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using  relative  dating  techniques.  The  Precambrian  accounts  for  more  than  88
                  percent of geologic time.

                         Task 9.  Put 5 different questions (general, special, alternative, disjunctive
                  and to the subject of the sentence) to the following sentences:

                    1. Physical geology examines the materials composing Earth and seeks to understand
                       the many processes that operate beneath and upon its surface.
                    2. Geology is perceived as a science that is done in the out of doors.
                    3. Geology is a science that seeks to expand our knowledge of the natural world and
                       our place in it.

                         Task  10.  Read  the  following  text,  translate  it  into  Ukrainian.  Render  its
                  main ideas according to the following plan:
                             1. Historical notes about geology.
                             2. Catastrophism.
                             3. The birth of modern geology.
                             4. Geology today.
                         The nature of our Earth—its materials and  its processes—has been a focus of
                  study for centuries. Writings about fossils, gems, earthquakes, and volcanoes date back
                  to  the  Greeks,  more  than  2300  years  ago.  Certainly,  the  most  influential  Greek
                  philosopher was Aristotle. Unfortunately,
                         Aristotle’s  explanations  about  the  natural  world  were  not  derived  from  keen
                  observations  and  experiments,  as  is  modern  science.  Instead,  they  were  arbitrary
                  pronouncements  based  on  the  limited  knowledge  of  his  day.  He  believed  that  rocks
                  were created under the “influence” of the stars and that earthquakes occurred when air
                  in the ground was heated by central  fires and escaped explosively!  When confronted
                  with a fossil fish, he explained that “a great many fishes live in the earth motionless and
                  are  found  when  excavations  are  made.”  Although  Aristotle’s  explanations  may  have
                  been  adequate  for  his  day,  they  unfortunately  continued  to  be  expounded  for  many
                  centuries, thus thwarting the acceptance of more up-to-date ideas.
                         In the mid-1600s James Ussher, Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of all
                  Ireland,  published  a  major  work  that  had  immediate  and  profound  influences.  A
                  respected scholar of the Bible, Ussher  constructed a chronology of  human and  Earth
                  history in which he determined that Earth was only a few thousand years old, having
                  been  created  in  4004  BC.  Ussher’s  treatise  earned  widespread  acceptance  among
                  Europe’s scientific and religious  leaders, and his chronology was soon  printed in the
                  margins of the Bible itself. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the doctrine
                  of  catastrophism  strongly  influenced  people’s  thinking  about  Earth.  Briefly  stated,
                  catastrophists  believed  that  Earth’s  landscapes  had  been  shaped  primarily  by  great
                  catastrophes. Features such as mountains and canyons, which today we know take great
                  periods of time to form, were explained as having been produced by sudden and often
                  worldwide
                  disasters produced by unknown causes that no longer operate. This philosophy was an
                  attempt to fit the rates of Earth processes to the then current ideas on the age of Earth.
                         Against this backdrop of Aristotle’s views and an Earth created in 4004BC, a
                  Scottish physician and gentleman farmer named James Hutton published Theory of the
                  Earth in 1795. In this work Hutton put forth a fundamental principle that is a pillar of
                  geology today: uniformitarianism. It states that the physical, chemical, and biological
                  laws that operate today also operated in the geologic past. In other words, the forces and
                  processes that we observe shaping our planet today have been at work for a very long



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