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The Asteroid Crater


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Published: 1.01.2018
Level 6   |   Time: 3:10
Accent: British, American

TOEFL: A discussion on the effects of the asteroid event that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs.

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You can download the file [ HERE ].

    

triangle Directions 목표 Direcciones Instruções


  1. READ the VOCABULARY

    It is important to read the vocabulary before you watch the video. This will improve your ability to understand the video. It will also help you understand how the new vocabulary is used naturally.

  2. WATCH the VIDEO

    The first time you watch the video, just try to understand the overall situation.

  3. ANSWER the QUESTIONS

    First try to answer all the questions from memory. Then rewatch the video and try to answer the questions that you missed.

  4. WATCH and READ the SCRIPT

    Watch the video again while you read the script. Reading and listening at the same time will help you hear each individual word and improve your listening accuracy.

  5. DO the ACTIVITIES

    There are several different activities that focus on test preparation, vocabulary, grammar, and sentence structure.

  1. LEA el VOCABULARIO

    Es importante leer el vocabulario antes de ver el video. Esto mejorará su capacidad para comprender el video. También le ayudará a comprender cómo se usa el nuevo vocabulario de forma natural.

  2. VER el VIDEO

    La primera vez que vea el video, intente comprender la situación general.

  3. RESPONDE a las PREGUNTAS

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  4. MIRAR Y LEER

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  5. HACER LAS ACTIVIDADES

    Hay una serie de actividades diferentes que se centran en la preparación de la examen, el vocabulario, la gramática y la estructura de las oraciones.

  1. 어휘 읽기

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  3. 문제에 답하기

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  4. 비디오 보면서 대본 읽기

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  5. 액티비티 하기

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  1. LER o VOCABULÁRIO

    É importante ler o vocabulário antes de assistir ao vídeo. Isso melhorará sua capacidade de entender o vídeo. Também ajudará você a entender como o novo vocabulário é usado naturalmente.

  2. ASSISTA ao VÍDEO

    Na primeira vez que assistir ao vídeo, tente entender a situação geral.

  3. RESPONDA às PERGUNTAS

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  4. ASSISTA e LEIA o SCRIPT

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  5. FAÇA as ATIVIDADES

    Existem várias atividades diferentes que se concentram na preparação para o teste, vocabulário, gramática e estrutura de frases.

triangle Vocabulary 어휘 Vocabulário Vocabulario


  • ☐ ☐ ☐ irrevocably [adv] - in a way that cannot be reversed
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ slam [v] - hit
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ the fall out [n] - the effects
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ demise [n] - death
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ come into focus [exp] - become clear
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ a crater [n] - a large bowl-shaped hole in the Earth
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ an asteroid [n] - a large rock in outer space
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ sediments [n] - small particles of rock
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ the impact site [n] - the place the asteroid stuck the Earth
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ toxic [adj] - poisonous
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ vents [n] - rivers of gas
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ hydrothermal [adj] - related to heated water in the Earth's crust
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ straight after [exp] - immediately after (in time)
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ a Hiroshima worth of energy [exp] - the same amount of energy released by the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in WWII.
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ the rim [n] - the outer edge
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ degassed [v] - gas is removed
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ Sulphur [n] - a yellow chemical element (S)
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ soot [n] - black dust that comes from burning something
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ photosynthesis [n] - how plants turn light into chemical energy
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ inhibit [v] - prevent or restrain
  • ☐ ☐ ☐ the food chain [n] - the system of how organisms (life) are dependent on each other as a food source

[n] - noun,  [v] - verb, [phv] - phrasal verb,  [adj] - adjective,  [exp] - expression



triangle Comprehension Questions 이해력 검사 문제 Perguntas de compreensão Preguntas de comprensión


  1. When did the asteroid hit the Earth?
    6 million years ago
    60 million years ago
    66 million years ago

  2. How fast was the asteroid moving?
    18 km/h
    18 km/m
    18 km/s

  3. Where did the asteroid hit the Earth?
    in northeastern Mexico
    in the Gulf of Mexico
    just north of Mexico

  4. What was the effect of the asteroid impact?
    Three quarters of all dinosaurs died.
    All of the animals on the Earth died.
    75% of all animal and plant life died.

  5. What surprised the researcher about the impact site?
    Life quickly recovered in the area.
    The crater that formed was very deep.
    A lot of gas was released after the impact.

  6. How much energy was released by the impact?
    the equivalent of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima
    the equivalent of 10 nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima
    the equivalent of 10 billion nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima

  7. How does the scientist describe the crater?
    It was surprisingly shallow.
    It was quite deep.
    It was not very wide.

  8. What happened to the sediments around the impact site?
    They released a lot of gas.
    They were destroyed.
    They were injected into the Earth's atmosphere.

  9. What effect did the release of Sulphur have on the Earth?
    It created numerous fires around the Earth.
    It increased the temperature of the Earth.
    It reduced the temperature of the Earth.

