Sport is very important in our life. It is popular among young and old people. Many people do morning exercises, jog in the morning, train themselves in clubs, in different sections and take part in sport competitions. Other people like sports too, but they only watch sports games, listen to sports news. They prefer reading interesting stories about sportsmen. But they don't go in for sports.
Physical training is an important subject at school. Pupils have got physical training lessons twice a week. Boys and girls play volley-ball and basket-ball at the lessons. There is a sportsground near our school and school-children go in for sports in the open air. A lot of different competitions are held at schools, a great number of pupils take part
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People all over the world are fond of sports and games. Sport keeps us fit, makes us healthy, more organized, better disciplined. It gives us a lot of pleasure, makes us stronger, and prolongs our life. But the great amount of people - both men and women don't realize the importance of sport in their life and keep ignoring them and continue (for instance) smoking and ruining their health and, finally, their lives.
Nowadays plenty of sport clubs and sections are organized in our city. All kinds of sports - tennis, badminton, track - and - field, figure skating, volleyball, basketball, football and many other are enjoyed people of all ages. During the last years shaping sections became very popular among women and girls. The effective occupati
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Sport holds an important place in our life. When we listen to the radio in the morning, we can always hear sport news. When we open a newspaper, we can always find information about some game or other or an article about our favourite kind of sports. Television programmes about sport are also very popular, and we can watch something interesting every day. Sport helps people to keep in good health. Sport also makes us more organized in our daily activities.
National game and sports competitions are popular in our country. People go in for many kinds of sports. There are sports grounds near every school, every institute, every factory and plant. Besides there are sports clubs and sport school in every town. Many people go there for training.
There are all kinds of racing in England - horse-racing, motor-car racing, boat-racing, dog-racing, and even races for donkeys. On sports days at school boys and girls run races, and even train for them. There is usually a mile race for older boys, and one who wins it is certainly a good runner. Usually those who run a race go as fast as possible, but there are some races in which everybody has to go very carefully in order to avoid falling.
The most famous boat-race in England is between Oxford and Cambridge. It is rowed over a course on the River Thames, and thousands of people go to watch it. The eight rowers in each boat have great struggle, and at the end there is usually only a short distance between the winners and the losers. The Univers
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London was host for the first time in 1908. With 1,500 competitors from 19 nations, the Games were by now an institution of worldwide significance. The programme, moreover, was augmented by the inclusion of Association football (which appeared in 1900 but only in a demonstration match), diving, field hockey, and ice hockey, as well as other sports since discontinued.
The most dramatic episode of these Games was in the marathon, run from Windsor to Shepherd's Bush in London, the site of a new stadium. Pietri (Italy) led into the arena but collapsed and was disqualified for accepting assistance from officials. The gold medal went to the second man home, Hayes (USA), but Queen Alexandra, who was present opposite the finishing line, was so moved
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The Olympic Games are one of the most spectacular reminders of the debt we owe to the Greeks. The original Olympic Games were held every four years in honour of Zeus, the supreme god of Greek religion. The first record of the games dates from 776 B.C., but it is certain that they existed prior to that. They were held continuously for over 1.000 years until they were abolished in the reign of King Theodosius about 392 A.D.
The Olympic festival was a great unifying bond between the Independent city-states of Greece. The important sports in the original Olympic Games were running, jumping, wrestling, throwing the discus and throwing the javelin. Only men competed and they wore no clothes in order to have greater freedom of movement. Each competitor
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The word’s greatest international sports games are known as the Olympic Games. They are held once every four years. The Olympic Games began in Olympia nearly 1,200 years ago in Olympia. They were for men only. In 1896 the first International Olympic Games were organized in Olympia. The Games opening ceremony is celebrated by lighting a flame called the “Olympic flame”. The Olympic motto is “Faster, Higher, Stronger”. The Olympic symbol is five interlocking circles colored blue, yellow, black, green and red.
