Grammar Exercises

VII. Translate into Russian. Pay attention to patterns of comparison with the word times:

a) 1. The average depth of water is just about five times the average elevation of the continents. 2. The moon, controlled by the mass of the earth, has a radius of only 1080 miles. It is 240,000 miles away, a distance about 60 times the radius of the earth and about ¹/₃₈₆ of the distance between the earth and the sun. 3. Africa is the second largest of the continents, with an area of 11,500,000 square miles, or three times that of Europe.

b) 1. Mercury is thirteen times as heavy as water. 2. The Kuznetsk Basin is as large as the Donets Basin and its reserves are five times as great as the reserves of the Donbas. 3. There is more than twice as much water as land on the globe, but in the Northern Hemisphere the areas of land and water are nearly equal, while in the Southern Hemisphere there is nearly 15 times as much water as land. 4. The quantity of water in the oceans is almost fifteen times as great as that of all the rock of the continents and islands above sea level. 5. The relief of the Colorado Plateau is several times as great as that of the Appalachians or Urals. 6. The great distance of the comet makes its head look small, almost like a star, although actually the head is larger than the earth — in some cases, many times as large.

VIII. Translate into Russian paying attention to the as much/far/long...as structures:

1. The lower limit of wave action varies, and may be as much as 600 feet. 2. The speed of advance of different glaciers varies considerably. Most rapid is the movement of the glaciers of Greenland. They advance as much as 4 to 20 m a day, and some even up to 38 m a day. 3. During the 1944 Vesuvius eruption bombs and lapilli were thrown as far as 16 km. 4. The moon frequently passes between us and some bright star, cutting off the star's light for perhaps as long as an hour.

IX. Translate into Russian paying attention to the the more..., the less... construction:

1. The darker (is) the sky, the brighter (are) the stars. 2. The more massive the two stars, the faster they move about one another. 3. The higher is the land and the nearer it is to the sea, the greater is the relief developed by erosion. 4. The greater and the more sudden is the change of temperature, the greater is the breaking of rocks. 5. The greater is the slope, the higher is the velocity of a stream. 6. The faster the temperature changes, the faster the weathering proceeds. 7. The more rapid the rainfall, the less water sinks into the ground. 8. The colder the climate, the greater the depth to which the water freezes.

X. (Revision). Translate into Russian:

1. Tides are caused by the attraction of the moon and the sun. The moon's influence is more important because it is much closer to the earth than the sun. 2. Pluto is farthest away from the sun, and Mercury is nearest. 3. The year of Mercury (0.24 earth's years) is much less than that of the earth, and those of the more distant planets are far longer. 4. The four inner planets have a much greater density (3.9 to 5.5+) than the sun (1.41), whereas all of the larger, more distant planets are less dense. 5. The nearest star is 4.3 light years away from the earth. 6. The earth is a sphere flattened slightly at the poles. The flattening is so slight that the diameter of the earth from pole to pole is only 27 miles shorter than that at the equator. 7. The warmer the air is, the faster is the motion of the particles. 8. Land areas become much more heated during summer than neighbouring areas of water. 9. In most cases of erosion ice, snow and water are the main agencies of transportation. 10. One can find large land areas covered evenly by volcanic rock. 11. The heavier and more viscous is the oil, the slower is the rate of flow. 12. The relief of the earth's crust is several times as great as that of the earth's surface. 13. It is this tendency toward balance in nature that largely determines the course of events in a particular situation. 14. Storms in tropical regions are generally much smaller in diameter than those of mean latitudes. 15. The finest of the landscapes are those which include falling waters. 16. Of the four main constituents of the air: nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor, nitrogen is the least active chemically. 17. The moons of Mars revolve at a rate more rapid than that of the planet. 18. The mountains on the moon are much steeper than our hills and mountains, because the moon has no air. 19. Quartz is not only abundant as a mineral, but is one of the most resistant to all forms of weathering. 20. The higher the land and the more resistant the country rock, the more slowly coastal erosion will advance. 21. A most sensational achievement was the discovery of a new planet, Neptune, in 1846. 22. The most remote galaxies are so distant that light from them takes about 2000 million years to reach the earth. 23. The earliest and the most extensive investigations of the earth were made by observation of its surface features. 24. The rocks of most mountains are much more deformed than those of the main continental areas.