十年高考真题分类汇编(2010-2019) 英语专题 22 科普类说明文阅读理解(2010﹒安徽﹒阅读理解 B)Have you ever wondered?1. Why do airplanes take longer to fly west than east?It can take five hours to go west-east from New York(NY) to London bur seven hours to travel east-west fromLondon to NY. The reason for the difference is an atmospheric phenomenon known as the jet(喷射) jet stream is a very high altitude wind which always blows from the west to the east across the planes moving at a constant air speed thus go faster in the west-east direction when they are movingwith the wind than in the opposite . What would happen if the gravity on Earth was suddenly turned off?Supposing we could magically turn off gravity. Would buildings and other structures(建筑物) float away?What happened would depend on how strongly the things were attached to the Earth. The Earth ismoving at quite a speed, moving at over a thousand miles per hours. If you turn something around yourhead on a string (细绳), it goes around in a circle until you let go of the string. Then it flies off in astraight line. ‘Switching off’ gravity would be like letting go of the string. Things not attached to theEarth would fly off in a straight line. People in buildings would suddenly shoot upwards at a great speeduntil they hit the ceiling. Most things outside would fly off into information can we get from the first passage? is jet stream that affects how fast airplanes go slower when they are moving with the takes more time to fly from NY to London than from London to yet stream always blows from the east to the west across the word”shoot”underline in the 2ndpassage probably means “ ” for quickly e out can be inferred that without gravity . and other structures would float and buildings would not easily fly around your head would not fly outside buildings would fly off into