2. 外语
  3. By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "icebox" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect t

By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "icebox" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect t

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问题     By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "icebox" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking  city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1860--1865), as ice was used to refrigerate fish in freight cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor (先驱) of the modem refrigerator, had been invented.
    Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might 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 notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping the ice in blankets, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the delicate balance of insulation and circulation needed for an efficient icebox.
    But as 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 of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs of his competitors to pay a premium price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.
According to the information in the second paragraph, an ideal icebox would______.
选项 A、completely prevent ice from melting
B、stop air from circulating
C、allow ice to melt slowly
D、use blankets to conserve ice
答案C
解析 题目问：理想的冰箱应是什么样的。可以和此题目对应的一句是：“The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of course mistaken，for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling．”值得注意的是，前半句说人们以前的常识是错的。因此A项是不对的。根据后半句“for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling”可知必须让冰慢慢溶化，才能起到冷却的作用，因此，正确答案是C项。
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