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Solar energy.

Ever since it became apparent that the supply of coal, oil and natural gas would soon become inadequate for our needs, scientists have intensified their search for other sources of energy. It is natural, then, that the investigators should turn to the Sun which has been providing the Earth with enormous quantities of energy in the form of light and heat ever since it was created. The Sun is the most important body in the Universe for manking, for it gives us heat without which the Earth would be a frozen world in which no life can exist. The Sun is our closest star. Of course, you never should look directly at the Sun on, a clear day. Although it is 93,000,000 miles away, it is so bright that it would damage your eyes.

The Sun is really a huge globe with a diameter of about 865,000 miles. It would take over 100 Earths, side by side, to reach across the Sun at the equator. If the Sun were a hollow ball, you could pack more than 1,300,000 Earths inside it.

It was natural for early men to regard the Sun as a god. Indeed, it would have been strange if they had not done so, since we depend entirely upon the Sun for our light and heat, and without it no life on Earth could ever have developed.

A better idea of the Sun's size will be gained if we describe a simple though impossible experiment. Suppose, that we could take an aeroplane to the Sun, and fly once round the solar equator, moving at a steady speed of 500 m.p.h.; how long would it take us to go once round the Sun? The answer is surprising it would take us 230 days. For almost eight months we would fly at this tremendous rate before arriving back at our starting point. Yet to go round the Earth at the same speed would take us only a little more than 50 hours.

The Sun's mass is over 330,000 times that of the Earth, and the gravitational pull is extremely strong. If a man could stand on the solar surface, he would seem to weigh 2 tons, so that he would be crushed under his own weight. However, we can hardly hope to visit the Sun, where the surface temperature is almost 6,000 degrees Centigrade.

Until it became possible to form some ideas of the size of the Universe, men were inclined to think that the solar system was really important — just as a man who has lived all his life in a remote country village may think that the scattered houses which make up his own village are far more important than distant London. Nowadays, we know the solar system to be merely our "village in space".

Grammar and lexical exercises

I. Translate the following sentences into Ukrainian paying attention to the Verbals.

1. The drifting scientific stations are the only means of obtaining regular meteorological data close to the Pole. 2. The new science dealing with the problems of control, known as cybernetics, plays an important part among the sciences of the future. 3. Generating electricity is probably the main use for atomic heat 4. Calculating machines can do mechanically the processes of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. 5. The scientific method is the method used by scientists in making scientific discoveries. 6. Steam entering and leaving the cylinder moves at high speed. 7. Planning is the key to efficient electricity supply,