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II. Reading

a. Read the text and translate it.

Text A

The most abundant elements

Two of the most abundant elements are hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen constitutes over 10% of water by mass and occurs in petroleum and all organic matter. Oxygen (atomic number 8, atomic mass 15.9994) is the most abundant element on the earth and the third most abundant element in the universe, ranking behind only hydrogen and helium. Almost 90% of the mass of the oceans and two-thirds of the mass of the human body are oxygen. Air at sea level is 21% oxygen by volume.

Free hydrogen occurs in nature as a diatomic molecule, H2. It is a colourless, odorless, tasteless, explosive gas with a boiling point of –253°C. Hydrogen is the least dense substance, being twice as light as helium under the same conditions. There are three isotopes of hydrogen: ordinary hydrogen, consisting of one proton and one electron; deuterium, consisting of one proton, one neutron, and one electron; and tritium, consisting of one proton, two neutrons, and one electron. Water that contains deuterium as its hydrogen constituent is designated by D2O (l) and is called heavy water. Heavy water is used commercially in the nuclear industry.

Oxygen in air exists primarily as the diatomic molecule O2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas with a boiling point of –183°C and a freezing point of –218°C. Although oxygen is colorless as a gas, both liquid and solid oxygen are pale blue. Industrially, oxygen is produced by the fractional distillation of liquid air, a method that exploits the difference in the boiling points of nitrogen and oxygen, the principal components of air.

Tremendous quantities of oxygen are used directly from air as a reactant in the combustion of hydrocarbon fuels and coal that supply about 90% of the energy consumed worldwide. Most of the oxygen in the atmosphere is the result of photosynthesis, the process by which green plants combine CO2 (g) and H2O (l) into carbohydrates and O2(g) under the influence of visible light.

Ozone is a pale blue gas at room temperature. It has a sharp, characteristic odor, which often is noticed after electrical storms or near high-voltage generators. Oxygen and ozone are called allotropes (two different forms of an element that have a different number or arrangement of the atoms in the molecules).

Ozone plays a vital role in the earth’s atmosphere. It produced in the upper atmosphere and absorbs the ultraviolet (uv) radiation from sunlight that would otherwise destroy most life on earth. Without ozone in the upper atmosphere, there could be no life as we know it on earth.

b. Answer the following questions.

    1. What is the most abundant element on the earth?

    2. Name the naturally occurring isotopes of hydrogen.

    3. What is heavy water?

    4. What is the source of the oxygen in the earth’s atmosphere?

    5. Describe combustion in chemical terms.

    6. What is an allotrope?

III. Fill in the correct words from the list below: ultraviolet, heavy, abundant, organic, nuclear, diatomic, freezing, fractional, tremendous, hydrocarbon.

  1. …….. water

  2. …….. elements

  3. …….. point

  4. …….. radiation

  5. …….. industry

  1. …….. matter

  2. …….. molecule

  3. …….. fuels

  4. …….. distillation

  5. …….. quantities