1 RUDDICK

2 Garden Avenue
3 home
4 31st July
5 104
6 handle
7 repair
8 dust bag
9 180
10 silver

11 A
12 C
13 C
14 B
15 B
16 local museum
17 national newspaper
18 secondary object
19 afternoon
20 detailed notes

21 B
22 C
23 A
24 A
25 C
26 A
27 F
28 D
29 A
30 C

31 cotton
32 milk
33 silk
34 laboratory
35 chemist
36 hard
37 gases
38 light
39 pens
40 car
Part 1
Good morning, madam. Can I help you?

Yes, hello. I have a complaint to make about this vacuum cleaner. I'm wanting to return it,
please.

Oh, dear. I'm sorry to hear that. Well, could I take down your details first? Your name,
please?

It's Diane Ruddick. That's R-U-D-D-I-C-K.

Fine, thanks. And your address.

It's 34 Garden Avenue.

I haven't heard of that one. That's here in Hamilton, is it?

Yes, it is. It's just a small street.

Right. And what number can I reach you on?

That would be 970-7520, and that's home, because my mobile is not working at the moment.
And at the office I share a phone line, so it's better not to call me at work.

OK then. And now, a few details about the product itself. When did you buy it? Do you
remember?

Yes, it says on the receipt. Hang on, I need my glasses to read it. Does that say the 21st of
July? Oh no, sorry, it's the 31st. Mm-hmm.

And I see you've got the vacuum with you. It looks like a Volta Budget model. What's the
size of the motor on that one?

It says 2000 watts.

OK. And I can see that it's a nice bright red, so I'll just write that down.

Yes, I like the colour. And I got it for an excellent price, too. Only $104 on sale, which was
good, considering that I'd nearly bought one for $130 in another shop.

___

OK, well, that all sounds very good. So what seems to be the matter with it? Does it not
clean your floor properly?

No, it does, but it's definitely faulty because there's a problem with the handle. Do you see?
It's permanently stuck in this upright position. It won't fold back down into place as it should.

OK, well, that's annoying for you. There are a couple of possible solutions. One thing we
could do is I could keep it here for now and offer you a repair at no charge.

No, thanks. I think I'd like to exchange it for a better model.

That sounds like it would be useful.

Now, I'd better check the cost is all right for you, Mum, as there will be a difference to pay.
Do you see this price label here?

Yes, that'll be all right. My range was always from about $100 to $200 maximum, so $180
would be fine.

Well, it looks as though we've found you a better appliance. Um, now, do you have a
preference as to colour? The Volta Ultima comes in three colourways. As you can see, the
sky blue is pretty.

Yes, it looks good in that colour, but I think I'll take the silver one, please. Although I do love
that shade of purple.

Right, we don't actually have one in stock, but they're coming in on Tuesday. Would you like
to come in and collect it then?

No, I'd rather...

Part 2
Thanks for inviting me here today. I'll start by showing you some of my photographs, and
explaining a bit of background about the red squirrel, and then give some general advice for
those of you who might be interested in doing some nature photography of your own. So,
let's look at my first slide. a young red squirrel. Its Latin name, Scurius vulgaris, derives from
the Greek word skia, meaning shadow, and ura, meaning tail. I thought this was a bit funny
at first, and couldn't make any sense of the phrase, until I realized that it translated as an
animal sitting in the shadow of its tail. And then it all fell into place, because that's what the
red squirrel does. This photo was taken right outside my back door. Before I started, I set
myself the goal of taking all these photographs in my garden, but using different kinds of
camera and incorporating a variety of different contextual features. Squirrels amongst birds,
for example. But why such a fascination with this animal? Well, the red squirrel was once
common throughout much of Britain. In the late nineteenth century, the American gray
squirrel was introduced into this country. Some people believed that they brought a disease
with them that reduced the red squirrel population. But the decline of the red species had
already started long before the grays came to the country, and my theory is that it's to do
with fewer nuts. which reds love to eat, being available. The only place reds seem to thrive
now is in one or two ancient forests. But how did I go about capturing them on film? Well, a
wildlife photographer friend of mine advised me to use lure, or bait, of hazelnuts. She told
me that you have to attract them over several months by leaving out nuts. Of course, lots of
other animals love to eat hazelnuts, but evidence of red squirrels is clear. Mice, for example,
gnaw a neat hole through the shell, whereas a red squirrel picks up the nut, spins it until it
finds a fault line, and splits it in two with one bite, removing the nut from within. I soon began
to see signs of red squirrel visits to my patch, and I knew that I'd eventually see the animals
themselves. I was amazed by how soon they started arriving, jumping delightfully around the
trees and clotheslines. At first, they were very reluctant to come within a ten-meter the radius
of me, but soon they began to recognize the hand that fed them, and they boldly approached
me. And I began to get some pretty remarkable photographs. It's curious, but the actual
photography side of things didn't bother me too much. Although I had had only a little
practice, and my cameras were largely second-hand, I'd had a very good mentor, and picked
up a lot of tips from her. It was really the attracting of the animals and capturing them in the
most natural situations that I was most concerned about.