In 1980 the Olympic Games were organized in our country in the Moscow. The first Winter Olympic Games were hold in France in the city Shamoni in 1924. Last Winter Olympic Games were hold in the USA in the Salt-La
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The world’s greatest international sports games are known as the Olympic Games. The Olympic Games have a very long history. They began in 777 BC in Greece and took place every four years for nearly twelve centuries at Olympia. They included many different kinds of sports: running, boxing, wrestling, long jumping, throwing of disks, chariot races, etc. All the cities in Greece sent their best athletes to Olympia to compete in the Games. All athletes took an oath that they had been preparing for the Games well, and promised to compete honestly and keep the rules of the sacred Olympics. The rules were very strict. Those that didn’t obey them were physically punished. The athletes took part in all kinds of competitions. Winners were called “olympionics”, they were awarded olive wreaths and cups of olive oil. This tradition has survived.
The history of Olympic games goes back to Ancient Greece. They began in 776 B.C. (that is more than 2700 years ago) and took place for about 1200 years every four year, at Olympia in Greece. It was a great athletic festival including many different kinds of sports: running, boxing, discus throwing, wrestling and others.
The Olympics were organized up to the year of 391. In 394 A.D. the Games stopped. Then fifteen hundred years later, in 1894, a Frenchman, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, managed to persuade people from fifteen countries to start the Olympic Games again. The International Olympic Commitee was set up in 1894, and the first of the modern series of Games took place in Athens two years later, in 1896. More than two thousands competitors fr
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In 1453 before Christ the first games were held in Olympia. Beginning with approximately 776 before Christ the games were organised every fourth year. These sports consisted of running, wrestling and other exercises. The favourite games of that time were horse-racing and jumping. The ancient winners got wreaths of palm leaves.
The modern Olympic Games began again in 1896. They take place every four years. They cannot take place in a country which is at war, and during the two world wars there were no Olympic Games. So except in 1916, 1940 and 1944, the Olympic Games have been held every leap year. Women's events started in 1912. Winter Olympic Games first took place in 1924.
Many kinds of sport originated from England. The English have a proverb, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". They do not think that play is more important than work; they think that Jack will do his work better if he plays as well, so he is encouraged to do both.
Association football, or soccer is one of the most popular games in the British Isles played from late August until the beginning of May. In summer the English national sport is cricket. When the English say: "that's not cricket" it means "that's not fair", "to play the game" means "to be fair". Golf is Scotland's chief contribution to British sport.
\All kinds of sports and games are cultivated in our country as well as in England, the USA and other countries of the world. Tennis, hockey, volley-ball and football have become very popular in Russia.
Football is my favourite sport. The term "football" is understood differently in the US and Britain. For a Britisher "football" is the same as what is known to be "футбол" in our country. For an American "football" means "rugby", while the game usually played here in Russia is known as "soccer".
Soccer is played by two teams, equal in number, each consisting of
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Sport is very important in our life. We meet it since the very first days of the life. When a mother puts her baby's arms left and right it is the first step to physical training. Then a child goes to a kindergarten and has lessons in physical training. Every child likes to play games. When you are faster and stronger than your friends you win. If you are a good sports lover you win often. So sport helps to breed up strong character.
Many children start to go in for sport at the age of 7, 8, 9. They like it very much. Later some of them become popular. So we can say that sport helps to achieve success in life. For example, Oxana Bayul from Dniepropetrovsk started to skate when she was three. When the girl was seven she won her first competit
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If you want to feel fit you’d better go in for one kind of sport or another. I should admit that everyone must do all he can to be healthy. Good health is better than the best medicine. "You have a sound mind in a sound body" as the old Latin saying goes. The English proverb "Sickness in the body brings sickness to the mind" expresses a similar idea but from different point of view.
All kinds of physical exercises are very useful to make our bodies strong and to keep ourselves fit and healthy. To tell the truth I don’t do sports regularly and it is not an essential part of my daily life. In the morning I do some exercises just to awake. Then some aerobics for myself. It puts me into the fine moods.
