IELTS General Training Reading Practice Test 18

Text A — RIVERBANK SCIENCE MUSEUM: CURRENT EXHIBITS

Welcome to Riverbank Science Museum. We are open Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00 to 17:30 (last admission 16:45). The museum is closed every Monday and on 25 December. The building has been busiest at weekends and during school holidays; visitors planning a quieter visit may prefer a weekday morning.

Permanent galleries (no separate ticket required): - Ground Floor — 'Forces and Motion': hands-on demonstrations of gravity, friction, and momentum. Suitable for all ages. A free 15-minute live show takes place every hour from 11:00. - First Floor — 'The Human Body': interactive models of the heart, lungs, and digestive system. A short film about the immune system runs continuously in the side theatre. - Second Floor — 'Space and Beyond': meteorite samples, a full-size model of the lunar lander, and a small planetarium (5 shows daily, normally free, first-come first-served).

Temporary exhibitions (separate ticket required, £6 adults / £3 children): - 'Climate Lab' (until 30 June) — first floor east wing. - 'Insect Architects' (until 15 September) — ground floor west wing.

Cafe and shop are located in the main atrium. The cafe normally closes at 17:00. Photography is welcome throughout the museum, but flash and tripods are not permitted in temporary exhibitions. Pushchairs are available free from the cloakroom on a first-come basis. Lockers cost £1 (returnable).

Group visits of more than 10 people must be booked at least seven days in advance via the website. School parties generally enter free of charge but must be accompanied by one adult per six pupils. Coach drop-off is available at the side entrance on Marlow Street.

Text B — WEEKEND WORKSHOP PROGRAMME: SIGN-UP DETAILS

Riverbank Science Museum runs a weekend workshop programme for visitors aged 7 and above. Each session lasts 90 minutes and is led by a museum educator. Workshops are very popular and we recommend booking online at least two weeks in advance. Walk-up bookings have occasionally been argued to be impractical given how quickly the sessions fill.

Saturday workshops: - 10:30 — 'Build a Bridge' (ages 7-10, £8): children build a small bridge from cardboard and test how much weight it can hold. - 13:00 — 'Robot Rovers' (ages 9-13, £12): programme a small wheeled robot to follow a marked track. - 15:00 — 'Egg Drop Challenge' (ages 8-12, £8): design a parachute that lets a raw egg fall five metres without breaking.

Sunday workshops: - 11:00 — 'Volcano Lab' (ages 7-11, £8): create a small chemical eruption and learn about real volcanoes. - 14:00 — 'Circuit Café' (ages 10 and above, £10): build a working torch using a battery, bulb, switch, and wire.

What to bring: closed-toe shoes are required for all workshops. Aprons and safety goggles are provided. Children must be accompanied by an adult, who does not need a separate ticket. Workshops cannot be refunded if cancelled less than 48 hours in advance, but you may transfer your place to another session of the same price free of charge up to the day before. Late arrivals more than fifteen minutes into a workshop may be asked to wait for the next available session.

Members of the museum (£35 per year) generally receive 25% off all workshop fees and a free guest ticket per visit. Membership has been argued to pay for itself within three or four workshop bookings.

Text C — JOINING THE EDUCATION TEAM AT RIVERBANK SCIENCE MUSEUM

Welcome to the Education Team. We generally deliver schools programming, weekend workshops, family events, and outreach sessions for community partners. Our central aim is to translate the museum's exhibits into hands-on experiences that meet the National Curriculum at Key Stages 1 to 4. The team has been argued to function best when permanent staff and casual workshop leaders meet regularly to share new session plans.

Roles within the team: - Education Officer: designs and delivers schools sessions; minimum qualification is a degree in a science subject or in education. - Workshop Leader: runs weekend and holiday workshops; no degree required, but a Level 3 qualification in childcare, teaching assistance, or a relevant science subject is essential. - Outreach Coordinator: takes mobile exhibits to schools, libraries, and community centres in the region; a clean driving licence and a willingness to drive the museum van are essential. - Volunteer Educator: assists at family events and large public weekends; minimum age 18, full induction normally provided.

All staff and volunteers must complete the following modules within their first four weeks of joining: Safeguarding Children, Health and Safety in Workshops, Fire Evacuation, and Inclusive Communication. Each module is normally delivered online, takes around 90 minutes, and ends with a short assessment that must be passed before working unsupervised with children. Re-sits are available within a fortnight where the first attempt is unsuccessful.

Hours: Education Officers and Outreach Coordinators normally work a standard 37-hour week, including one Saturday in four. Workshop Leaders are contracted for weekend hours only (Saturdays and Sundays) plus school-holiday weeks. Overtime is paid at 1.25 times the normal rate, except on bank holidays, when it is paid at 1.5 times the normal rate.

Text D — PREPARING AND DELIVERING A WORKSHOP

Each workshop session is built around a single core question (for example, 'What makes a bridge strong?') and follows the same five-stage shape:

1. Welcome and safety briefing (5 minutes): introduce yourself, agree the workshop rules, point out fire exits, and demonstrate any equipment to be used.

2. Big idea (10 minutes): use the related gallery exhibit, a short video, or a live demonstration to explain the science behind the question. Keep technical language simple and check understanding through quick questions. A confident opening has been argued to set the tone for the rest of the session.

