Source question 20. 4 GO ON TO THE NEXT PAGE. ACT-G20 1 1 After four years in the NBA, she noticed that people no longer talked about her gender, she was simply a referee. Although other women have become NBA referees after Palmer, she doesn’t see herself as a pioneer. Even so, she didn’t initially seek a career in the NBA, but when the opportunity came, she embraced it. She says, “If you give me a challenge, I’m going to take it.” PASSAGE II Schiphol Airport’s Sound Solution [1] Each day, more than 1,600 flights go through Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport ranks as Europe’s fourth busiest. Unfortunately, such a volume of takeoffs and landings causes volume of a different sort: noise. [A] In the early 2000s, as Schiphol grew ever busier, nearby residents increasingly complained about the noise. The roaring of jets was worst in the Hoofddorp Noord neighborhood. [2] Pledging to curtail the noise, the airport administration hired acoustic scientists to research the problem. As the scientists worked, the seasons changed after farmers plowed many of the fields near the airport. Researchers noticed that the noise, reaching the airport’s neighbors: had suddenly decreased. [B] The plowed fields, with their dirt ridges and furrows, somehow diminished the noise. 16 17 18 19 20 14 15 www.actexam.net www.crackab.com [3] The researchers set out to replicate the sound- dampening qualities of plowed fields. They tested miniature landform shapes in the lab and full-size versions outside, analyzing how sound waves interacted with various shapes. [C] They also brought in landscape artist Paul de Kort, to add visual appeal to the design. [4] The installed design, called Buitenschot Land Park and finished in 2013, are consisted of 150 earthen ridges on eighty acres of land adjacent to the airport. The long, straight, grass-covered ridges stand ten feet tall and run parallel to each other. Groups of these parallel ridges are offset at various angles, which gives the project a warped-checkerboard look. De Kort incorporated paths, playing fields, and art pieces among the ridges—making the strange landscape into a park. In other words, when sound from the airport encounters the ridges, much of it is deflected skyward, halving the noise that reaches the neighbors.
