Английский язык. Учебное пособие

3._______ expectations inevitably drive and define 'performance' criteria and standards.

a) customer b) client

c) people

4.Therefore Quality Management Systems focus on customer expectations and ongoing review and _______.

a) importance b) improvement c) value

5.There are many ways to measure _______ performance other than financial output or profit.

a) cultural b) technical

c) organizational

6.Modern measurement focuses on the essential _______, resources and other

factors.

a) productive b) activities c) use

7.The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model is a _______ framework for developing quality and excellence within an organization.

a) useful b) useless c) powerful

8.Benchmarking is a _______ used term within the field of organizational measurement and management.

a) originally b) widely c) closely

9.Quality improvement includes the following _______.

a)elements

b)basis

c)foundation

10. This _______ for achieving organizational excellence is based on many years of research, education and advisory work in the European Centre for Business Excellence (ECforBE).

a)focused on

b)looked like

c)blueprint

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SUPPLEMENTARY READING

THE UNITS OF MEASUREMENT

WHO INVENTED THE YARD AND HOW DID THE UNIT OF MEASUREMENT ORIGINATE?

A yard is a unit of length in several different systems, and an international yard is equal to 3 feet, 36 inches, or 0.9144 metres.

The word yard comes from the Old English word «gerd», for a straight branch or rod, although the exact origin of the measure is not known.

In the twelfth century, Henry I of England decreed that a yard would be the distance from his nose to the thumb of his outstretched arm.

As crude as this seems, Henry was only off by one-hundredth of an inch from today’s version.

Two yards make a fathom.

WHO INVENTED THE METER AND HOW DID THE UNIT OF MEASUREMENT ORIGINATE?

The meter was introduced by the French after the revolution and was intended to be exactly one-ten-millionth the distance between the North Pole and the equator, which was incorrectly calculated as 39.37 inches.

In 1983, the meter was redefined to improve its accuracy, and is now the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1⁄299,792,458 of a second.

WHAT IS A PARSEC, HOW LONG IS A PARSEC, AND WHO INVENTED THE PARSEC AS A UNIT OF MEASUREMENT?

A parsec (pc) is a measure of incredibly large astronomical distance. The word comes from the phrase parallax second.

Parallax means the change in a star’s relative position in the sky when viewed from different places, and second refers to the smallest measurement of the change, stars move in arcs measured in seconds.

Imagine a clock with a sweeping second hand. Pretend that you are on Earth at the center of the clock looking up at a star at exactly 12:00.

Twenty-four hours later, you look up to see the star, but it appears to have moved to a position that is one second after 12:00.

In fact, it is Earth that moves along its orbital path; the star only appears to

move.

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What you see as a movement of one second, however, is actually a vast distance, but you are so far away from the star, the distance appears tiny.

One parsec equals 3.26 light-years, or the distance light travels in 3.26 years, approximately 19 trillion miles, or 30.4 trillion km.

Alpha Centauri, the star nearest the Sun, is about 1.3 parsecs away.

The first documented use of the term parsec was in 1913, and is attributed to Herbert Hall Turner.

HOW WAS THE KNOT INVENTED TO MEASURE THE SPEED OF A SHIP AND WHEN DID THE UNIT OF SPEED ORIGINATE?

In the 1600s, sailors measured the speed of their sailing ships by tying knots in a rope at sixty-foot intervals.

How was the Knot Invented to Measure the Speed of a Ship and When Did the Unit of Speed Originate?

They then further divided and marked the space between the knots into ten equal parts that would each be one fathom in length.

Then a heavy floating log was tied to the rope’s end and thrown into the ocean.

The rope was let out through a reel, and speed was measured by the number of knots that passed through the reel in thirty seconds of an hourglass.

And that’s how the knot was invented, which is still used today by both sailors and aviators.

The knot is a unit of speed that is equal to one nautical mile per hour, which is equal to about 1.151 mph.

The knot is also used in the study of meteorology worldwide.

HOW LONG IS A FURLONG, WHAT DOES IT MEAN, AND HOW DID THE UNIT OF MEASUREMENT ORIGINATE?