Basketball is an extremely popular all around the world. The object is to put a ball through a hoop, or basket, and thus score more points than the opposing team. Teams comprise of ten players, with a maximum of five on court at any one time. Substitutions are unlimited during the course of the game.
Although basketball can be played outdoors, it was invented to serve as an exciting indoor exercise for the winter months in a northern climate. It quickly became a spectator sport, however, and now attracts large audiences to gymnasiums and arenas, especially in the United States, South America, and Europe.
Nowadays our life is getting more and more tense. People live under the press of different problems, such as social, ecological, economic and others. They constantly suffer from stress, noise and dust in big cities, diseases and instability. A person should be strong and healthy in order to overcome all difficulties. To achieve this aim people ought to take care of their physical and mental health. There are several ways to do it.
The state of your body depends on how much time you spend doing sports. At least everybody must do morning exercises every day. The most healthy kinds of sports are swimming, running and cycling.
We often hear a saying "Dont invent a bicycle" about something simple and known fora long time.
Really, the bicycle is old enough - more than a hundred years of age. Its first prototype appeared in 1791 in France. In 1800 a Russian peasant Artamonov made an iron bicycle and travelled on it from Nizhni Tagil to Moscow.
First bicycles looked odd: a large (about 1.5 m high) front wheel with a cranked axle.
The back wheel was usually smaller. Bicycles were made of iron and riding them was not c
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Baseball is the most popular game in the US. It is played throughout the spring and summer by schools, colleges and professional teams.
Football is the most popular game in the autumn. There are professional football teams in all the main cities of the United States. In American football there are eleven players in each team, as in original football, but the rules are different. Players are often hurt in American football. So the teams wear special clothing and helmets as in hockey.
Basketball is a very popular game in the United States too. It is especially popular in high schools, both among boys and girls.
The second planet from the sun bakes under twice as much solar radiation as Earth and reaches temperatures of 895 degrees Fahrenheit (480 degrees Celsius).
Pressure from the dense atmosphere of sulfuric acid gas is about 95 times greater than Earth's and would crush a human. The thick cloud cover around Venus rotates much faster than the planet itself - once every four days.
The surface of Venus is mostly a rocky desert (this computer-generated view shows lava flows around Sif Mons). Like Mercury, Earth and Mars, Venus is composed of mostly rock and metal.
The seventh planet from the sun is much like its gaseous neighbors, with a cloudy surface, rapid winds, and a small rocky core. Uranus was thought to be a star until William Herschel discovered in 1781 that it orbited the Sun.
Perhaps because of a collision with a large object long ago, Uranus orbits at an extreme tilt of 98 degrees - sort of on its side. This causes one pole to point toward the sun for decades, giving the planet strange seasons.
Uranus has numerous satellites and a faint set of rings. If all the possible satellites being studied are confirmed, Uranus would have 16 regular and five irregular moons, making
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The big burning ball of gas that holds nine major planets in orbit is not unlike many stars in the universe. The Sun makes up 99.86 percent of the solar system's mass and provides the energy that both sustains and endangers us. Scientists have lately begun calling its tremendous outpouring of energy "space weather".
The Sun can be divided into three main layers: a core, a radiative zone, and a convective zone. The Sun's energy comes from thermonuclear reactions (converting hydrogen to helium) in the core, where the temperature is 15 to 25 million degrees. The energy radiates through the middle layer, then bubbles and boils to the surface in a process called convection. Charged particles, called the solar wind, stream out at a m
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When did man first begin to think of space travel?
Man began to think of space travel in the second century A. D. At that time a Greek, Lucian of Samos, wrote a fantastic story about a man who was carried to the Moon by a storm. In his second story about space, Lucian's hero flew to the Moon with a pair of wings which he had made himself.
But for the next 1400 years, in the years of the inquisition, people could not even think of travelling to the Moon.
About 300 years ago the famous Italian astr
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We, humans, live on the Earth. And our planet Earth is surrounded by space. The sky is what we see of space. There are billions of stars and probably billions of other planets moving through space. Our planet is moving through space too.
