剑桥雅思7Test4阅读Passage1原文翻译 Pulling strings to build pyramids 风筝用于修建金字塔
剑桥雅思7阅读第四套题目第一篇文章的主题为风筝在修建金字塔中的应用。文章分为9段，内容大体可以分为三部分：一开始先介绍Marcus关于金字塔修建的新观点，接下来对该观点进行实验验证，最后说明该观点成立的其他例子。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，以及具体题目的答案解析：
雅思真题阅读词汇 剑桥雅思7 test 4 passage 1 金字塔
剑桥雅思7Test4阅读Passage1答案解析 Pulling strings to build pyramids 用风筝修建金字塔
剑桥雅思7 Test4 Passage 1阅读原文翻译
第1段
No one knows exactly how the pyramids were built. Marcus Chown reckons the answer could be ‘hanging in the air’.
没有人确切地知道金字塔是如何建造的。Marcus Chown 认为答案可能是“悬挂在空中” 。
第2段
The pyramids of Egypt were built more than three thousand years ago, and no one knows how. The conventional picture is that tens of thousands of slaves dragged stones on sledges. But there is no evidence to back this up. Now a Californian software consultant called Maureen Clemmons has suggested that kites might have been involved. While perusing a book on the monuments of Egypt, she noticed a hieroglyph that showed a row of men standing in odd postures. They were holding what looked like ropes that led, via some kind of mechanical system, to a giant bird in the sky. She wondered if perhaps the bird was actually a giant kite, and the men were using it to lift a heavy object.
埃及的金字塔建于三千多年前，没人知道是怎么完成的。传统观点认为该过程涉及数万名奴隶用雪橇拖运石头。但是没有证据可以证明这一点。现在，加利福尼亚一位叫做莫琳·克莱蒙斯（Maureen Clemmons）的软件顾问认为风筝可能参与其中。当她仔细阅读一本关于埃及古迹的书时，她注意到一个象形文字，显示一排人以奇怪的姿势站立。他们拿着看起来像绳索的东西，通过某种机械系统引向天空中的一只大鸟。 她好奇这只鸟是否真的是一只巨大的风筝，而这些人正在用它提起沉重的物体。
第3段
Intrigued, Clemmons contacted Morteza Gharib, aeronautics professor at the California Institute of Technology. He was fascinated by the idea. ‘Coming from Iran, I have a keen interest in Middle Eastern science,’ he says. This article is from Laokaoya webiste. He too was puzzled by the picture that had sparked Clemmons’s interest. The object in the sky apparently had wings far too short and wide for a bird. ‘The possibility certainly existed that it was a kite,’ he says. And since he needed a summer project for his student Emilio Graff, investigating the possibility of using kites as heavy lifters seemed like a good idea.
克莱蒙斯对此深感兴趣，她与加州理工学院的航空学教授Morteza Gharib 联系。他对这个文章来自老烤鸭雅思想法着迷。他说：“我来自伊朗，对中东科学非常感兴趣。” 引起克莱蒙斯兴趣的那幅画也使他感到困惑。天空中的物体对于一只鸟来说翅膀太短又太宽。他说：“确实有可能是风筝。” 而且由于他需要为学生Emilio Graff进行暑期项目，因此研究将风筝用作重型起重器的可能性似乎是个好主意。
第4段
Gharib and Graff set themselves the task of raising a 4.5-metre stone column from horizontal to vertical, using no source of energy except the wind. Their initial calculations and scale-model wind-tunnel experiments convinced them they wouldn’t need a strong wind to lift the 33.5-tonne column. Even a modest force, if sustained over a long time, would do. The key was to use a pulley system that would magnify the applied force. So they rigged up a tent-shaped scaffold directly above the tip of the horizontal column, with pulleys suspended from the scaffold’s apex. The idea was that as one end of the column rose, the base would roll across the ground on a trolley.
Gharib和Graff为自己设定的任务如下：将一块4.5米长的石柱从水平位置变为竖直。在此过程中除了风能之外不使用其他任何能源。他们最初的计算和相应比例的风洞实验说服他们，他们并不需要强风来提起这一重达33.5吨的石柱。即使力量一般，如果长期维持下去，也能做到。关键是文章来自老烤鸭雅思使用滑轮系统放大施加的力。因此，他们在水平支柱的顶端直接架起了一个帐篷形的脚手架，并在脚手架的顶点上悬挂了滑轮。当时的想法是，当柱子的一端升起时，底座会在推车上滑过地面。
第5段
Earlier this year, the team put Clemmons’s unlikely theory to the test, using a 40-square-metre rectangular nylon sail. The kite lifted the column clean off the ground. We were absolutely stunned,’ Gharib says. ‘The instant the sail opened into the wind, a huge force was generated and the column was raised to the vertical in a mere 40 seconds.’