The furlong is an ancient British unit of measurement, literally meaning the length of a furrow.

It’s the distance a horse can pull a plow without resting, which was calculated at exactly 220 yards, or 201.168 metres.

When the Romans introduced the mile to Britain, it was changed in length to accommodate a tidy eight furlongs.

This was done because all property and other precise distances such as that of a horse race were measured locally in furlongs.

HOW LONG IS A ROD AND WHERE DID THE UNIT OF MEASUREMENT COME FROM?

The rod is still used as a unit of measurement for portaging in recreational canoeing, possibly because a rod is about the same length as a canoe.

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A rod was established to be the combined total length of the left feet of the first sixteen men to leave church on Sunday.

The distance was standardized in 1607 as 5 yards, or 16.5 feet.

An acre is 40 rods by 4 rods, or the area a man and an ox could work in one

day.

A rod is the same length as a perch and a pole.

HOW FAR IS A LEAGUE AND WHERE DID THE UNIT OF MEASUREMENT COME FROM?

Folk tales refer to a league as a specific distance.

There were seven-league boots, and Jules Verne sent Captain Nemo twenty thousand leagues under the sea.

A league is an ancient measurement.

In medieval England it was simply the distance a person or a horse could walk in one hour, which is about three miles, or five kilometres, the same distance as defined by the Romans.

The league is no longer an official unit of measurement in any nation.

WHAT IS AN ASTRONOMICAL UNIT AND HOW IS THE ASTRONOMICAL UNIT USED TO MEASURE DISTANCES IN SPACE?

The astronomical unit (AU) measures the relatively short distances within our solar system.

One AU is the mean distance from Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.

We can say that Pluto’s average distance from the sun is 40 AUs rather than saying it is 3.72 billion miles.

The units of light-years and parsecs take care of the even greater distances beyond the border of our solar system.

In the 2nd century CE, Ptolemy estimated the mean distance of the sun as 1,210 times the Earth radius.

Ptolemy determined this value by measuring the Moon’s parallax.

HOW DO METEOROLOGISTS MEASURE SNOWFALL AND WHAT DO METEOROLOGISTS USE TO MEASURE RAINFALL?

The measurement of rainfall is fairly straightforward, but snowfall presents problems that make measurements somewhat arbitrary.

For rain, the meteorology department at Pennsylvania State uses a simple cylindrical tube to catch it.

The amount that falls in a given period is poured into a smaller cylindrical tube that is carefully gradated and measured with something like a dipstick.

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Many things can affect the depth of snow, especially wind and how frequently it is measured, both during and after a storm.

Because the weight of the falling snow packs down what is underneath, it might compact from 10 inches to 8 inches as air holes fill in.

The National Weather Service guidelines call for using a snowboard, a board exposed to catch snow, with the accumulation measured every hour through the storm and then brushed off, a time-consuming method.

Meteorologists at Penn State seek an average reading from ten different points after the snow stops.

FAMOUS PEOPLE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

DMITRY IVANOVICH MENDELEYEV

Dmitry Ivanovich Mendeleyev is a famous Russian chemist. He is best known for his development of the periodic table of the properties of the chemical elements. This table displays that elements' properties are changed periodically when they are arranged according to atomic weight.

Mendeleyev was born in 1834 in Tobolsk, Siberia. He studied chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg, and in 1859 he was sent to study at the University of Heidelberg. Mendeleyev returned to St. Petersburg and became Professor of Chemistry at the Technical Institute in 1863. He became Professor of General Chemistry at the University of St. Petersburg in 1866. Mendeleyev was a well-known teacher, and, because there was no good textbook in chemistry at that time, he wrote the twovolume «Principles of Chemistry» which became a classic textbook in chemistry.

In this book Mendeleyev tried to classify the elements according to their chemical properties. In 1869 he published his first version of his periodic table of elements. In 1871 he published an improved version of the periodic table, in which he left gaps for elements that were not known at that time. His table and theories were proved later when three predicted elements: gallium, germanium, and scandium were discovered.