3. Hands-on build or experiment (45 minutes): this is the heart of the workshop. Children typically work in pairs or threes, with each adult helper supervising one pair. Materials should be pre-counted and laid out before the session begins. Resist the temptation to do the work for the child; ask questions to guide them instead.

4. Test and reflect (20 minutes): each group tests their build or records the result of their experiment. Encourage children to explain what they found, including failures. Celebrate the most creative as well as the most successful.

5. Tidy up and farewell (10 minutes): children return tools and materials to their trays; thank everyone for taking part and remind them where to find related exhibits in the museum.

If a workshop is over-subscribed and parents ask to add a child on the day, please refer them politely to reception. Do not enrol additional children directly. If a child becomes upset or unwell, ask the duty manager to attend; do not attempt to contact parents yourself. A short written note on the incident is completed before the end of the shift and filed with the duty manager.

A The steam engine, more than any other invention, is widely regarded as having shaped the modern world. By converting the energy stored in coal into mechanical work, it freed human society from the limits of muscle power, wind, and water. The story of the steam engine is therefore, in the author's view, the story of the Industrial Revolution itself, and it begins not with a single inventor but with centuries of slow accumulation. Hero of Alexandria, working in the first century AD, built a small spinning sphere driven by jets of steam, but it was treated as a curious toy rather than a source of useful power. The practical use of steam to do work did not begin until the late seventeenth century, when European engineers turned to the problem of pumping water from increasingly deep mines.

B The first commercially successful steam engine was Thomas Savery's 'Miner's Friend' of 1698, used to pump water out of flooded tin mines in Cornwall. Savery's machine had no piston: it used the partial vacuum left by condensing steam to suck water up from below. It worked, but only for shallow depths, and the boilers tended to explode. The major step forward came in 1712 with Thomas Newcomen, a Devonshire ironmonger, who designed an 'atmospheric engine' that used a piston driven by atmospheric pressure as steam condensed beneath it. Newcomen engines were enormous, slow, and wasted huge amounts of coal — but they were reliable enough to be installed at hundreds of mines across Britain in the decades that followed.

C The leap that turned the steam engine from a special-purpose mining device into a general source of industrial power was made by the Scottish instrument-maker James Watt in the 1760s and 1770s. Watt realised that Newcomen engines typically lost most of their efficiency because the cylinder was cooled at every stroke when steam condensed inside it; the next stroke had to reheat the cylinder before any useful work could be done. Watt's solution was to condense the steam in a separate vessel, the 'separate condenser,' which allowed the cylinder to remain hot continuously. Combined with the financial and manufacturing skill of his business partner Matthew Boulton, Watt's design reduced coal consumption by around 75 percent and made steam engines economic for use far beyond mining.

D The Watt engine was a stationary engine, fixed in place, transmitting power through belts and gears to nearby machinery. The next great frontier was to mount a steam engine on wheels. The Cornish engineer Richard Trevithick built the first high-pressure steam engine in 1799 and demonstrated a steam-powered road carriage in 1801 and a steam locomotive that ran on iron rails in 1804. Trevithick's locomotive was a technical success but a commercial failure: cast-iron rails broke under its weight. George Stephenson, working a generation later, solved this problem by improving both the locomotive and the track; his Rocket, which won the Rainhill Trials in 1829, became the prototype for all subsequent steam locomotives.

E The arrival of practical railways transformed nineteenth-century life in ways that are now hard to imagine. Distances that had taken days to cover on horseback or by canal could be travelled in hours. Towns that had been isolated communities became regional centres; fresh fish reached inland markets; postal services accelerated; standard time zones were established because railway timetables required them. By 1870, the rail networks of Britain, France, Germany, and the United States together exceeded 200,000 kilometres. The economic impact was so great that it is sometimes argued that the railway, rather than the steam engine itself, was the true engine of nineteenth-century growth.

F The steam engine also went to sea. The first commercially successful steamship, Robert Fulton's Clermont, began service on the Hudson River in 1807. Ocean-going steamships followed: Brunel's Great Western crossed the Atlantic on steam power in 1838, and within a generation the wooden sailing ship had been replaced for most commercial purposes by the iron steamship. At sea, as on land, the steam engine collapsed distances and made the world feel smaller. The British Royal Navy switched almost entirely from sail to steam between 1850 and 1880, with profound consequences for global politics.

G By the late nineteenth century, however, the steam engine was beginning to be challenged. The steam turbine, invented by Charles Parsons in 1884, was, according to most engineers, vastly more efficient at generating electricity than the reciprocating piston engine and reportedly quickly displaced it in power stations and large ships. The internal-combustion engine, developed by Daimler, Benz, and Otto in the 1880s, was lighter and more responsive, and within decades it had taken over road transport entirely. By the middle of the twentieth century, the steam locomotive itself was being replaced by diesel and electric traction. Today, the reciprocating steam engine survives mainly on heritage railways and in museums — yet the steam turbine, its direct descendant, still produces around 80 percent of the world's electricity from coal, gas, and nuclear plants. In that quiet, hidden form, the steam engine continues, in the author's view, to power the modern world.