閱讀經典美文是拓寬思維、增長見識、豐富情感、涵養素質的最有效手段。我精心收集了初壹英語美文，供大家欣賞學習!
初壹英語美文篇1
The Origin of Refrigerators
By the mid-nineteenth century, the term"icebox"had entered the American language, but icewas still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice tradegrew with the growth of cities.Ice was used in hotels, taverns,and hospitals,and by someforward-looking city dealers in fresh meat,fresh fish,and butter.After the Civil War (1861-1865),as ice was used to refrigerate freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880,half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Bostonand Chicago, went to families for their own use.
This had become possible because a new household convenience,the icebox,a precursor ofthe modern refrigerator, had been invented. Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as wemight now suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the physics of heat,which was essential to a science of refrigeration,was rudimentary. The commonsense notionthat the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for itwas the melting of the ice that performed the cooling.
Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which keptthe ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventorsachieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox.Butas early as 1803, an ingenious Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track.He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village ofGeorgetown was the market center.
When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found thatcustomers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay apremium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage ofhis icebox, more explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at nightin order to keep their produce cool.
冰箱的由來
直到 19 世紀中期，"冰箱"這個名詞才進入了美國語言，但冰僅僅只是開始影響美國普通市民的飲食。 冰的買賣隨著城市的發展而發展。 冰被用在旅館、酒館、醫院以及被壹些有眼光的城市商人用於肉、魚和黃油的保鮮。 內戰(1861-1865)之後，冰被用於冷藏貨車，同時也進入了民用。 甚至在 1880 年前，半數在紐約、費城和巴爾的摩銷售的冰，三分之壹在波士頓和芝加哥銷售的冰進入家庭使用，因為壹種新的家庭設備，冰箱，即現代冰箱的前身，被發明了。 制造壹臺有效率的冰箱不像我們想象的那麽簡單。
19 世紀早期，關於對冷藏科學至關重要的熱物理知識是很淺陋的。 認為最好的冰箱應該防止冰的融化這樣壹個普遍的觀點顯然是錯誤的，因為正是冰的融化起了制冷作用。 早期為節省冰的努力，包括用毯子把冰包起來，使得冰不能發揮它的作用。 直到近 19 世紀末，發明家們才成功地找到有效率的冰箱所需要的精確的隔熱和循環的精確平衡。 但早在 1803 年，壹位有發明天才的馬裏蘭農場主，托馬斯 ?莫爾，找到了正確方法。 他擁有壹個農場，離華盛頓約20 英裏，那裏的喬治鎮村莊是集市中心。
當他用自己設計的冰箱運送黃油去市場時，他發現顧客們會走過裝在競爭者桶裏那些迅速融化的黃油而給他比市價更高的價格買他仍然新鮮堅硬，整齊地切成壹磅壹塊的黃油。 莫爾說他的冰箱的壹個好處是使得農民們不必在夜裏上路去市場以保持他們產品的低溫。
初壹英語美文篇2The Organic Foods
Are organically grown foods the best food choices? The advantages claimed for such foods overconventionally grown and marketed food products are now being debated. Advocates oforganic foods -- a term whose meaning varies greatly -- frequently proclaim that suchproducts are safer and more nutritious than others.
The growing interest of consumers in the safety and nutritional quality of the typical NorthAmerican diet is a welcome development. However, much of this interest has been sparked bysweeping claims that the food supply is unsafe or inadequate in meeting nutritional needs.
Although most of these claims are not supported by scientific evidence, the preponderanceof written material advancing such claims makes it difficult for the general public to separatefact from fiction. As a result, claims that eating a diet consisting entirely of organically grownfoods prevents or cures disease or provides other benefits to health have become widelypublicized and form the basis for folklore.
Almost daily the public is besieged by claims for "no-aging" diets, new vitamins and otherwonder foods. There are numerous unsubstantiated reports that natural vitamins aresuperior to synthetic ones, that fertilized eggs are nutritionally superior to unfertilized eggs,that untreated grains are better than fumigated grains and the like.
One thing that most organically grown food products seem to have in common is that they costmore than conventionally grown foods. But in many cases consumers are misled if theybelieve organic foods can maintain health and provide better nutritional quality thanconventionally grown foods. So there is real cause for concern if consumers particularly thosewith limited incomes, distrust the regular food supply and buy only expensive organic foodsinstead.
