Supplementary vocabulary:

downtown – центр міста traffic congestion – дорожній затор ditch – рів, канава culvert – дренажна труба

gravel – гравій chushed rock – щебень aggregate – кам'яні матеріали concrete – бетон

2. Here are the definitions of some words from the text. Find these words:

1. A person who plans.

2. A large area or part without boundaries.

3. A building or open place where people meet to sell or buy goods.

4. People living in an area or a country.

5. A road round something.

6. To remove something from an area, to get rid of.

7. A system or means for draining.

8. Unwanted, unpleasant sound.

9. The system or apparatus that lights a room, a building or a road.

10. The edge of the road.

3. Summarize the text to produce a short report on road construction.

TEXT 7 C

1. Skim the text to outline the main stages of history of asphalt:

ASPHALT – AN ANCIENT CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL

Asphalt, the world’s most popular construction material today, is by no means new. It was used in many ways in Ancient Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt. The asphalt used by the ancients was native material obtained from many of the oil seeps or pools where crude oil rose to the surface and the lighter fraction were evaporated by nature. The remaining heavy residue usually contained various amounts of water, soil and other impurities; but by slow and crude methods of distillation, fuel for lamps and bituminous products for mastics, waterproofing and paving were obtained.

The most extensive sources of native asphalt 4,000 to 5,000 years ago located in Iraq. Several large deposits are known to have existed along the banks of the Euphrates River in the vicinity of Hit and Ramadi. Other deposits mentioned by historians were along the Tigris River in northern Iraq near the present city of Shargat – this latter location being near a modern oil field.

The Egyptians obtained native asphalt for waterproofing, mummification and building from the Dead Sea and a source near the River Jordan in Lebanon.

Much of the knowledge we have today concerning the ancient city of Babylon we owe to the preservation of structures by the use of asphalt as a cementing material for building blocks and waterproofing. The floors of royal palaces and baths and processional streets were paved with a mixture of sand and asphalt. Extractions and screen analysis of pieces of pavement removed from the ruins reveal that the paving mixtures used in antiquity conform very nearly to our present sheet-asphalt mixtures.

TRINIDAD ASPHALT

Sir Walter Raleigh landed on the island of Trinidad in 1595 and stayed there long enough to obtain a supply of asphalt to calk his ships. The asphalt he used was a natural asphalt taken from an asphalt lake a short distance from the shore of the Gulf of Paria and was similar to that used by the ancients.

Hundreds of thousands of tons of asphalt have been removed from the Trinidad lake without showing any sign of loss. As the material is removed, pressure deep in the earth forces more of the heavy residue to the surface, where nature continues its refining process.

The natural or native asphalt removed from the lake contains many impurities and foreign matter, such as water, fine sand and vegetation. To produce a suitable paving material, these impurities have to be removed, therefore refining process is necessary.

For many years Trinidad asphalt was exported to foreign countries for paving purposes; but with the development of modern methods of refining domestic petroleum crude oil, asphaltic materials are produced in most countries at a cost with which Trinidad asphalt cannot compete.

The island of Trinidad is now a large producer of crude oil and whether or not the continued removal of crude from several thousand feet in the earth will reduce underground pressure enough to deplete the asphalt lake is only problematical.