今年早些时候，团队使用40平方米的长方形尼龙帆将克莱蒙斯看起来不太可能的理论付诸测试。风筝把柱子从地面上抬起。我们超级震惊”，Gharib说，“帆向风张开的一瞬间就产生了巨大的力量，柱子在短短40秒内就上升到垂直位置”。
第6段
The wind was blowing at a gentle 16 to 20 kilometres an hour, little more than half what they thought would be needed. What they had failed to reckon with was what happened when the kite was opened. ‘There was a huge initial force- five times larger than the steady state force,’ Gharib says. This jerk meant that kites could lift huge weights, Gharib realised. Even a 300-tonne column could have been lifted to the vertical with 40 or so men and four or five sails. So Clemmons was right: the pyramid builders could have used kites to lift massive stones into place. ‘Whether they actually did is another matter,’ Gharib says. There are no pictures showing the construction of the pyramids, so there is no way to tell what really happened. ‘The evidence for using kites to move large stones is no better or worse than the evidence for the brute force method,’ Gharib says.
风以每小时16至20公里的平缓速度吹来，仅仅是他们认为所需速度的一半多一点。他们没有考虑到的是风筝打开时所发生的事情。Gharib说：“初始力很大，是稳定状态下力的五倍”。Gharib意识到，这一猛然的力道意味着风筝可以举起巨大的重量。甚至一根300吨重的柱子也可以用40名左右的人和四五个帆起吊到垂直位置。因此，克莱蒙斯说得对：金字塔建造者确实可能使用风筝将大块石头抬起。Gharib说：“他们是否真的这样做是另外一回事”。没有图片展示金字塔的建造过程，所以没有办法知道当时真正发生了什么。Gharib说：“用风筝移动大石头的证据并不比用蛮力的方法更好或更糟”。
第7段
Indeed, the experiments have left many specialists unconvinced. ‘The evidence for kite-lifting is non-existent,’ says Willeke Wendrich, an associate professor of Egyptology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
确实，实验并没有使许多专家信服。美国加州大学洛杉矶分校埃及学的副教授Willeke Wendrich说：“风筝抬起重物的证据是不存在的”。
第8段
Others feel there is more of a case for the theory. Harnessing the wind would not have been a problem for accomplished sailors like the Egyptians. And they are known to have used wooden pulleys, which could have been made strong enough to bear the weight of massive blocks of stone. In addition, there is some physical evidence that the ancient Egyptians were interested in flight. A wooden artefact found on the step pyramid at Saqqara looks uncannily like a modern glider. Although it dates from several hundred years after the building of the pyramids, its sophistication suggests that the Egyptians might have been developing ideas of flight for a long time. And other ancient civilisations certainly knew about kites; as early as 1250 BC, the Chinese were using them to deliver messages and dump flaming debris on their foes.
其他人则认为该理论还有其他案例支持。对于像埃及人这样熟练的水手来说，驾驭风不是问题。而且众所周知，他们确实使用木质滑轮。这些滑轮可以制造得足够坚固以承受巨大石块的重量。另外，有一些实际证据表明古埃及人对飞行感兴趣。在萨加拉（Saqqara）的台阶金字塔上发现的木制人工制品看起来特别像现代滑翔机。尽管它的历史可以追溯到金字塔建成后的数百年，但它的复杂性表明埃及人可能已经对飞行感兴趣很久了。当然其他古代文明也知道风筝。早在公元前1250年，中国人就用它们来传递信息，并将燃烧的碎片倾倒在敌人身上。
第9段
The experiments might even have practical uses nowadays. There are plenty of places around the globe where people have no access to heavy machinery, but do know how to deal with wind, sailing and basic mechanical principles. Gharib has already been contacted by a civil engineer in Nicaragua, who wants to put up buildings with adobe roofs supported by concrete arches on a site that heavy equipment can’t reach. His idea is to build the arches horizontally, then lift them into place using kites. ‘We’ve given him some design hints,’ says Gharib. ‘We’re just waiting for him to report back.’ So whether they were actually used to build the pyramids or not, it seems that kites may make sensible construction tools in the 21st century AD.
如今，这些实验甚至可能有实际用途。全球有很多地方的人们无法使用重型机械。但他们确实知道如何处理风，航海和基本的机械原理。尼加拉瓜的一位土木工程师已经联系了Gharib ，他希望在重型设备无法到达的地点建造由混凝土拱门支撑的带有土坯屋顶的建筑物。他的想法是水平建造拱门，然后使用风筝将其提升到位。“我们给了他一些设计上的提示”，Gharib说，”我们正在等待他的反馈”。因此，无论它们是否真的被用于建造金字塔，风筝似乎都可以在公元21世纪成为明智的建造工具。
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