Hi vọng IELTS Academic Reading Sample 115 - Striking Back at Lightning with Lasers sẽ cung cấp những kiến thức bổ ích cho các bạn trong quá trình ôn tập nâng cao kiến thức trước khi bước vào kì thi của mình. Mời các bạn cùng tham khảo. | You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13 which are based on Reading Passage 115 below. Striking Back at Lightning With Lasers Seldom is the weather more dramatic than when thunderstorms strike. Their electrical fury inflicts death or serious injury on around 500 people each year in the United States alone. As the clouds roll in a leisurely round of golf can become a terrifying dice with death - out in the open a lone golfer maybe a lightning bolt s most inviting target. And there is damage to property too. Lightning damage costs American power companies more than 100 million a year. But researchers in the United States and Japan are planning to hit back. Already in laboratory trials they have tested strategies for neutralising the power of thunderstorms and this winter they will brave real storms equipped with an armoury of lasers that they will be pointing towards the heavens to discharge thunderclouds before lightning can strike. The idea of forcing storm clouds to discharge their lightning on command is not new. In the early 1960s researchers tried firing rockets trailing wires into thunderclouds to set up an easy discharge path for the huge electric charges that these clouds generate. The technique survives to this day at a test site in Florida run by the University of Florida with support from the Electrical Power Research Institute EPRI based in California. EPRI which is funded by power companies is looking at ways to protect the United States power grid from lightning strikes. We can cause the lightning to strike where we want it to using rockets says Ralph Bernstein manager of lightning projects at EPRI. The rocket site is providing precise measurements of lightning voltages and allowing engineers to check how electrical equipment bears up. Bad behaviour But while rockets are fine for research they cannot provide the protection from lightning strikes that everyone is looking for. The rockets cost around 1 200 each can only be fired 1 at a .
