М. М. Кутепова The World of Chemistry Мир

Look at the picture of \toter Cycle on page 90 and describe it to your fellow students.

1. You’re invited to participate in a conference. Fill in an application form, then write your CV (resume).

2. 
   You’ve got a letter of invitation to participate in the Conference on Hard Witer to be held in London in August, 200.... Write a letter saying that you accept the invitation. The letter to you was signed by Dr. P. Green, Chairman of Organizing Committee. ^{3 * *}
   

3. You’ve been invited to take part in Symposium on Nitrogen Fixation. It


will take place on the 7th of February, 200... in University of Berkeley,


California, USA. You can’t comply with the invitation because you’ll be very busy. Write a letter to your correspondent (Dr. Sweetheart), express your gratitude and explain the reason for declining the invitation.


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11. 
    Read the biography of a famous chemist and speak in front of your fellow students as if you were him/her. Don’t introduce yourself. Let your fellow students guess themselves in whose person’s name you are speaking. They may ask you questions but you should give evasive answers.
    
12. 
    Do the same with an element from the Periodic Table. Describe it to your fellow students in such a way that they will have to ask you questions to find out what element you’ve spoken about.
    

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FINAL EXAMINATION PAPER 1

Section 1. LISTENING COMPREHENSION
This section of the test requires a demonstration of your ability to understand a lecture or a talk. After you hear a lecture or a talk, you’ll have to answer a few questions. The questions and the answers are given to you. Choose the best answer from the four given. Record your answers on a piece of paper.
The word “alchemy” is derived from the Egyptian кет-it (the black) or from the Greek chyma (molten metal), but in any event it came to use through Arabic. It is believed that the practice of alchemy existed among the Alexandrine Greeks of Egypt. From there it spread to Asia, then to Europe.
In discussing alchemy we must rid ourselves of the conception of it as a collection of fantastic superstitions. It arose as a reaction against the mechanist nature of Greek scientific thinking, which had reached a dead end.
The chemistry of early times was chiefly concerned with attempts to make gold and silver from base metals and to prepare a universal medicine capable of curing all ills. In a large sense it was the beginning of the modern science of chemistry.
Early alchemists investigated and recorded the properties and reactions of many materials. It is true that the practice of alchemy was accompanied by much deceit but there were serious workers engaged in the search. By their investigations they laid the foundation of modern chemistry. In any event, who would dare say that this search for health and prosperity was unworthy in itself?
In the 16th century Paracelsus and others gave a new direction to alchemy through their investigation of the effects of chemicals on the


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human body and through the preparation of medicines. Paracelsus's followers laid the foundations of chemistry as we know it today.
Modern chemists and physicists have, in fact, achieved the alchemists’ dream of converting one metal into another. For example, by bombarding the nucleus of an element in a nuclear reactor, scientists change the composition of the nucleus and thus transform one Element into another -- a thing which was considered impossible during the 19th century. *

1.