高中英语美文摘抄_关于中学英语美文阅读
以经典美文诵读作为突破口,破解当今学生 读书苦,苦读书的现状,在英语教学中走出了一条开满鲜花的快乐阅读之路,激发了学生的学习兴趣,提升了校园生活品质,形成了学校文化品牌。小编整理了高中英语美文，欢迎阅读!
高中英语美文：Coal-fired Power Plants
The invention of the incandescent light bulb by Thomas A. Edison in 1879 created a demandfor a cheap, readily available fuel with which to generate large amounts of electric power. Coalseemed to fit the bill, and it fueled the earliest power stations (which were set up at the end ofthe nineteenth century by Edison himself. As more power plants were constructed throughoutthe country, the reliance on coal increased. Since the First World War, coal-fired power plantshave accounted for about half of the electricity produced in the United States each year. In1986 such plants had a combined generating capacity of 289, 000 megawatts and consumed83 percent of the nearly 900 million tons of coal mined in the country that year. Given theuncertainty in the future growth of nuclear power and in the supply of oil and natural gas,coal-fired power plants could well provide up to 70 percent of the electric power in the UnitedStates by the end of the century.
Yet, in spite of the fact that coal has long been a source of electricity and may remain one formany years (coal represents about 80 percent of United States fossil-fuel reserves), it hasactually never been the most desirable fossil fuel for power plants. Coal contains less energyper unit of weight than natural gas or oil; it is difficult to transport, and it is associated with ahost of environmental issues, among them acid rain. Since the late 1960's problems of emissioncontrol and waste disposal have sharply reduced the appeal of coal-fired power plants. Thecost of ameliorating these environmental problems along with the rising cost of building a facilityas large and complex as a coal-fired power plant, have also made such plants less attractivefrom a purely economic perspective.
Changes in the technological base of coal-fired power plants could restore their attractiveness,however. Whereas some of these changes are evolutionary and are intended mainly toincrease the productivity of existing plants, completely new technologies for burning coalcleanly are also being developed.
火力发电厂
托马斯 ·爱迪生 1879 年发明的白炽灯导致对便宜、易得、可生产大量电能的燃料的需求。 煤似乎符合这个要求，并成为第一批电厂的燃料(正是爱迪生本人在 19 世纪末建造了第一批电厂)。 全国到处兴建电厂时，对煤的依赖加深了。 自第一次世界大战以来，美国每年约有一半的电力是以煤为燃料的电厂提供的。 1986 年这些电厂的总发电能力达到28，900 千瓦并且消耗了当年全国开采的九亿吨煤的 83%。 考虑到核能发展以及石油、天然气供应中的不确定因素，到本世纪末，火力发电厂仍可能为美国提供多达 70%的电力。 然而，尽管煤长期以来一直是电力的原料之一并且可能会继续如此(煤占美国化石燃料储量的 80%)，它却不是电厂的理想燃料。 煤的单位能量含量低于石油和天然气，而且会导致包括酸雨在内的一系列环境问题。 从 1960 年以来，排放控制和垃圾处理的问题极大地削弱了燃煤电厂的魅力。 由于减轻这些环境问题需要大量资金，而且建造庞大复杂的燃煤电厂的费用不断上涨，也使得这些电厂从经济角度上不具备吸引力。 改变火力发电厂的基础技术却可能恢复它们的吸引力。 虽然某些技术改进是渐进的，其目的只是提高现有电厂的生产率，但人们正在开发全新的清洁燃煤的技术。
高中英语美文：Chimpanzee
The most striking single fact about chimpanzees is the flexibility of their social life, the lack ofany rigid form of organization. It represents about as far a departure from the baboon type oforganization as one can find among the higher primates, and serves to emphasize the greatvariety of primate adaptations. Chimpanzees are more human than baboons, or rather theyjibe better with the way we like to picture ourselves, as free-wheeling individuals who tend tobe unpredictable, do not take readily to any form of regimentation, and are frequentlycharming.
(Charm is relatively rare among baboons.) Two researchers have described what they foundduring more than eight months spent among chimpanzees in their natural habitat theforest:"We were quite surprised to observe that there is no single distinct social unit inchimpanzee society. Not only is there no 'family' or 'harem' organization; neither is there a'troop' organization - that is to say, no particular chimpanzees keep permanently together.On the contrary, individuals move about at will, alone or in small groups best described asbands, which sometimes form into large aggregations.
They leave their associates if they want to, and join up with new ones without conflict. " Thegeneral practice is best described as "easy come, easy go", although there are certain group-forming tendencies. As a rule himpanzees move about in one of four types of band: adultmales only; mothers and offspring and occasionally a few other females; adults andadolescents of both sexes, but no mothers with young and representatives of all categoriesmixed together. The composition of bands may change a number of times during the courseof a day as individuals wander off and groups split or combine with other groups. On theother hand, certain individuals prefer one another's company. One of the researchers observedthat four males often roamed together over a four-month period, and mothers often associatedwith their older offsprings.
