Then the inventor Henry Bessemer discovered that directing a blast of air at melted iron in a furnace would burn out the impurities that made the iron brittle. As the air shot through the furnace, the bubbling metal would erupt in showers of sparks. When the fire cooled, the metal had been changed, or converted to steel. The Bessemer converter made possible the mass production of steel. Now three to five tons of iron could be changed into steel in a matter of minutes.
Just when the demand for more and more steel developed, prospectors discovered huge new deposits of iron ore in the Mesabi Range, a 120long region in Minnesota near Lake Superior. The Mesabi deposits were so near the surface that they could be mined with steam shovels.
Barges and steamers carried the iron ore through Lake Superior to depots on the southern shores of Lake Michigan and Lake Erie. With dizzying speed Gary, Indiana, and Toledo, Youngstown, and Cleveland, Ohio, became major steelmanufacturing centers. Pittsburgh was the greatest steel city of all.
Steel was the basic building material of the industrial age. Production skyroc
keted from seventyseven thousand tons in 1870 to over eleven million tons in 1900.
31.According to the passage, the railroad industry preferred steel to iron because steel was ____.
A.cheaper and more plentiful
B.lighter and easier to mold
C.cleaner and easier to mine
D.stronger and more durable
32.According to the passage, how did Bessemer method make the mass production of steel possible?
A.It directed air at melted iron in a furnace, removing all impurities.
B.It slowly heated iron ore then stirred it and heated it again.
C.It changed iron ore into iron which was a substitute for steel.
D.It could quickly find deposits of iron ore under the ground.
33.According to the passage, where were large deposits of iron uncovered?
A.In Pittsburgh. B.In the Mesabi Range.
C.Near Lake Michigan.D.Near Lake Erie.
34.The words “Barges and steamers” could best be replaced by which of the following?
A.Trains.B.Planes.C.Boats.D.Trucks.
35.It can be inferred from the passage that the mass production of steel
caused ____.
A.a decline in the railroad industry
B.a revolution in the industrial world
C.an increase in the price of steel
D.a feeling of discontent among steel workers
Questions 36 to 40 are based on the following passage:
There were two widely divergent influences on the early development of statistical methods. Statistics had a mother who was dedicated to keeping orderly records of governmental units (state and statistics come from the same Latin root, status) and a gentlemanly gambling father who relied on mathematics to increase his skill at playing the odds in games of chance. The influence of the mother on the offspring, statistics, is represented by counting, measuring, describing, tabulating, ordering, and the taking of censuses—all of which led to modern descriptive statistics. From the influence of the father came modern inferential statistics, which is based squarely on theories of probability.