Mendeleyev investigated the chemical theory of solution. He found that the best proportion of alcohol and water in vodka is 40%. He also investigated the thermal expansion of liquids and the nature of petroleum.

In 1893 he became director of the Bureau of Weights and Measures in St. Petersburg and held this position until his death in 1907.

CHARLES ÉDOUARD GUILLAUME

Charles Édouard Guillaume (15 February 1861, Fleurier, Switzerland – 13 May 1938, Sèvres, France) was a Swiss physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics

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in 1920 in recognition of the service he had rendered to precision measurements in physics by his discovery of anomalies in nickel steel alloys.

Guillaume is known for his discovery of nickel-steel alloys he named invar and elinvar. Invar has a near-zero coefficient of thermal expansion, making it useful in constructing precision instruments whose dimensions need to remain constant in spite of varying temperature. Elinvar has a near-zero thermal coefficient of the modulus of elasticity, making it useful in constructing instruments with springs that need to be unaffected by varying temperature, such as the marine chronometer. Elinvar is also non-magnetic, which is a secondary useful property for antimagnetic watches.

As the son of a Swiss horologist Guillaume took an interest in marine chronometers. For use as the compensation balance he developed a slight variation of the invar alloy which had a negative quadratic coefficient of expansion. The purpose of doing this was to eliminate the "middle temperature" error of the balance wheel.

Guillaume was head of the International Bureau of Weights and Measures. He worked with Kristian Birkeland, serving at the Observatoire de Paris – Section de Meudon. He conducted several experiments with thermostatic measurements at the observatory. He was the first to determine accurately the temperature of space.

MIKHAIL VASILYEVICH LOMONOSOV

Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov was a famous Russian writer, chemist, and astronomer who made a lot in literature and science.

Lomonosov was born on November 19, 1711, in Denisovka (now Lomonosov), near Archangelsk, and studied at the University of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg. After studying in Germany at the Universities of Marburg and Freiberg, Lomonosov returned to St. Petersburg in 1745 to teach chemistry and built a teaching and research laboratory there four years later.

Lomonosov is often called the founder of Russian science. He was an innovator in many fields. As a scientist he rejected the phlogiston theory of matter commonly accepted at the time and he anticipated the kinetic theory of gases. He regarded heat as a form of motion, suggested the wave theory of light, and stated the idea of conservation of matter. Lomonosov was the first person to record the freezing of mercury and to observe the atmosphere of Venus during a solar transit.

Interested in the development of Russian education, Lomonosov helped to found Moscow State University in 1755, and in the same year wrote a grammar that reformed the Russian literary language by combining Old Church Slavonic with modern language. In 1760 he published the first history of Russia. He also revived the art of Russian mosaic and built a mosaic and colored-glass factory. Most of his achievements, however, were unknown outside Russia.

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IGOR SIKORSKY, ANDREY TUPOLEV

Sikorsky Igor Ivanovich was a well-known aircraft engineer and manufacturer. Sikorsky was born in 1889 in Kiev, in the Ukraine, and got his education at the naval college in St. Petersburg, and later in Kiev and Paris. He was the first to make experiments in helicopter design. In 1913 he designed, built, and flew the first suc-

cessful aero plane. Later he built military air crafts for Russia and France.

In 1919 Sikorsky moved to the United States and later helped to organize an aircraft company that produced a series of multi-engine flying boats for commercial service. Sikorsky became an American citizen in 1928. In the late 1930s he returned to developing helicopters and produced the first successful helicopter in the west. Helicopters designed by Sikorsky were used mostly by the US Army Air Forces during World War II. He died in 1972 at the age of 83.

Tupolev Andrey Nikolayevich, famous aircraft designer, was born in 1888. He graduated from the Moscow Higher Technical School, where he designed the first Russian wind tunnel. He helped to found the Central Aerohydrodynamics Institute in 1918 and later worked as the head of its design bureau. During his career he directed the design of more than 100 military and commercial aircraft, including the TU-2 and TU-4 bombers used in the World War II. In 1955 he designed the TU-104, the first passenger jet airliner. His TU-144 supersonic jet liner began its commercial passenger flights in 1977.

