TPO Reading Passages (1-55)

1 TPO Reading Passages (1-55). Table of Contents TPO 01 .. 8. Groundwater .. 8. The Origins of Theater .. 11. Timberline Vegetation on Mountains .. 14. TPO 02 .. 16. Desert Formation .. 16. The Origins of Cetaceans .. 19. Early Cinema .. 21. TPO 24. Architecture .. 24. Depletion of the Ogallala 27. The Long-Term Stability of Ecosystems .. 30. TPO 04 .. 33. Deer Populations of the Puget 33. Cave Art in Europe .. 36. Petroleum Resources .. 39. TPO 05 .. 42. Minerals and Plants .. 42. The Origin of the Pacific Island People .. 45. The Cambrian Explosion .. 48. TPO 06 .. 51. Powering the Industrial Revolution .. 51. William 54. Infantile 57. TPO 07 .. 60. The Geologic History of the Mediterranean .. 60. Ancient Rome and Greece .. 63. Agriculture, Iron, and the Bantu Peoples .. 66. TPO 08 .. 69. The Rise of Teotihuac n .. 69. 1. Extinction of the Dinosaurs .. 72. Running Water on Mars .. 75. TPO 09 .. 78. Colonizing the Americas via the Northwest Coast .. 78. Reflection in Teaching .. 81. The Arrival of Plant Life in Hawaii.

2 84. TPO 10 .. 87. Chinese Pottery .. 87. Variations in the Climate .. 90. Seventeenth-Century European Economic Growth .. 93. TPO 11 .. 96. Ancient Egyptian Sculpture .. 96. Orientation and 99. Begging by Nestlings .. 102. TPO 12 .. 105. Which Hand Did They Use? .. 105. Transition to Sound in Film .. 108. Water in the 111. TPO 13 .. 114. Types of Social Groups .. 114. Biological 117. Methods of Studying Infant Perception .. 120. TPO 14 .. 123. Children and Advertising .. 123. Maya Water Problems .. 126. Pastoralism in Ancient Inner 129. TPO 15 .. 132. A Warm-Blooded Turtle .. 132. Mass Extinctions .. 135. Glacier Formation .. 138. TPO 16 .. 140. Trade and the Ancient Middle 140. Development of the Periodic Table .. 143. 2. Planets in Our Solar System .. 146. TPO 17 .. 149. Europe's Early Sea Trade with Asia .. 149. Animal Signals in the Rain 152. Symbiotic Relationships .. 155. TPO 18 .. 158. Industrialization in the Netherlands and Scandinavia .. 158. The Mystery of Yawning .. 161. Lightning.

3 164. TPO 19 .. 167. The Roman Army's Impact on Britain .. 167. Succession, Climax, and Ecosystems .. 170. Discovering the Ice 173. TPO 20 .. 176. Westward Migration .. 176. Early Settlements in the Southwest Asia .. 179. Fossil Preservation .. 182. TPO 21 .. 185. Geothermal Energy .. 185. The Origins of Agriculture .. 188. Autobiographical 191. TPO 22 .. 194. Spartina .. 194. The Birth of Photography .. 197. The Allende Meteorite .. 200. TPO 23 .. 203. Urban Climates .. 203. Seventeenth-Century Dutch Agriculture .. 206. Rock Art of the Australia Aborigines .. 209. TPO 24 .. 212. Lake Water .. 212. Breathing During Sleep .. 215. Moving into Pueblos .. 218. 3. TPO 25 .. 221. The Surface of Mars .. 221. The Decline of Venetian 224. The Evolutionary Origin of Plants .. 227. TPO 26 .. 230. Energy and the Industrial Revolution .. 230. Survival of Plants and Animals in Desert Conditions .. 233. Sumer and the First Cities of the Ancient Near East .. 236. TPO 27 .. 239. Crafts in the Ancient Near East.

4 239. The Formation of Volcanic Islands .. 242. Predator-Prey Cycles .. 245. TPO 28 .. 248. Groundwater .. 248. Early Saharan Pastoralists .. 251. Buck Rubs and Buck 254. TPO 29 .. 257. Characteristics of Roman Pottery .. 257. Competition .. 260. The History of Waterpower .. 263. TPO 30 .. 266. Role of Play in Development .. 266. The Pace of Evolutionary Change .. 269. The Invention of the Mechanical Clock .. 272. TPO 31 .. 275. Speciation in Geographically Isolated Populations .. 275. Early Childhood Education .. 278. Savanna Formation .. 281. TPO 32 .. 284. Plant Colonization .. 284. Siam, 1851 1910 .. 287. Distributions of Tropical Bee Colonies .. 290. TPO 33 .. 293. 4. The First Civilizations .. 293. Railroads and Commercial Agriculture in Nineteenth-Century United States .. 296. Extinction Episodes of the Past .. 299. TPO 34 .. 302. Islamic Art and The 302. The Development of Steam Power .. 305. Protection of Plants by Insects .. 308. TPO 35 .. 311. Earth's Age .. 311. The Development of Social Complexity.

