Prime Time 6, Coursebook mit Audio-CD und DVD

3 Expressing facts and figures Units of measurement a) Say the figures and add the correct information. Start like this: “Four point six billion years is the … .” 1 • the average volume of water used to flush a toilet • the distance half of all British plastics travel to be recycled in China • the area of rainforest destroyed each year • the predicted rise in temperature by the end of the twenty-first century • the length of time the Earth has been in existence • the proportion of household waste that could be recycled • the weight of nitrogen added to the land as fertiliser for every metric tonne of cotton harvested b) Collect groups of words used to express units of weight, length and volume. Write down the words in their full form, as you would say them, and also their abbreviations. c) In the US and the UK, you might need to understand non-metric measurements. Look up the information you need and work out the metric equivalent of: 1. a 12 ounce steak 4. a ten-foot six-inch alligator 2. thirty miles an hour 5. a gallon of petrol 3. a pint of apple juice 6. 45 miles to the gallon Tip In English, you use … • a decimal point (not a comma like in German). Example: 2.1 litres • commas to separate long numbers into groups of three figures. Example: 2,100 people Abbreviations • l = litre • kg = kilogramme • km = kilometre • °C = degree Celsius/ centigrade T 4.6 billion years 200 kg 7 l 13,000 km 63,000 sq. miles 4/5 6 °C Design an environment quiz Use information from this chapter and other sources to write multiple choice questions about the environment (e. g. the question how long plastic lasts, the total population of the Earth, …). The answers should all be measurements. Use your quiz to test other students at your school. The language of statistics a) Look at the question below. What would you expect the answer to be? Explain why. Question: Which is more environmentally friendly: a T-shirt made of cotton or one made of polyester? Answer: Generally, people do not work out 1 the environmental cost of the clothes they wear, and most 2 consumers would probably think cotton is more environmentally friendly than polyester. Growing cotton does cost a smaller amount of 3 energy than creating the raw materials of polyester from oil. Cotton uses about 4 a quarter of the world’s insecticides, however, and the land also needs fertiliser – on average, 200 kg for every 5 tonne of cotton – which releases a powerful greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. Such things 6 mean that the carbon cost of producing a new cotton T-shirt is actually the same as 7 the cost of producing a polyester one, but then wearing and using cotton has a bigger 8 cost because of the extra energy needed to wash it at a warmer temperature and also to iron it. When you put all the numbers together 9 , therefore, the whole 10 gure shows that cotton is actually the wrong choice for the environment! b) Reports giving facts and figures use special expressions. Make the answer above more formal by replacing the highlighted words with the words below and make a list. (Two words are not needed.) approximately factors add per equal to total compared to the majority of average calculate higher less 2 3 40 The Blue Planet Language skills Nur zu Prüfzweck n – Eigentum des Verlags öbv