GEORGE STEPHENSON, ROBERT STEPHENSON

George Stephenson was a British inventor and engineer. He is famous for building the first practical railway locomotive.

Stephenson was born in 1781 in Wylam, near Newcastle upon Tyne, Northumberland. During his youth he worked as a fireman and later as an engineer in the coal mines of Newcastle. He invented one of the first miner's safety lamps independently of the British inventor Humphry Davy. Stephenson's early locomotives were used to carry loads in coal mines, and in 1823 he established a factory at Newcastle for their manufacture. In 1829 he designed a locomotive known as the Rocket, which could carry both loads and passengers at a greater speed than any locomotive constructed at that time. The success of the Rocket was the beginning of the construction of locomotives and the laying of railway lines.

Robert Stephenson, the son of George Stephenson was a British civil engineer. He is mostly well-known for the construction of several notable bridges.

He was born in 1803 in Willington Quay, near Newcastle upon Tyne, and educated in Newcastle and at the University of Edinburgh. In 1829 he assisted his father in constructing a locomotive known as the Rocket, and four years later he was appointed construction engineer of the Birmingham and London Railway, completed in 1838. Stephenson built several famous bridges, including the Victoria Bridge in

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Northumberland, the Britannia Bridge in Wales, two bridges across the Nile in Damietta in Egypt and the Victoria Bridge in Montreal, Canada. Stephenson was a Member of Parliament from 1847 until his death in 1859.

ALFRED BERNHARD NOBEL

Alfred Bernhard Nobel was a famous Swedish chemist and inventor. He was born in Stockholm in 1833. After receiving an education in St. Petersburg, Russia, and then in the United States, where he studied mechanical engineering, he returned to St. Petersburg to work with his father in Russia. They were developing mines, torpedoes, and other explosives.

In a family-owned factory in Heleneborg, Sweden, he developed a safe way to handle nitroglycerine, after a factory explosion in 1864 killed his younger brother and four other people. In 1867 Nobel achieved his goal: he produced what he called dynamite. Не later produced one of the first smokeless powders. At the time of his death he controlled factories for the manufacture of explosives in many parts of the world. In his will he wanted that the major portion of his money left became a fund for yearly prizes in his name. The prizes were to be given for merits in physics, chemistry, medicine and physiology, literature, and world peace. A prize in economics has been awarded since 1969.

JAMES PRESCOTT JOULE

James Prescott Joule, famous British physicist, was born in 1818 in Salford, England.

Joule was one of the most outstanding physicists of his time. He is best known for his research in electricity and thermodynamics. In the course of his investigations of the heat emitted in an electrical circuit, he formulated the law, now known as Joule's law of electric heating. This law states that the amount of heat produced each second in a conductor by electric current is proportional to the resistance of the conductor and to the square of the current. Joule experimentally verified the law of conservation of energy in his study of the conversion of mechanical energy into heat energy.

Joule determined the numerical relation between heat and mechanical energy, or the mechanical equivalent of heat, using many independent methods. The unit of energy, called the joule, is named after him. It is equal to 1 watt-second. Together with the physicist William Thomson (Baron Kelvin), Joule found that the temperature of a gas falls when it expands without doing any work. This phenomenon, which became known as the Joule-Thomson effect, lies in the operation of modern refrigeration and air-conditioning systems.

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VLADIMIR GRIGORYEVICH SHUKHOV

Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov was a Russian engineer-polymath, scientist and architect renowned for his pioneering works on new methods of analysis for structural engineering that led to breakthroughs in industrial design of world's first hyperboloid structures, diagrid shell structures, tensile structures, grid shell structures, oil reservoirs, pipelines, boilers, ships and barges.

Besides the innovations he brought to the oil industry and the construction of numerous bridges and buildings, Shukhov was the inventor of a new family of doubly curved structural forms. These forms, based on non-Euclidean hyperbolic geometry, are known today as hyperboloids of revolution. Shukhov developed not only many varieties of light-weight hyperboloid towers and roof systems, but also the mathematics for their analysis. Shukhov is particularly reputed for his original designs of hyperboloid towers such as the Shukhov Tower.