5 314. Seasonal Succession in Phytoplankton .. 317. TPO 36 .. 320. Soil Formation .. 320. Early Ideas About Deep-sea Biology .. 323. Industrial Melanism: The Case of the Peppered 326. TPO 37 .. 329. Thales and the Milesians .. 329. Direct Species Translocation .. 332. Modern Architecture in The United States .. 335. TPO 38 .. 338. Microscopes .. 338. The Raccoons' Success .. 341. Transgenic 344. TPO 39 .. 347. Early Writing 347. The Extinction of 350. Forest Fire Suppression .. 353. TPO 40 .. 356. Ancient Athens .. 356. Latitude and 359. Amphibian 361. TPO 41 .. 364. Navajo Art .. 364. 5. Climate of 367. Trade and Early State 370. TPO 42 .. 373. Geographic Isolation of Species .. 373. Explaining Dinosaur Extinction .. 376. Callisto and Ganymede .. 379. TPO 43 .. 382. The Empire of Alexander the Great .. 382. The Origin of 385. El Ni o .. 388. TPO 44 .. 391. From Fish to Terrestrial 391. The Use of the Camera Obscura .. 394. 396. TPO 45 .. 399. Microscopes The Beringia Landscape .. 399.

6 Wind 402. Feeding Strategies in The Ocean .. 405. TPO 46 .. 408. The Origins of Writing .. 408. The Commercial Revolution in Medieval Europe .. 411. Ecosystem Diversity and Stability .. 414. TPO 47 .. 417. Roman Cultural Influence on Britain .. 417. Termite Ingenuity .. 420. Coral Reefs .. 423. TPO 48 .. 425. Chinese Population 425. Determining Dinosaur Diet .. 428. Climate and Urban 431. TPO 49 .. 433. Ancient Coastlines .. 433. Movable Type .. 436. 6. Background for the Industrial Revolution .. 439. TPO 50 .. 442. American Railroads .. 442. The Achievement of Brazilian 445. Star Death .. 448. TPO 51 .. 451. Memphis: United Egypt's First Capital .. 451. Surface Fluids on Venus and Earth .. 454. Population Growth in Nineteenth-Century 457. TPO 52 .. 460. Stream Deposit .. 460. Natufian 463. Early Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa .. 466. TPO 53 .. 469. Evidence of the Earliest Writing .. 469. Rain Forest Soils .. 472. Paleolithic Cave Paintings .. 475. TPO 54 .. 478. The Commercialization of 478.

7 Overkill of the North American 481. Elements of 484. TPO 55 .. 487. Mesolithic Complexity in Scandinavia .. 487. Evolution of the Flowering Plants .. 490. How Herding Can Provide Safety .. 493. 7. TPO 01. TPO 01- Passage 1. Groundwater Groundwater is the word used to describe water that saturates the ground, filling all the available spaces. By far the most abundant type of groundwater is meteoric water; this is the groundwater that circulates as part of the water cycle. Ordinary meteoric water is water that has soaked into the ground from the surface, from precipitation (rain and snow) and from lakes and streams. There it remains, sometimes for long periods, before emerging at the surface again. At first thought it seems incredible that there can be enough space in the solid ground underfoot to hold all this water. The necessary space is there, however, in many forms. The commonest spaces are those among the particles sand grains and tiny pebbles of loose, unconsolidated sand and gravel.

8 Beds of this material, out of sight beneath the soil, are common. They are found wherever fast rivers carrying loads of coarse sediment once flowed. For example, as the great ice sheets that covered North America during the last ice age steadily melted away, huge volumes of water flowed from them. The water was always laden with pebbles, gravel, and sand, known as glacial outwash, that was deposited as the flow slowed down. The same thing happens to this day, though on a smaller scale, wherever a sediment-laden river or stream emerges from a mountain valley onto relatively flat land, dropping its load as the current slows: the water usually spreads out fanwise, depositing the sediment in the form of a smooth, fan- shaped slope. Sediments are also dropped where a river slows on 8. entering a lake or the sea, the deposited sediments are on a lake floor or the seafloor at first, but will be located inland at some future date, when the sea level falls or the land rises; such beds are sometimes thousands of meters thick.

9 In lowland country almost any spot on the ground may overlie what was once the bed of a river that has since become buried by soil; if they are now below the water's upper surface (the water table), the gravels and sands of the former riverbed, and its sandbars, will be saturated with groundwater. So much for unconsolidated sediments. Consolidated (or cemented). sediments, too, contain millions of minute water-holding pores. This is because the gaps among the original grains are often not totally plugged with cementing chemicals; also, parts of the original grains may become dissolved by percolating groundwater, either while consolidation is taking place or at any time afterwards. The result is that sandstone, for example, can be as porous as the loose sand from which it was formed. Thus a proportion of the total volume of any sediment, loose or cemented, consists of empty space. Most crystalline rocks are much more solid; a common exception is basalt, a form of solidified volcanic lava, which is sometimes full of tiny bubbles that make it very porous.

10 The proportion of empty space in a rock is known as its porosity. But note that porosity is not the same as permeability, which measures the ease with which water can flow through a material; this depends on the sizes of the individual cavities and the crevices linking them. Much of the water in a sample of water-saturated sediment or rock will drain from it if the sample is put in a suitable dry place. But some will remain, clinging to all solid surfaces. It is held there by the force of surface tension without which water would drain instantly from any wet surface, leaving it totally dry. The total volume of water in the saturated sample must 9. therefore be thought of as consisting of water that can, and water that cannot, drain away. The relative amount of these two kinds of water varies greatly from one kind of rock or sediment to another, even though their porosities may be the same. What happens depends on pore size. If the pores are large, the water in them will exist as drops too heavy for surface tension to hold, and it will drain away; but if the pores are small enough, the water in them will exist as thin films, too light to overcome the force of surface tension holding them in place; then the water will be firmly held.