___

I exhibited a selection of them in the local museum when friends advised me to show them
to a wider audience. Also, much to my surprise, I won third prize in a competition organized
by a national newspaper. But what advice can I give to any of you who might be thinking of
embarking on something similar? Well, Tracy, my photography expert friend, and I spent a
bit of time thinking about this, and we came up with the following five points, specifically
related to nature photography. First of all, although a good camera is always of great
importance, The crucial requirement for this kind of work must be a tripod. The level of detail
needed, not to mention the weight of a good zoom lens, means that simply bracing your arm
won't do. Next, our review of a large number of outstanding photographs tells us that just
having the animal in shot can be misleading. Make sure you set up the shot in such a way
that what is named a secondary object is in view. It can be a branch, flowers, masonry,
whatever you want. This helps portray the prime object in proper perspective. Next, and this
might seem bizarre, take care to look behind you when you're setting up a shot. The number
of times I've found that the most original new shot is in the very place I've just passed. Now,
it's a well-known dictum in photography that midday or early afternoon light has the effect of
bleaching true color. Late afternoon light is my favorite with its warm red colors. Morning light
can be beautiful, but has a starker yellow glow. And finally, if you are at all serious about
your nature or wildlife photography, take the trouble to make detailed notes on all your shots.
Mention information on time, equipment, setting, etc., and this will work like a recipe book to
help you recognize what contributed to successful shots.

Part 3
Hi, Anita. Did you see that the information about the electives we can choose from this year
has just gone up on the class website?

Really? Great. Do you want to look at it together? We'd better sign up as soon as possible.

I guess so, but it says on the site that we can't register any choices until 3 o'clock.

Okay. But we need to get a move on, I think. Some people told me last year that they got
turned away from a couple of the choices they wanted because they were too slow to
decide.

Let's have a look at it all on my laptop then. It's pretty complicated working out which classes
are compulsory and what restrictions there are on your choices.
Yes, we all have to do a language class of some kind, don't we? I think that's a really good
idea.

That's not quite right. We can do a business class or a philosophy or economics one instead
if we want. The required classes are thermodynamics, machine system dynamics, and
mathematics.

Oh no! I was sure we had finished with that last year.

Well, I suppose it's important for us.

Guess you must be right. So let's look at the descriptions of the topics covered by the
classes we can choose from. Can you get them up on the screen?

Sure. The information also tells you how the classes are graded. Some of them have exams,
but others just have classwork.

Yes, but that shouldn't influence our choices, should it? I'd say it'd be more important to try
to find out how good the professor is.

True. That can make or break any class.

Well, we'll have to ask the seniors to get that kind of information.

True. I know several people have recommended the statistics class, but it would mean a
very early start on Monday morning.

Well, that's not a bad thing, is it? What puts me off more is that everyone says it's very hard
work.

Oh, I don't know. Not if you've done lots of stats before. And I did a special elective on it in
high school. And it's very relevant, isn't it? We're bound to need it whatever work we end up
doing.

Fair enough. Then there's an art and design class. My advisor said he wouldn't recommend
doing that one.

Really.

Well, he said lots of... Lots of people think it's an easy elective, but that actually it's very
time-consuming.

I wouldn't have expected that.

