量达到了两位数。
第10自然段
One of the worst examples of this is Waterfront Place, which was completed in 1990. Over the following decade the 40-storey Brisbane block suffered a rash of failures. Eighty panes of its toughened glass shattered due to inclusions before experts were finally called in. John Barry, an expert in nickel sulphide contamination at the University of Queensland, analysed every glass pane in the building. Using a studio camera, a photographer went up in a cradle to take photos of every pane. These were scanned under a modified microfiche reader for signs of nickel sulphide crystals. ‘We discovered at least another 120 panes with potentially dangerous inclusions which were then replaced,’ says Barry. ‘It was a very expensive and time-consuming process that took around six months to complete.’ Though the project cost A$1.6 million (nearly ￡700,000), the alternative – re-cladding the entire building – would have cost ten times as much.
最糟糕的例子之一是1990年建成的海滨广场（Waterfront Place）。在随后的十年中，布里斯班40层高的大楼遭受了多次事故。在专家最终被召集过来之前，其八十块玻璃钢化玻璃都因为杂质而破裂了。约翰·巴里，昆士兰硫化物污染专家，分析了建筑的每个玻璃面板。摄影师在围栏里用摄影棚的照相机为每块窗格拍照。这些在改进的微缩胶片阅读器上进行扫描以寻找硫化镍晶体迹象。巴里说：“我们至少发现了120块带有潜在危险杂质的玻璃，然后将其更换。这是一个非常昂贵而且耗时的过程，大约需要六个月才能完成。” 虽然工程高达 160万澳元（约合700,000 英镑），其替代方案-重新覆盖整个建筑物-成本将是这的十倍。
剑桥雅思5 Test 4阅读Passage 1原文翻译 The Impact of wilderness tourism 荒野旅游的影响
剑桥雅思5 Test 4阅读Passage 3原文翻译 the effects of light on plant and animal species 光对动植物的影响
