Check your understanding

Read the text again carefully, looking up anything you don’t understand in a dictionary. Then answer the following questions:

1) What is measurement?

2) How many different symbols for measurement of length are shown in the two tables?

3) How is the US measurement of force different from the SI units?

4) What is the principle on which SI is based?

5) What is the US customary unit for the SI equivalent 1.356J?

6) How many ‘ins’ are there in 1 ‘m’, according to Table 1?

Language study

Task 3

Look at the text and say what the following words refer to:

Paragraph 1: concept, reason

Paragraph 2: one

Paragraph 3: it, it

Paragraph 4: which, which

Paragraph 5: that

Task 4

Find the symbols in Tables 1 and 2 which match the words:

Word study

Task 5

Look at the first paragraph and say:

1) What words could you replace with ‘using’?

2) What word has the same meaning as ‘very important’?

3) What does ‘accepted’ mean here?

Task 6

Word Building

Fill in the following table:

Grammar study

Revise your grammar

Modals with Passive forms

Task 7

Rewrite the following sentences using can / should / must / may with the passive form:

1) You must position the flywheel housing very precisely.

2) You can check the position by placing a magnetic base onto the crankshaft.

3) It is possible to convert miles into kilometers by multiplying by 1.609.

4) You can express the multiple 10⁶ using the prefix ‘mega’ and you must use M as the symbol for this.

5) With SI numbers, you should not use a comma to separate multiples of a thousand. You may use a space instead.