IELTS - reading practice 1

Complete the notes. Write one word from the text in each gap.

Text: Following Henri Becquerel’s discovery in 1896 of a new phenomenon, which Marie later called ‘radioactivity’, Marie Curie decided to find out if the radioactivity discovered in uranium was to be found in other elements. She discovered that this was true for thorium.

When uranium was discovered to be radioactive, Marie Curie found that the element called ________ had the same property.

Complete the notes. Write one word from the text in each gap.

Text: Turning her attention to minerals, she found her interest drawn to pitchblende, a mineral whose radioactivity, superior to that of pure uranium, could be explained only by the presence in the ore of small quantities of an unknown substance of very high activity. Pierre Curie joined her in the work that she had undertaken to resolve this problem, and that led to the discovery of the new elements, polonium and radium.

Marie and Pierre Curie’s research into the radioactivity of the mineral known as _______led to the discovery of two new elements.

Complete the notes. Write one word from the text in each gap.

Text: In 1911 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry for the isolation of a pure form of radium.

In 1911, Marie Curie received recognition for her work on the element ______.

Complete the notes. Write one word from the text in each gap.

Text: During World War I, Marie Curie, with the help of her daughter Irène, devoted herself to the development of the use of X-radiography, including the mobile units which came to be known as ‘Little Curies’, used for the treatment of wounded soldiers.

Marie and Irène Curie developed X-radiography which was used as a medical technique for _______.

Complete the notes. Write one word from the text in each gap.

Text: One of Marie Curie’s outstanding achievements was to have understood the need to accumulate intense radioactive sources, not only to treat illness but also to maintain an abundant supply for research.

Marie Curie saw the importance of collecting radioactive material both for research and for cases of ____________.

Complete the notes. Write one word from the text in each gap.

Text: The existence in Paris at the Radium Institute of a stock of 1.5 grams of radium made a decisive contribution to the success of the experiments undertaken in the years around 1930. This work prepared the way for the discovery of the neutron by Sir James Chadwick and, above all, for the discovery in 1934 by Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie of artificial radioactivity.

The radioactive material stocked in Paris contributed to the discoveries in the 1930s of the ______and of what was known as artificial radioactivity.

Choose the sentence that best summarizes the text.

Text: World-renowned astrophysicist Stephen Hawking believes that once spaceships can exceed the speed of light, humans could feasibly travel millions of years into the future in order to repopulate earth in the event of a forthcoming apocalypse. This is because as the spaceships accelerate into the future, time would slow down around them (Hawking concedes that bygone eras are off limits - this would violate the fundamental rule that cause comes before effect).

• Human time travel is theoretically possible, but is unlikely to ever actually occur.

• Human time travel might be possible, but only moving forward in time.

• Human time travel might be possible, but only moving backward in time.

Choose the sentence that best summarizes the text.

Text: Procrastination, a kind of chronic time-wasting, has long been dismissed as an innocuous human foible. Researchers are now beginning a more sober examination of this practice, however, and there may be good reason for doing so: twenty per cent of Americans now admit to suffering from procrastination, a fifteen per cent jump from 1970.

• Procrastination has never been considered a serious problem.

• Procrastination has always been recognised as a serious problem.

• Procrastination has, until recently, not been recognised as a serious problem.

Choose the sentence that best summarizes the text.

Text: Another option is the ‘relaxation response’, discovered by Harvard cardiologist Herbert Benson. Benson found that certain behaviours, such as deep breathing, meditation, and the repetition of simple, affirmative phrases, acted as an antidote to mind chatter and the fight or flight responses, calming the nervous system and inducing a relaxed state of mind and body instead.

• Benson found that a combination of three behaviours can reduce stress.

• Benson found that nothing can really reduce stress.

• Benson found that saying positive words can reduce stress.

Does the following statement agree with the information given in the text?

Ada did not go to school.

Text: Although it was unusual for young women of her era to pursue mathematics as a discipline, and Ada did not enjoy the privilege of formal education, her position in society allowed her access to some of the greatest minds of her day. Among these tutors was Mary Somerville, a noted mathematician and astronomer, whose legacy is continued in the naming of women’s colleges around the world. Another tutor, logician Augustus De Morgan, informed Anne that her daughter had the potential to become ‘an original mathematical investigator, perhaps of first-rate eminence’.

• TRUE

• FALSE

• NOT GIVEN