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Language activity

Exercise 1. Summarize your knowledge of the Sequence of Tenses. Translate the sentences into Russian.

  1. It is clear that the newest devices of today will become obsolete tomorrow.

  2. The engineers asked if the work could be compressed into 6 days.

  3. We finally realized that we had chosen the worst possible moment to visit the company.

  4. We were told that the Earth revolves round the Sun.

  5. He considered that this problem would be solved in the nearest future.

  6. I was not sure whether this theory could account for these phenomena.

  7. It is known that magnifying power of microscopes is being increased from year to year.

Exercise 2. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct tense form according to the Sequence of Tenses rule.

  1. It is apparent that fiber optics steadily (to replace) copper wire as an appropriate means of communication signal transmission.

  2. He said that fiber optics (to use) light pulses to transmit information.

  3. The students were told that today more than 80 percent of the world’s long-distance traffic (to be carried) over optical fiber cables.

  4. They read that lenses (to date back) to the burning glasses of antiquity.

  5. She has learnt that revolutionary advances in optics of the 20th century (to begin) with the construction of the first laser.

  6. The Danish astronomer Olaf Roemer calculated that the light (travel) a distance equal to the diameter of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun for about 22 minutes.

  7. In the 19th century none could predict that it (to be possible) to produce images of high-speed events.

Exercise 3. Confirm the expression using Tag Question.

    1. We use electricity to produce heat, … ?

    2. This student made a report at the conference, … ?

    3. The scientists were astonished to discover new stars in the galaxy space, … ?

    4. You were not ready to continue this work, … ?

    5. Many laser physicists have been awarded Nobel Prize, … ?

    6. The experimentalists couldn’t obtain wholly coherent beams of light, … ?

Exercise 4. Change modal verbs of the predicates into their equivalents.

      1. Under the action of light this phenomenon must produce conduction electrons.

      2. In a number of cases, the junction between a metal and a semiconductor or between two semiconductors may have a rectifying action.

      3. Both kinds of conductivity could occur in semiconductors.

4. This energy must be in the form of a photon.

  1. A layer of metal might be made so thin that light easily passes through it.

  2. An electric current can flow when the circuit is closed.