Unit 2a Book

Unit 2a deals with a topic which is crucial for technological development in any industry: materials. The main material discussed is plastic, which seems to be everywhere around us. On one hand, plastic has lots of applications, making our lives easier in many fields, but on the other hand, microplastics have become a burning problem that will be very difficult to solve. Most plastics are made of crude oil, so perhaps one day, after all deposits of oil are depleted, plastics will have to be replaced with another material. The authors of your coursebook, however, do not seem to expect this scenario happening very soon and rather predict even more vast application in plastics in areas plastics have never been used before.

Unit 2a will give you a chance to give your opinion on this topic. It will be interesting to see whether you support the view of the authors of the coursebook, or rather believe that plastics will be replaced by some other materials. In any case, plastic is not the only material that can be replaced in the near future. There is another material that seem to reach their technological limits: silicon. Used to manufacture semiconductors, this material plays a major part in electrical engineering and information technologies. In the specialist section of this Unit, you will have an opportunity to read about promising future materials that are likely to replace silicon.

Contents:

• Materials and their properties:

Glass is transparent, sometimes only translucent and fragile. It is used for making glasses and window panes.

• Speculating about the future and expressing the level of certainty using adjectives and adverbs:

It´s possible that they will make a plastic wing one day.

They will possibly make a plastic wing one day.