Well, I thought it might be, but it's useful to know for sure, isn't it? Sometimes people's
advice can make decisions even harder, but I found that really helpful.

What I don't know is the amount of practical work each class involves. I'd like to find that out.

No, it's there. Look, if you click on that link, you'll get all that sort of information.

Great. And the class times are there too. So how do we tell them when we've made our
choices?

Maybe we need to go and see our advisors. Or is there something we have to do online?
Okay, let's go and talk to the secretary and find out.

Good idea.

___

How about thinking about the electives we did last year? Maybe that'd help us decide.

Okay. We both did metallurgy, didn't we? It was pretty good, I think. It involved a lot of library
work, but I quite enjoyed that.

Yes, it was definitely useful and well-structured, but it was the most difficult class I chose. I
didn't think it would be that bad.

Neither did I. But I didn't mind because some of my other electives were fairly
straightforward.

Yes, even fluid mechanics wasn't too bad.

No, the online tutorials weren't much help, but the professor made some hard stuff seem
pretty easy, I thought.

Yes, he was great at simplifying concepts that were actually really hard to grasp. You did
computing too, didn't you? What was that like?

It was okay. The later classes were much better than the earlier ones. Initially, I didn't like it
much, but I liked it once we started getting more hands-on stuff. And what did you think
about the energy economics course we both did?

Well, it was useful, except for the notes on the internet. They were pretty disappointing.

I liked the way it wasn't too theoretical, though, and the fact that much of it was based on
solving real problems. It really helped me get better at working through the questions we'd
have to answer for our coursework.

Yes, but more input from our advisors might have been helpful, don't you think?

Part 4
Good morning. My name's Susan Mossman, and as well as being a part-time lecturer on the
university's museum science degree, I'm also curator of a new exhibition opening at the
Bidmouth Museum called Plasticity. This traces the history of plastics and ways they are
being developed and used today. The first type of plastic was originally developed in
response to a call from the makers of sports equipment. Animal-derived materials were
becoming extremely expensive, so manufacturers launched a competition to find an
alternative to ivory for making pool and billiard balls. Although various forms of plastic were
developed, none of them were good enough to win the competition. But the inventors knew
they were on to a good thing, and started researching a variety of different substances,
partly based on organic material, what we call semi-synthetics. One of the early semi-
synthetic materials produced was the first commercially produced celluloid, or plastic film,
which was made by dissolving cotton in a strong acid, such as nitric acid. Unfortunately, this
had a tendency to explode, so technicians had to be very careful with it. They also
experimented with making plastics out of products derived from milk, but this didn't really
work, and efforts were therefore concentrated on other organic material. One of the first uses
of plastic was in the production of artificial fabric, and the earliest successful one was a
substitute for silk. This was obviously a very expensive fiber, so artificial alternatives were
thought to be worth investing in. The next significant breakthrough came in 1907 with the
invention of Bakelite. This was the first entirely synthetic plastic made in a laboratory. It was
invented by Hendrik Baekeland, a chemist who had made a fortune from producing paper
used in photographic processes. is a pretty unusual type of plastic, because it actually gets
hard when it's heated, whereas most other plastic becomes more malleable when hot. That
is, they become more plastic, which is, of course, where the name for the category of
materials comes from. So, strictly speaking, Bakelite isn't a plastic at all. But now let's look at
the exhibition itself. In it we show a variety of semi-synthetic and totally synthetic plastics,
some of them dating back a hundred years. Some of the older plastics on display are
unstable. This means that when they are in the process of degrading, they may produce
gases which are acidic and which can cause neighboring objects in the display to
disintegrate. We had to be very careful with these displays because there is one thing which
causes plastic objects to degrade or break down, and that is light. So we've had to think of
ways to get around this problem when setting up the objects on display. We have about 850
objects in the exhibition. One of our most interesting is a magnificent chandelier. A lamp
designed to hang in the center of the ceiling of a big hall. It's only when you look carefully
that you can see this is a wonderful example of recycling. It's made entirely of pens, ones
which we use and throw away every day. A second exhibit, which is drawing a lot of
attention, is a car made entirely from plastic, which is now in small-scale production in
Japan.