人教版（新课程标准） 必修1 Unit 4Earthquakes拓展阅读素材

人教课标新教材必修1Unit 4拓展阅读 1 Earthquakes around the Pacific About 400 earthquakes occur worldwide every day, more than a hundred thousand in a year. China is situated (位于) in one of the most active earthquake regions (区域) in the world and there have been many terrible earthquakes. The most serious of these occurred in Hua County in Shaanxi Province in 1556. The earthquake affected eight provinces in Central China. It covered an area of 800 square kilometers. In some communities, 60 percent of the population were killed. In all, 830,000 people lost their lives. The California Earthquake of the 18th of April 1906 is the worst earthquake that has ever happened in the US. It took place at 5:15 am, and lasted for only a minute. However, it caused the worst natural disaster in the nation’s history. Fires caused by the California Earthquake did the most damage. The fires burned for three days, destroying a total of 25,000 buildings. About 500 people were killed in the city of San Francisco and 250,000 were made homeless. In the whole of California, the earthquake and fires caused about 3,000 deaths. The 1906 earthquake was caused by a movement on the San Andreas Fault. One hundred years later, movements on the San Andreas Fault continue to cause problems for the whole of California. 2 How do hurricanes get their names Each year, as the summer comes to a close, hurricanes begin to appear. Hurricanes are huge tropical storms that can sometimes be as large as 600 miles across. Hurricanes occur in many parts of the world, but they’re not always called “hurricanes”. For those of you who like words, you may be interested to know that hurricanes that form in the western Pacific Ocean are called “typhoons (台风)”. In the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal and Australia, these storms are called “cyclones (旋风)”. They’re all the same type of storm, though. Recent hurricanes that have caused serious damage in the United States include Hurricane Ike and Hurricane Katrina. Other past hurricanes have had names like Opal, Andrew and Fran. How do they get these names Hurricanes are given names so that meteorologists (气象学家) can recognize them and track them across the oceans. Since there are sometimes different hurricanes at a certain time, naming them helps to avoid confusion (混淆). Since 1979, the World Meteorological Organization has used six lists of names — both male and female — in rotation. Each list contains a name for each letter of the alphabet (字母表), except for Q, U and Z. The same lists are reused every six years. Every once in a while, a hurricane will cause so much damage that its name goes down in the history books. Hurricane Katrina is a recent example of such a disastrous storm. When a storm is bad enough, its name will never be used again, and a new name will be added to the list. Although hurricanes can form at any time, the hurricane season in the Atlantic Ocean is usually June 1 to November 30, with most hurricanes occurr ... ...