We live on the surface of our planet Earth. Gravity keeps us here on the Earth. Gravity is an invisible force that pulls things and people toward the center of the Earth. All the other planets, stars and moons have gravity too. Without gravity we would float away into space.
The Sun lights up the Earth. The Earth turns around each day. The half of the Earth turned away from the Sun is dark
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The third planet from the sun is, in scientific terms, quite similar to the first two. In fact, the four planets of the inner solar system (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars) all share rock and metal as their primary ingredients. Each of these so-called terrestrial planets has a solid surface, unlike the gaseous planets of the outer solar system.
Perhaps Earth's most distinguishing factor, at least from our point of view, is the presence of water, which contributed to the formation of life some 3,000 million years ago. Most of us ought also to be fond of Earth's unique atmosphere, rich in life-sustaining nitrogen and oxygen.
For thousands of years man dreamed of flying to the stars. At the beginning of the century the great Russian scientist Tsiolkovsky predicted that "mankind will not remain on Earth forever". Half a century later his words came true, the dream became a reality. It happened on October 4, 1957, when the 1st artificial satellite, the sputnik, was launched.
The Russians were the 1st in the world to fly into outer space. The most remarkable event in the history of cosmonautics took place on April 12, 1961, when the spaceship "Vostok", piloted by Yuri Gagarin went up. He orbited the Earth only once, staying in space for 108 minutes. Mankind will always remember him. A new era of man's exploration of outer space began.
Mankind always dreamed of overcoming gravitation and reaching other planets. But it was only in the 1960ies that this dream was to become reality.
On the 12th of April 1961 the spaceship "Vostok" was launched into space with a man on board and after orbiting our planet successfully returned to the Earth. The first man to overcome gravitation and orbit the Earth was Yuri Gagarin. This day went down in history of mankind as an outstanding achievement, opening the space era. In the course of space exploration there have been lots of achievements of world science and technology. This period saw the launching of many earth satellites, numerous space laboratories. Among the achievements we may enumerate the landing of automatic stations on t
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Much like its neighbor Jupiter, the sixth planet from the sun has a rocky core and a gaseous surface. But Saturn is chiefly known for its intricate series of rings that encircle it. The mile-thick rings are made of countless orbiting ice particles, from less than an inch to several feet in size. Up close, it's clear that Saturn has more rings than we can count. But though you can't see all of them from Earth, you can spot three of them with a good telescope.
The two outermost rings are separated by a dark band called the Cassini Division, named for the astronomer who discovered it in 1675. The Cassini division isn't empty, but it has less material in it. The middle ring is the brightest, and just inside it is a fuzzy one that can be
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On April 12 every year the Russian people celebrate Cosmonautics Day in commemoration of the first space flight in the world which was made by Russian citizen. Here are three main dates in the history of space exploration. October 4 in 1957 the Soviet Union sends the first sputnik in the world into space. April 12 in 1961 the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin goes into space and makes one orbit round the Earth in his spaceship Vostok-1. July 21 in 1969 the American astronauts Armstrong and Alidrin land on the Moon.
Since Yuri Gagarin’s flight, Russian space science and engineering have come a long way. According to space experts in the US and Europe Russian takes the lead in almost all space exploration. Russian has launched more than 2300 sp
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Pluto, which is only about two-thirds the size of our moon, is a cold, dark and frozen place. Relatively little is known about this tiny planet with the strange orbit. Its composition is presumed to be rock and ice, with a thin atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and methane. The Hubble Space Telescope has produced only fuzzy images of the distant object. Pluto's 248-year orbit is off-center in relation to the sun, which causes the planet to cross the orbital path of Neptune.