  10. How long did this effect last?
    a few months
    less than 20 years
    hundreds of years

  11. What inhibited photosynthesis?
    the release of Sulphur
    dust and soot in the atmosphere
    the freezing temperatures

  12. What effect did the inhibited photosynthesis have?
    It had a negative impact on the food chain.
    It had a positive impact on the food chain.
    It had no impact on the food chain.



triangle TOEFL Questions TOEFL 문제 Perguntas do TOEFL Preguntas de TOEFL


  1. What is the discussion mainly about?
    (A) The death of the dinosaurs
    (B) How asteroids effect the Earth
    (C) New discoveries from research around an asteroid impact site
    (D) The types of gases released by asteroid impacts

  2. What facts does the man mention about the asteroid?
    [Click on four answers.]
    (A) How big the asteroid was
    (B) How fast the asteroid was traveling
    (C) Where the asteroid struck the Earth
    (D) When the asteroid struck the Earth
    (E) How the asteroid impact affected the Earth
    (F) What animals survived after the impact

  3. What can be inferred from this statement?

    (A) Life returned to the impact site more quickly than expected.
    (B) Life returned to the impact site more slowly than expected.
    (C) Surprisingly, life did not return to the impact site.
    (D) Life returned to the impact site much more quickly than to other areas.

  4. Why does the professor mention Hiroshima?
    (A) To show where the asteroid struck the Earth
    (B) To show where research is being done on the subject
    (C) To show how far away the asteroid was from land
    (D) To show how much energy was released by the asteroid impact

  5. What happened to the area right after the impact?
    (A) A deep crater formed and then filled with water.
    (B) Huge mountains formed and then collapsed.
    (C) Sediments disappeared from the area.
    (D) All water in the area was changed into ice.

  6. According to the professor, where did the Sulphur and carbon dioxide come from?
    (A) They were released from the sediments.
    (B) They were released from the asteroid.
    (C) They were released from the atmosphere.
    (D) They were released from water in the area.

  7. According to the professor, what effect did the release of Sulphur have on the Earth?
    (A) It cooled the Earth.
    (B) It poisoned the dinosaurs.
    (C) It filled in the crater.
    (D) It was absorbed by the oceans.

  8. What can be inferred about the release of soot and dust into the atmosphere?
    (A) It had a bigger impact on the Earth than the Sulphur that was released.
    (B) It mostly affected the area near the impact site.
    (C) It negatively affected plant life.
    (D) It was hard to measure.

  9. What is the professor referring to when she mentions "the primary food chain"?
    (A) Dinosaurs
    (B) Sediments
    (C) Small animals
    (D) Plant life



triangle Discussion 논의 Questões de discussão Discusión


  1. Summarize the process of what happened after the asteroid collided with Earth.
  2. What do you believe caused the extinction of the dinosaurs? Was it the asteroid, or are there other plausible explanations?
  3. What animals would survive if a similar asteroid collided with Earth today? Do you think humans would survive? What large animals might survive?
  4. Why are there so many craters visible on the Moon?
  5. Why is it so difficult to find craters on Earth?
  6. How could scientists try to stop an asteroid from colliding with Earth if one were identified to be heading our way?
  7. Which asteroid collision movies have you seen? Deep Impact? Armeggedon? Which one seemed the most realistic?

triangle Script 대본 Roteiro Texto


It was the one event which irrevocably changed our world. Sixty six billion years ago, a giant rock moving at 18 kilometers per second came out of the Northeastern sky and slammed into a shallow sea where today there is the Gulf of Mexico. The fallout from the impact resulted in the demise of three quarters of all plant and animal species including the dinosaurs. Precisely what happened on that day is now coming into clearer focus thanks to a project to drill into the crater made by the asteroid. Our science correspondent Jonathan Amos has been speaking to the lead researchers Joe Morgan and Sean Gulick.

One of our targets actually was to look at the earliest sediments that filled the crater because they're going to tell us about the recovery of life actually at the impact site. So we might have expected life to grow very very slowly here because there was probably quite a toxic environment. The ocean was probably was full of vents of hydrothermal circulation and all these sort of metals that were being put into the oceans. So we were expecting sort of life to recover very very slowly, and we were quite surprised. So we get really amazing fast recovery, high productivity sort of almost straight after the impact. Similar to the fastest recovery at other sites around the world.

Sean, you've been able to put the day back together in a sense.

Yeah, what's super exciting as just the energy of an impact crater. So I mean they're hitting at something like 10 billion Hiroshimas worth of energy. And so that creates an instantaneous hole that has a rim with mountains that are Himalayan in size. But then all that collapses within minutes in order to infill the crater and result in something that's almost twice as wide when the final crater forms, and not very deep, only maybe a kilometer deep.

It was a bad day for planet Earth, a bad day for the dinosaurs, a bad day for a lot of life on Earth. And you can say now some of the way that it was a bad day because of the nature of the rocks that this impactor hit and what it did to the climate.

Yeah that's right. So we now know a lot more about the target site We know a lot more about the sediments that were essentially degassed when the asteroid hits. So a very high pressure shock wave passes through the sediments, releases these gases sulfur and carbon dioxide injected into the Earth's atmosphere and all around the globe. So they have a dramatic effect all around the globe. So we think that the Sulfur itself cooled the Earth's surface by about 25 degrees centigrade for that first year after the impact. So that's an amazing sort of cold earth for us. And that lasted probably 3 to 16 years of these subfreezing temperatures. So life would have a big sort of struggle at that point. You know it would be nothing like life normally sort of previous to the impact that the temperatures had been like. We also have a little bit better idea of the soot and the dust that was up in the atmosphere and stayed there itself for several years. And that cuts out sunlight. So we think photosynthesis was seriously inhibiting for at least a year. So were cutting out the primary food chain basically - the organisms that photosynthesize and make the food that everything else eats off. So that's serious for all life on Earth.

Joe Morgan and Sean Gulick talking to Jonathan Amos.