Questões de Inglês

FOR CATS, A BIG GULP WITH A TOUCH OF THE TONGUE

 

  It has taken four highly qualified engineers and a bunch of integral equations to figure it out, but we now know how cats drink. The answer is: very elegantly, and not at all the way you might suppose. Cats lap water so fast that the human eye cannot follow what is happening, which is why the trick had apparently escaped attention until now. With the use of high-speed photography, the neatness of the feline solution has been captured. The act of drinking may seem like no big deal for anyone who can fully close his mouth to create suction, as people can. But the various species that cannot do so — and that includes most adult carnivores — must resort to some other mechanism. Dog owners are familiar with the unseemly lapping noises that ensue when their thirsty pet meets a bowl of water. The dog is thrusting its tongue into the water, forming a crude cup with it and hauling the liquid back into the muzzle.

  Cats, both big and little, are so much classier, according to new research by Pedro M. Reis and Roman Stocker of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, joined by Sunghwan Jung of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and Jeffrey M. Aristoff of Princeton. Writing in the Thursday issue of Science, the four engineers report that the cat’s lapping method depends on its instinctive ability to calculate the balance between opposing gravitational and inertial forces. What happens is that the cat darts its tongue, curving the upper side downward so that the tip lightly touches the surface of the water.

  The tongue is then pulled upward at high speed, drawing a column of water behind it. Just at the moment that gravity finally overcomes the rush of the water and starts to pull the column down — snap! The cat’s jaws have closed over the jet of water and swallowed it. The cat laps four times a second — too fast for the human eye to see anything but a blur — and its tongue moves at a speed of one meter per second. Being engineers, the cat-lapping team next tested its findings with a machine that mimicked a cat’s tongue, using a glass disk at the end of a piston to serve as the tip. After calculating things like the Froude number and the aspect ratio, they were able to figure out how fast a cat should lap to get the greatest amount of water into its mouth. The cats, it turns out, were way ahead of them — they lap at just that speed. To the scientific mind, the next obvious question is whether bigger cats should lap at different speeds.

WADE, Nicholas. For cats, a big gulp with a touch of the tongue. Disponível em: <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/12/science/12cats.html?_r=1&hpw> Acesso em: 20 nov. 2010.

Qual é o significado do substantivo sublinhado na seguinte oração?

''The neatness of the feline solution has been captured''. 

Mary Mac's mother's making Mary Mac marry me. My mother's making me marry Mary Mac. Will I always be so Merry when Mary's taking care of me? Will I always be so merry when I marry Mary Mac? (from a song by Carbon Leaf) 

Disponível em: http://www.uebersetzung.at. Acesso em: 27 jun. 2011.

O trava-língua, além de funcionar como um exercício de pronúncia, também pode abordar assuntos relacionados à sociedade. No texto, o tema abordado refere-se

Last Monday was a really awful day. I got to school late because I had missed the bus. Then I had a Math test and did badly because I hadn't studied for it. Things went from bad to worse: while I was waiting for the bus home I realised I had lost my money so I had to walk home. I really wanted to go to the cinema with my parents that evening but by the time I got home they had already gone out. I put my dinner in the oven, went to watch TV and fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later, there was a terrible smell and smoke coming up the stairs: I had forgotten to take my dinner out of the oven. 

ACEVEDO, A.; GOWER, M. High Flyer. Longman, 1996.

A intenção do narrador, nesse texto, é

A tirinha é um gênero textual que, além de entreter, trata de diferentes temas sociais. No caso dessa tirinha, as falas no 3º quadrinho revelam o foco do tema, que é

Ao estabelecer uma relação entre a Matemática e o blues a partir da opinião pessoal de um dos rapazes, a charge sugere que

A taste of Edinburgh

1.If you love food, drink and merriment, don't miss Edinburgh's Taste Festival from May 29 to June 1,

2.2008. Set against the beautiful backdrop of the Meadows park, this culinary experience involves twenty

3.top restaurants that will be serving three small-size dishes to over 20,000 visitors.

4.There will also be a taste Kitchen and a Food and Whisky School. To learn more, visit

5.www.channel4.com/tastefestivals.

(Source: Speak Up magazine, issue 253, June 2008, p. 44.)

O Taste Festival é um evento