How could we tell time if there were no watches or clocks anywhere in the world?
The sun is probably the world’s first “clock”, except in the far north, where the Eskimos(爱斯基摩人) live. There, it’s dark most of the winter, and light most of the summer. But in most of the world, people have used the sun as a clock. Even today, if you don’t have a clock, you can still know that when the sun shines, it’s day and when it’s dark, it’s night. The sun can also tell you if it’s morning, noon, or afternoon.
Some people live near the sea from the tides. In the daytime, for about six hours, water rises higher and higher on the beach. And then it goes down and down for about six hours. The same thing happens again at night. There are two high tides and two low tides every 24 hours. Seamen on the ship learn how to tell time by looking at the moon and the stars. The whole sky is their clock.
In some places in the world the wind comes up at about the same time every day or changes direction or stops blowing. In these places the wind can be the clock.
A sand clock is an even better clock. If you had fine dry sand in a glass shaped like the one in the picture, you would have what is called an hourglass. The sand in the hourglass goes from the top part to the bottom in exactly one hour. When the hourglass is turned over, the sand will take another hour to go back again
小题1: From the passage we can know there are _______ways to tell time besides the clock and watch.
A．3
B．4
C．5
D．7小题2:. The Eskimos in the far north can’t use the sun for a clock because________
A．they know very little about the sun
B．the sun there never goes down in winter
C．it’s too cold for them to go out to watch the sun
D．it has long dark winters and long light summers小题3:. What does the underlined word “tides” mean in the passage?
A．洋流
B．潮汐
C．海啸
D．波浪小题4: In which page of newspaper can you probably read this passage?
A．News
B．Science
C．Advertisement
D．Sports小题5: What is the best title for the passage?
A．Different Ways to Tell Time
B．How the Clock Was Invented
C．The Development of the Clock
D．A Useful Machine to Tell Time
