It has been a hundred years since the last big one in California, the 1906 San Francisco earth quake, which helped give (1)_____ to modem earthquake science. A century later, we have a highly successful (2)_____, called plate tectonics, that explains why 1906-type earthquakes happen—along with why continents drift, mountains rise, and volcanoes (3)_____ the Pacific Rim. Plate tectonics may be one of the (4)_____ triumphs of the human mind, geology's (5)_____ to biology's theory of evolution. And yet scientists still can't say when an earthquake will happen. They can't even come (6)_____. What scientists can do right now is make good maps of fault zones and (7)_____ out which ones are probably due (8)_____ a rupture. And they can make forecasts. A forecast might say that, over a certain number of years, there is a certain (9)_____ of a certain magnitude earthquake in a (10)_____ spot. And that you should fix your house to its foundation and glue the water heater to the wall. Turning forecasts into predictions—'a magnitude 7 earthquake is (11)_____ here three days from now'—may be impossible, but scientists are doing everything they can to solve the (12)_____ of earth quakes. They break rocks in laboratories, studying how stone (13)_____ under stress. They hike (14)_____ ghost forests where dead trees (15)_____ of long-ago tsunamis. They make maps of unsecured, balanced rocks to see where the ground has (16)_____ in the past and how hard. They dig ditches across faults, searching for the active trace. They have wired up fault zones with so many sensors it is (17)_____ the Earth is a patient (18)_____ intensive care. (19)_____, we tell ourselves—trying hard to be persuasive—there must be some way to (20)_____ order and criterion on all that untrustworthy ground. A.birth B.rise C.ground D.way
A. B. C. D. A.birth B.rise C.ground
【参考答案】
A 解析:短语辨析题。这是一个主从复合句,which引导定语从句,修饰先行词the 1906 San Francisco earthquake,对于这次地震的研究奠定了现代地震科学的基础,因此选birth,构成短语give birth to意为'孕育,引起,发生',本句大意是:'1906年旧金山地震以来,已有一百年了。那次地震孕育了现代地震科学的诞生'。give rise to 虽然也有'引起,导致'的意思,但一般指不好的结果,用在这里不合题意。ground和way与give搭配表示'让...