綠色食品
綠色食品是最佳食物嗎?有人認為綠色食品比通過常規方式生產和銷售的食品有更多的優越性，然而現在卻有人對此提出異議。 綠色食品--這壹詞的用法非常不統壹--支持者往往聲稱綠色食品比其它食品更安全，營養價值更高。 北美的消費者們越來越關註他們的日常飲食是否安全和有營養。 這壹發展趨勢是好的。 然而這種關註多半是由壹些武斷的說法引起的，即食物供應不安全或不能提供足夠的營養。 盡管這些說法多數未被科學證實，但是由於大量文章支持這壹觀點，使得普通群眾難辨真偽。 因此那些認為只食用綠色食品就能防治疾病或增進健康的觀點便廣為人知，並導致壹些不科學的做法和習慣。 公眾幾乎每天都被"抗衰老"食品、新型維生素以及其它具有神奇功效的食物廣告所包圍。 聲稱天然維生素優於人造維生素，受精蛋比未受精蛋的營養價值更高，未經薰蒸消毒處理的谷物比經過處理的好等等諸如此類的報道屢見不鮮，但沒有壹篇是經過證實的。 大多數綠色食品有壹***同點，即它們的價格高於以常規方式種植的食物。 但在許多情況下，如果消費者認為綠色食品能預防疾病且營養價值高於以常規方式生產的食品，那麽他們被誤導了。如果消費者們，尤其是那些收入有限的消費者們，懷疑傳統食品而只購買更昂貴的綠色食品，那就值得擔憂了。
初壹英語美文篇3The Nobel Academy
For the last 82 years, Sweden's Nobel Academy has decided who will receive the Nobel Prize inLiterature, thereby determining who will be elevated from the great and the near great to theimmortal. But today the Academy is coming under heavy criticism both from the without andfrom within. Critics contend that the selection of the winners often has less to do with truewriting ability than with the peculiar internal politics of the Academy and of Sweden itself.According to Ingmar Bjorksten, the cultural editor for one of the country's two majornewspapers, the prize continues to represent "what people call a very Swedish exercise:reflecting Swedish tastes." The Academy has defended itself against such charges ofprovincialism in its selection by asserting that its physical distance from the great literarycapitals of the world actually serves to protect the Academy from outside influences. This maywell be true,but critics respond that this very distance may also be responsible for theAcademy's inability to perceive accurately authentic trends in the literary world. Regardlessof concerns over the selection process, however, it seems that the prize willcontinue to surviveboth as an indicator of the literature that we most highly praise, and as an elusive goal thatwriters seek. If for no other reason, the prize will continue to be desirable for the financialrewards that accompany it; not only is the cash prize itself considerable, but it alsodramatically increases sales of an author's books.
諾貝爾委員會
過去的 82 年裏，瑞典的諾貝爾委員會決定了誰將獲得諾貝爾文學獎，因此也就決定了誰將從偉大或近乎偉大榮升為不朽。 但在今天，該委員會卻遭到了評選委員會內外的猛烈批評。 批評者們爭論說："評選獲獎者時，起作用更大的不是真實的寫作能力，而是該委員會以及瑞典特有的內部政治。 按照瑞典兩家主要報紙之壹的文化版編輯 Ingmar Bjorksten 的說法，該文學獎仍然是"人們所說的壹種非常瑞典式的做為：反映瑞典口味"。對於其評選過程中目光短淺的指責，該委員會辯護說，該委員會與世界幾大文學之都相距遙遠，實際上使該委員會免受外來的幹擾。 這也許是對的，但批評者們反駁說，也正因為相距如此遙遠，該委員會才不能準確地把握文學界的真正趨勢。盡管對評選程序存在著關註，該文學獎將繼續作為世人最為推崇的文學的標誌而存在，並將繼續是作家們難以達到卻又會不斷追逐的目標。 如果不考慮其他因素，而僅僅考慮與之俱來的經濟利益，該獎也將繼續為人所渴求：這不僅因為該獎本身就是壹筆可觀的現金收入，而且該獎還將極大地增加壹個作家的著作的銷量。