After going for a long walk in the rain, Ali noticed that one of his new black shoes was beginning to come apart. The lower part was beginning to separate from the upper part of the shoe. Fortunately, one of his friends had a tube of glue, so Ali was able to put some of the glue on both parts of the shoe and press them tightly together until the shoe was repaired. glue means:

Some types of trees are extremely rigid. When a strong wind blows, they sometimes break because they do not bend easily. Other trees, such as tall coconut palms, bend easily and do not break in a strong wind.

rigid means:

When Jamal was shopping, he found a red shirt that he wanted to buy. Because the shirt was made of 100% cotton, Jamal was worried that it would shrink. Therefore, he asked the salesman if the shirt would get smaller when he washed it in warm water. The salesman said that it probably would and advised Jamal to buy a larger size.

shrink means:

Karim’s cheek started to swell when he had a toothache. It became much larger than normal. When Karim’s father noticed the swelling, he called the dentist and made an appointment for Karim.

swell means:

When Bader considers buying a new cell phone, he doesn’t place a lot of importance on how attractive the phone is. He is more interested in all of the different functions that each phone has. In particular, he wants a good camera and plenty of storage for his music. If the phone is good-looking, that’s just an extra benefit.

attractive means:

Ali’s dining room table is mostly made of cheap pinewood. However, the table has a veneer made of oak. This thin covering layer of oak over the pine makes the table look as if it’s really made of the more expensive wood. Many people think the table cost a lot of money, but it didn’t.

veneer means:

Sami bought some large pieces of plywood to cover the windows in his house so that they would be protected from storms. The sheets of plywood were just the right size to protect the larger windows, but before covering the smaller windows he trimmed the plywood to fit them.

trimmed means:

Ahmed is planning to build a house in his village. He has owned some land there for many years, but it isn’t big enough for the house he wants to build. Fortunately, he was recently able to persuade the owner of the adjacent piece of land to sell it to him, so now Ahmed has enough room for a large house and garden.

adjacent means:

The hydraulic principle is simple: you cannot compress a liquid, and because of this, when you apply force at one point, that force is transmitted by the liquid to another point. We all know that pushing down on the brake pedal stops a car. When you push down with your foot, the car transmits the force from your foot to the brakes through a fluid. It also multiplies this force.

hydraulic means:

Plywood Passage

Plywood is a building material usually made of an odd number of thin layers of wood glued together. The layers, called plies, are arranged so that the direction of the wood grain, or pattern in the wood, in one layer is at right

Using glue to fix together an odd number of plies produces a very useful building material with several advantages. It is lightweight and workable, but it is also strong and rigid. Plywood shrinks and swells less than ordinary wood. Plywood can be produced in

large panels and cut to exact sizes.This makes it strong, easy to work with, and appropriate for smooth surfaces. For these reasons, plywood is one of the main materials used in building houses. Flat rectangular lengths of plywood are used for laying floors, lining roofs, and paneling walls. Plywood is even used in the construction of ships and aircraft.

Plywood is also used to make inexpensive, yet attractive, furniture. Veneers of expensive woods, such as walnut or cherry, can be used for the faces because only thin sheets are needed. Alternatively, plastic or metal faces can be used to provide surfaces that resist scratching.

Plywood is not something new. We know it existed in ancient Egypt around 3,500 years ago when wooden articles were made from veneers glued together crosswise. This was originally done because of the shortage of fine wood. Thin sheets of high-quality wood were glued over layers of low-quality wood to make the product look better. The added strength was an additional benefit.

The process of making plywood involves three main steps: the log, the veneer, and the lay-up. Logs used for plywood are selected for straightness, roundness, and lack of knots and decay. After the bark, the outer covering of the wood, is removed and the logs are cut to the right lengths, they are often steam-heated. This softens their surfaces. The logs are then placed in a rotary lathe. As the lathe rotates, a blade cuts the logs into long, continuous plies.

After the plies are dried, trimmed, and matched, a thin layer of glue is applied to each ply. Workers then lay up or place the plies with the grain in 45 each ply opposite to that in the adjacent ply. Large hydraulic presses squeeze the plies together with heat and pressure. Then the finished plywood is dried again, trimmed, smoothed, and finished into sheets.

This article is mainly about _____.

You can infer that the wood grain is arranged at right angles to _____.

Plywood _____ than ordinary wood.

When plywood is used for making furniture, an expensive kind of wood is usually used for the _____.

Plywood is unlikely to have _____ plies.

You can infer that plywood is often used to make _____.

The Egyptians first used plywood because _____.

The article does not mention that one advantage of plywood is that it _____.