黑猩猩
黑猩猩最突出的一个特征是它们社会生活的灵活性，即缺乏固定的组织形式。 它的这一特征与狒狒的那种组织形态间的差别，在灵长动物中最为突出。 由此可见灵长类动物中适应性变化的多样性。 黑猩猩比狒狒更接近人类，或者说它与我们心愿的自我形象更为接近：自由自在，不落窠臼，不喜欢任何形式的约束并且往往魅力十足(在狒狒中魅力比较罕见)。 通过在黑猩猩的自然栖息地森林中对它们进行了 8 个月的观察，两名研究人员得出这样结论："我们注意到在黑猩猩的社会中似乎没有任何一种独立的社会基本单位，这一点令我们很吃惊。 它们不仅没有'家庭'或'妻妾'组织，也没有'团队'组织，也就是说黑猩猩没有固定地生活在一起。 相反，每只黑猩猩随意流动，或是独自一人，或是作为最好称之为团伙的一员。 团伙有时会与其它团伙合并成大的聚合体。 它们可以随意离开同伴，并与其它黑猩猩组成新的团伙而不会产生任何纠纷。"把黑猩猩这一总的特性称之为"来得容易去得快" 是最恰当不过了。 但它们也有一定的群体倾向性。 通常，黑猩猩群的构成有以下4 种：仅有成年雄性; 母猩猩及其子女而且偶尔有几只其它的雌性猩猩; 雄性和雌性的成年和未成年黑猩猩但不包括有子女的雌性黑猩猩; 以及各种类型混杂在一起。一天之中一个团伙的组成可能变化好几次，因为有的成员可能离开，而且群体可能会与其它群体合并。 另一方面，有些黑猩猩有自己喜欢的伙伴。 一名研究人员发现四只雄性黑猩猩在4 个月中常常共同游荡，还有母亲们常与她们较年长的子女们在一起。
高中英语美文：Children's Numerical Skills
People appear to be born to compute. The numerical skills of children develop so early and so inexorably that it is easy to imagine an internal clock of mathematical maturity guiding their growth. Not long after learning to walk and talk, they can set the table with impressive accuracy -- one knife, one spoon, one fork, for each of the five chairs. Soon they are capable of noting that they have placed five knives, spoons and forks on the table and, a bit later, that this amounts to fifteen pieces of silverware. Having thus mastered addition, they move on to subtraction. It seems almost reasonable to expect that if a child were secluded on a desert island at birth and retrieved seven years later, he or she could enter a second-grade mathematics class without any serious problems of intellectual adjustment.
Of course, the truth is not so simple. This century, the work of cognitive psychologists has illuminated the subtle forms of daily learning on which intellectual progress depends. Children were observed as they slowly grasped -- or, as the case might be, bumped into -- concepts that adults take for granted, as they refused, for instance, to concede that quantity is unchanged as water pours from a short stout glass into a tall thin one. Psychologists have since demonstrated that young children, asked to count the pencils in a pile, readily report the number of blue or red pencils, but must be coaxed into finding the total. Such studies have suggested that the rudiments of mathematics are mastered gradually, and with effort. They have also suggested that the very concept of abstract numbers - the idea of a oneness, a twoness, a threeness that applies to any class of objects and is a prerequisite for doing anything more mathematically demanding than setting a table - is itself far from innate.
儿童的数学能力
人似乎生来就会计算。 孩子们使用数字的技能发展得如此之早和如此必然，很容易让人想象有一个内在的精确而成熟的数字钟在指导他们的成长。 孩子们在学会走路和说话后不久，就能以令人惊叹的准确布置桌子--五把椅子前面分别摆上一把刀、一个汤匙、一把叉子。 很快地，他们就能知道他们已在桌面上摆放了五把刀、五个汤匙、五把叉子。 没有多久，他们就又能知道这些东西加起来总共是 15 把银餐具。 如此这般地掌握了加法之后，他们又转向减法。 有一种设想几乎顺理成章，那就是，即使一个孩子一出生就被隔绝到荒岛上，七年后返回世间，也能直接上小学二年级的数学课，而不会碰到任何智力调整方面的大麻烦。当然，事实并没有这么简单。 本世纪认知心理学家的工作已经揭示了智力发展所依赖的日常学习的微妙形式。 他们观察到孩子们缓慢掌握那些成年人认为理所当然的概念的过程，或者是孩子们偶然遇到这些概念的过程。 他们也观察到孩子们拒绝承认某些常识的情况。 比如：孩子们拒绝承认当水从短而粗的瓶中倒入细而长的瓶子中时，水的数量没有变化。 心理学家们而后又展示一个例子， 即：让孩子们数一堆铅笔时，他们能顺利地报出蓝铅笔或红铅笔的数目，但却需诱导才能报出总的数目。 此类研究表明：数学基础是经过逐渐努力后掌握的。 他们还表示抽象的数字概念，如可表示任何一类物品并且是在做比摆桌子有更高数学要求的任何事时都必备的一、二、三意识，远远不是天生就具备的。