From 1979 until early 1999, Pluto had been the eighth planet from the sun. Then, on February 11, 1999, it crossed Neptune's path and once again became the solar system's most distant planet. It will remain the ninth planet for 228 years. Pluto's orbit is
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The eighth planet from the Sun - well, some of the time it's eighth, but more on that later - has a rocky core surrounded by ice, hydrogen, helium and methane. Like the other gas planets, Neptune has rapidly swirling winds, but it is thought to contain a deep ocean of water. Its quick rotation fuels fierce winds and myriad storm systems.
The planet has a faint set of rings and 8 known moons. Because of Pluto's strange orbit, Neptune is sometimes the most distant planet from the Sun.
Since 1979, Neptune was the ninth planet from the Sun. On February 11, 1999, it crossed Pluto's path and once again become the eig
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Though a satellite of Earth, the Moon is bigger than Pluto. Some scientists think of it as a planet (four other moons in our solar system are even bigger).
There are various theories about how the Moon was created, but recent evidence indicates it formed when a huge collision tore a chunk of the Earth away.
Because it takes 27.3 days both to rotate on its axis and to orbit Earth, the Moon always shows us the same face.
We see the Moon because of reflected sunlight. How much of it we see depends on it
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The innermost planet is rarely seen because of the Sun's glare. With less than half Earth's gravity, Mercury retains only a wisp of an atmosphere (presumed to be helium). The lack of a significant atmosphere allows temperatures to fluctuate from 750 degrees Fahrenheit during the day to minus 320 Fahrenheit at night.
Like the other terrestrial planets - Venus, Earth and Mars - Mercury is made mostly of rock and metal. This small world is scarred by craters and looks somewhat like our Moon.
Mercury has been known since ancient times: the name Hermes, given by the Greeks, later translated to Mercurius by the Romans.
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The fourth planet from the sun has always captivated our imagination, and while scientists haven't proven there's any life, not even the microscopic variety, the dusty red planet still commands our attention (and a lot of space missions).
The surface of Mars is more interesting than most planets. Like Mercury, Venus and Earth, Mars is mostly rock and metal. Mountains and craters scar the rugged terrain. The dust, an iron oxide, gives the planet its reddish cast. A thin atmosphere and an elliptical orbit combine to create temperature fluctuations ranging from minus 207 degrees Fahrenheit to a comfortable 80 degrees Fahrenheit on summer days (if you are at the equator). Researchers have recently monitored huge storms swirling on Mars. The
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Jupiter was believed by Mesopotamians to be a wandering star placed in the heavens by a god to watch over the night sky.
The fifth planet from the sun is a huge ball of gas so massive it could hold all the other planets put together. What we can see of the planet are bands of the highest clouds in a thick atmosphere of hydrogen and helium. Traces of other gases produce the bright bands of color.
Jupiter's most familiar feature is swirling mass of clouds that are higher and cooler than surrounding ones. Called the Great Red Spot, it has been likened to a great hurricane and is caused by tremendous winds that develop abo
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Made of dust, ice, carbon dioxide, ammonia and methane, comets resemble dirty snowballs. You may remember them as blurry smudges in the sky. Comets orbit the Sun, but most are believed to inhabit in an area known as the Ort Cloud, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Occasionally a comet streaks through the inner solar system; some do so regularly, some only once every few centuries.
As a comet nears the Sun, its icy core boils off, forming a cloud of dust and gas called a head, or coma. Comets become visible when sunlight reflects off this cloud. As the comet gets closer to the sun, more gas is produced. The gas and dust is pushed away by charged particles known as the solar wind, forming two tails. Dust particles form a yellowish tail, and ionized g
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Quick quiz: how many planets orbit our Sun? If you said nine, you're shy by several thousand. Scientists consider asteroids to be minor planets - some are hundreds of miles wide (and seldom round).
The vast majority of asteroids are small, compared with a large one like Ida, this 32-mile-long chunk of stone and iron that was photographed in 1993 by the Galileo spacecraft. Though we normally think of asteroids as crater-makers, they are typically pockmarked with their own impact craters.
Scientists divide asteroids into two groups, based on how they appear in infrared images: light and dark. The lightest-looking asteroi
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