Why pagodas don’t fall down
A
In a land swept by typhoons and shaken by earthquakes, how have Japan's tallest and seemingly flimsiest 不结实的; 易损坏的(原型flimsy)old buildings — 500 or so wooden pagodas 宝塔— remained standing for centuries? Records show that only two have collapsed during the past 1400 years. (第1题)Those that have disappeared were destroyed by fire as a result of lightning or civil war. The disastrous损失惨重的 Hanshin earthquake in 1995 killed 6,400 people, toppled elevated highways, flattened使…成为平地office blocks and devastated 毁灭; 摧毁the port area of Kobe. Yet it left the magnificent five-storey pagoda at the Toji temple in nearby Kyoto unscathed未受损伤; 未遭伤害(第2题) though it levelled夷平a number of buildings in the neighborhood.
Topple: ~ (over) be unsteady and fall 不稳而倒下:
The pile of books toppled over onto the floor. 那一摞书倒在地板上了.
B Japanese scholars have been mystified for ages about why these tall, slender buildings are so stable. It was only thirty years ago that the building industry felt confident enough to erect office blocks of steel and reinforced concrete that had more than a dozen floors.（第3题） With its special shock absorbers 减震器to dampen抑制the effect of sudden sideways movements from an earthquake, the thirty-six-storey Kasumigaseki building in central Tokyo — Japan's first skyscraper摩天楼— was considered a masterpiece of modern engineering when it was built in 1968.
【重要词汇】mystify/ ?m?st?fa?; ˋm?st??fa?/ v (pt, pp -fied) [Tn] make (sb) confused through lack of understanding; puzzle; bewilder 使（某人）困惑不解; 使迷惑: I'm mystified; I just can't see how he did it. 我大惑不解, 就是不明白他是怎麽做到的. * her mystifying disappearance 她神秘的失踪.
dampen (down )
to make something such as a feeling or activity less strong The light rain dampened the crowd's enthusiasm. Raising interest rates might dampen the economy. to make a sound or movement less loud or strong The spring dampens the shock of the impact.
C Yet in 826, with only pegs短桩 and wedges楔子 to keep his wooden structure upright, the master builder Kobodaishi had no hesitation in sending his majestic雄伟的 Toji pagoda soaring fifty-five metres into the sky — nearly half as high as the Kasumigaseki skyscraper built some eleven centuries later. Clearly, Japanese carpenters of the day knew a few tricks about allowing a building to sway and settle itself rather than fight nature's forces. （第4题） But what sort of tricks?
D The multi-storey pagoda came to Japan from China in the sixth century. As in China, they were first introduced with Buddhism and were attached to important temples. (第9题) The Chinese built their pagodas in brick or stone, with inner staircases, and used them in later centuries mainly as watchtower（第s5题和第7题）瞭望塔. When the pagoda reached Japan, however, its architecture was freely adapted to local conditions — they were built less high, typically five rather than nine storeys, made mainly of wood and the staircase was dispensed（第5题）免除，省掉 with because the Japanese pagoda did not have any practical use but became more of an art object. Because of the typhoons that batter接连猛击Japan in the summer, Japanese builders learned to extend the eaves屋檐of buildings further beyond the walls. （第6题） This prevents rainwater gushing 流出, 泻出, 涌出down the walls. Pagodas in China and Korea have nothing like the overhang that is found on pagodas in Japan.
【重要词组】dispense with sb/sth manage without sb/sth; get rid of sb/sth 用不着某人[某事物]; 摆脱某人[某事物]: He is not yet well enough to dispense with the pills. 他尚未痊愈, 仍需吃药.
adapte (oneself) (to sth) become adjusted to new conditions, etc 适应（新环境等）: Our eyes slowly adapted to the dark. 我们的眼睛慢慢地适应了黑暗的环境.
【重要词汇】overhang / ??uv?hæ?; ˋov??hæ?/ n part that overhangs 悬垂的部分: a bird's nest under the overhang of the roof房檐下的鸟巢.
E The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the building's overall width.（第8题）For the same reason, the builders of Japanese pagodas seem to have further increased their weight by choosing to cover these extended eaves not with the porcelain瓷tiles 瓦of many Chinese pagodas but with much heavier earthenware陶器tiles.
【难句解析】The roof of a Japanese temple building can be made to overhang the sides of the structure by fifty per cent or more of the building's overall width. 句子结构the roof… can be made to….by…
日本寺庙的屋顶可以被建造成各面都延伸出庙宇本身，延伸的范围在该寺庙整体宽度的50%或者更多。
F But this does not totally explain the great resilience弹性 of Japanese pagodas. Is the answer that, like a tall pine tree, the Japanese pagoda — with its massive trunk-like central pillar柱子known as shinbashira — simply flexes伸缩，弯曲 and sways摇动, 摇摆 during a typhoon or earthquake? For centuries, many thought so. But the answer is not so simple （11题B选项）because the startling令人吃惊的thing is that the shinbashira actually carries no load 不负重at all.
（11题A选项） In fact, in some pagoda designs, it does not even rest on the ground接触地面, but is suspended悬挂 from the top of the pagoda — hanging loosely down through the middle of the building. （11题C选项）The weight of the building is supported entirely by twelve outer and four inner columns.
G And what is the role of the shinbashira, the central pillar? The best way to understand the shinbashira's role is to watch a video made by Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as 'Professor Pagoda' because of his passion to understand the pagoda, has built a series of models and tested them on a 'shake- table' in his laboratory. In short, the shinbashira was acting like an enormous stationary pendulum钟摆. The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japan's first skyscraper. What those early craftsmen had found by trial and error was that under pressure a pagoda's loose stack of floors could be made to slither to and fro来回地; 往复地independent of one another. Viewed from the side, the pagoda seemed to be doing a snake dance — with each consecutive连续的 floor moving in the opposite direction to its neighbours above and below. The shinbashira, running up through a hole in the centre of the building, constrained individual storeys from moving too far because, after moving a certain distance, they banged into it, transmitting energy away along the column. （11题D选项）
【重要词汇】Stack：pile or heap, usu neatly arranged 堆, 摞（通常指堆放得整齐的）: a wood stack 木材堆 * a stack of newspapers
slither：slide or slip unsteadily摇晃不稳地滑动或滑行: slithering dangerously (on the muddy path) （在泥泞的路上）危险地滑行 *
【重要词组】bang into sb/sth collide with sb/sth violently 猛撞着某人[某物]: He ran round the corner and banged straight into a lamp-post. 他跑过拐角处时迎面撞在灯柱上.
【难句解析】The ancient craftsmen, apparently without the assistance of very advanced mathematics, seemed to grasp the principles that were, more than a thousand years later, applied in the construction of Japan's first skyscraper. 古代的工匠在明显没有先进的数学知识的情况下，似乎已经掌握了一千年以后应用于日本第一摩天大楼的理论。
H
Another strange feature of the Japanese pagoda is that, because the building tapers逐渐尖细, with each successive floor plan being smaller than the one below, none of the vertical垂直的 pillars that carry the weight of the building is connected to its corresponding pillar above. In other words, a five- storey pagoda contains not even one pillar that travels right up through the building to carry the structural loads from the top to the bottom. More surprising is the fact that the individual storeys of a
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