IELTS Mini-Readings, 23 of 25: Can You Guess What This Is?

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[You Guess What This Is About]

Let’s think about dihydrogen oxide. This material can often kill you, or hurt you badly (depending on what people have done to it previously), but it is absolutely necessary to keep the human body going. This material can combine with other material to make something very nasty which, if thrown into your face, will burn you horribly. If you have enough of this material together in one place, and make it move a lot, it can cause huge problems, destroying buildings and killing thousands of people. It does this everywhere, all over the world, every year.

This material has no taste, yet people love the taste. It has no form – that is, it is formless – yet people love watching it and the way it acts. This material is so ordinary, yet people travel thousands of miles (and spend thousands of dollars) just to be beside it. Every year, tens of thousands of people die in it, yet millions of people are always eager to be immersed in it.

This material comes in three main states, but we mostly want it and like it and absolutely depend on it in just one of those states. Without this material, the human body quickly breaks down and goes into crisis. Take this material completely away and within a few days, people’s lips will crack and shrink and all but disappear. The nose will do the same, the body will weaken, and a painful death soon follows.

Yet, despite the body’s desperate need for this material, the overwhelming majority of it on earth is deadly poisonous, and if it is put into the human body, seizures, unconsciousness, brain damage, and death will quickly follow.

So, what material am I referring to? The next post will confirm your guess.

Question Time

What is the chemical name for this material? ……………………..……………

How far will people travel to be beside this material? …….……………..………

Without this material, how many days can we live? ……………………….……….…….

What proportion of this material is poisonous to people?  ………………………………

Word-Learning Time

Do you know the meaning of the underlined words?

To be nasty

To immerse

A state

A crisis

A seizure

By the way, you can find out more about me at www.aisielts.com .