Vladimir Shukhov was born in a town of Graivoron, Belgorod uezd, Kursk Governorate (in present-day Belgorod Oblast) into a petty noble family. His father Grigory Ivanovich Shukhov was a minor government official, promoted for his efforts in the Crimean War. For a while, Grigory served as Mayor of Graivoron and later as an administrator in Warsaw.

In 1864 Vladimir entered Saint Petersburg gymnasium from which he graduated with distinction in 1871. During his high school years he showed mathematical talents, once demonstrating to his classmates and teacher an original proof of the Pythagorean theorem.

After graduating from the gymnasium, Shukhov entered the Imperial Moscow Technical School, in which his teachers included Pafnuty Chebyshev, Aleksey Letnikov, and Nikolay Zhukovsky. In the beginning of the year 1876 Shukhov graduated from school with distinction and a Gold Medal. Chebyshev offered him a job as a lecturer in mathematics at the Imperial Moscow Technical School, but Shukhov decided to seek a job in the engineering industry instead.

In May 1876 Shukhov went to Philadelphia, to work on the Russian pavilion at the Centennial Exposition, the first official World's Fair in the United States, and to study the inner workings of the American construction and engineering industries.

In 1877 Shukhov returned to Russia and joined the drafting office of the War- saw-Vienna railroad.

Shukhov always found time for a passionate hobby – photography. The photographic works of Shukhov opened new trends ahead of their flourishing of Fine art photography. He made photos in various genres: reporting, city landscape, portrait, constructivism. About two thousand photos and negatives made by Shukhov have survived until this day.

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After the October Revolution Shukhov decided to stay in the Soviet Union despite having received alluring job offers from around the world. Many signal Soviet engineering projects of the 1920s were associated with his name.

Shukhov died on February 2, 1939 in Moscow and was buried at the Novodevichy Cemetery.

GEORGY NIKOLAYEVICH BABAKIN

Georgy Nikolayevich Babakin was a Soviet engineer working in the space program. He was Chief Designer at the Lavochkin Design Bureau from 1965 until his death.

Babakin's early career was spent in radio engineering, starting with a job at the Moscow telephone company in 1930, working on an urban radio network. From 1943 to 1949, Babakin worked on radar targeting systems at the Institute of Automation (VSNITO), where he became its chief engineer.

Babakin became involved in the Soviet space program in 1949, working in Boris Chertok's division of NII-88 on surface-to-air missiles and targeting systems. In 1952, he was part of a group transferred to Lavochkin's bureau OBK-301 to work on the intercontinental cruise missile bureau and the V-300 anti-aircraft missile.

In 1960, Lavochkin died at an aircraft show (literally died in Babakin's arms), and the bureau was subsumed by Vladimir Chelomei. It became independent again in 1965, with Babakin as its chief designer. Sergey Korolev wanted Babakin to take over unmanned lunar and planetary probes, so he could focus his attention on the N-1 Moon-landing project.

Babakin's new «NPO Lavochkin» brought improved engineering, testing and systems management to this problem, generating a series of successes where Korolev's bureau had been failing – the first soft landing on the Moon by Luna 9, the first probe of the Venusian atmosphere by Venera 4.

Babakin died shortly before the completion of the Mars 2 and Mars 3 spacecraft. His bureau continued with a series of impressive successes, the first (and only) Lunar rovers, landings on Venus and robotic sample return of moon rocks. A research division of NPO Lavochkin is named after Babakin, and the firm continues to design and build spacecraft.

The crater Babakin on the Moon and Babakin on Mars were named in his honor.

DMITRY KONSTANTINOVICH CHERNOV

The father of the branch of science concerned with the changes in structure of steels was the Russian metallurgist Dmitry Konstantinovich Chernov (1839-1921). Investigating the properties of steel after heating to various temperatures, Chernov first established that at definite temperatures steel undergoes certain changes altering its structure and properties. These "critical temperatures" characterized by internal

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