The bridge that swayed IELTS Reading – Đáp án cùng giải thích

Bài đọc ‘The bridge that swayed‘ mang đến nhiều thông tin thú vị về kỹ thuật xây dựng và tâm lý đám đông. Để giúp bạn dễ dàng vượt qua bài thi thực tế, IKES đã tổng hợp lại toàn bộ đề bài cùng lời giải chi tiết. Hãy cùng khám phá ngay dưới đây nhé!

→ Kiểm tra trình độ IELTS tại IKES để xây dựng lộ trình cá nhân hóa hướng tới 6.5+.

1. Đề bài và đáp án chi tiết The bridge that swayed IELTS Reading

Đề bài

The bridge that swayed

1. When the London Millennium footbridge was opened in June 2000, it swayed alarmingly. This generated huge public interest and the bridge became known as London’s “wobbly bridge.”
2. The Millennium Bridge is the first new bridge across the river Thames in London since Tower Bridge opened in 1894, and it is the first ever designed for pedestrians only. The bridge links the City of London near St Paul’s Cathedral with the Tate Modern art gallery on Bankside.
3. The bridge opened initially on Saturday 10th June 2000. For the opening ceremony, a crowd of over 1,000 people had assembled on the south half of the bridge with a band in front. When they started to walk across with the band playing, there was immediately an unexpectedly pronounced lateral movement of the bridge deck. “It was a fine day and the bridge was on the route of a major charity walk,” one of the pedestrians recounted what he saw that day. “At first, it was still. Then if began to sway sideways, just slightly. Then, almost from one moment to the next, when large groups of people were crossing, the wobble intensified. Everyone had to stop walking to retain balance and sometimes to hold onto the hand rails for support.”
4. Immediately it was decided to limit the number of people on the bridge, and the bridge was dubbed the ‘wobbly’ bridge by the media who declared it another high- profile British Millennium Project failure. In older to fully investigate and resolve the issue the decision was taken to close the bridge on 12th June 2000.
5. Arup, the leading member of the committee in charge of the construction of the bridge, decided to tackle the issue head on. They immediately undertook a fast-track research project to seek the cause and the cure. The embarrassed engineers found the videotape that day which showed the center span swaying about 3 inches sideways every second and the south span 2 inches every 1.25 seconds. Because there was a significant wind blowing on the opening days (force 3-4) and the bridge had been decorated with large flags, the engineers first thought that winds might be exerting excessive force on the many large flags and banners, but it was rapidly concluded that wind buffeting had not contributed significantly to vibration of the bridge. But after measurements were made in university laboratories of the effects of people? walking on swaying platforms and after large-scale experiments with crowds of pedestrians were conducted on the bridge itself, a new understanding and a new theory were developed.
6. The unexpected motion was the result of a natural human reaction to small lateral movements. It is well known that a suspension bridge has tendency to sway when troops march over it in lockstep, which is why troops are required to break step when crossing such a bridge. “If we walk on a swaying surface we tend to compensate and stabilize ourselves by spreading our legs further apart but this increases the lateral push”. Pat Dallard, the engineer at Arup, says that you change the way you walk to match what the bridge is doing. It is an unconscious tendency for pedestrians to match their footsteps to the sway, thereby exacerbating it even more. “It’s rather like walking on a rolling ship deck you move one way and then the other to compensate for the roll.” The way people walk doesn’t have to match exactly the natural frequency of the bridge as in resonance the interaction is more subtle. As the bridge moves, people adjust the way they walk in their own manner. The problem is that when there are enough people on the bridge the total sideways push can overcome the bridge’s ability to absorb it. The movement becomes excessive and continues to increase until people begin to have difficulty in walking – they may even have to hold on to the rails.
7. Professor Fujino Yozo of Tokyo University, who studied the earth-resistant Toda Bridge in Japan, believes the horizontal forces caused by walking, running or jumping could also in turn cause excessive dynamic vibration in the lateral direction in the bridge. He explains that as the structure began moving, pedestrians adjusted their gait to the same lateral rhythm as the bridge; the adjusted footsteps magnified the motion just like when four people all stand up in small boat at the same time. As more pedestrians locked into the same rhythm, the increasing oscillation led to the dramatic swaying captured on film until people stopped walking altogether, because they could not even keep upright.
8. In order to design a method of reducing the movements, an immediate research program was launched by the bridge’s engineering designer Arup. It was decided that the force exerted by the pedestrians had to be quantified and related to the motion of the bridge. Although there are some descriptions of this phenomenon in existing literature, none of these actually quantifies the force. So there was no quantitative analytical way to design the bridge against this effect. The efforts to solve the problem quickly got supported by a number of universities and research organizations.
9. The tests at the University of Southampton involved a person walking on the spot on a small shake table. The tests at Imperial College involved persons walking along a specially built, 7.2m-long platform, which could be driven laterally at different frequencies and amplitudes. These tests have their own limitations. While the Imperial College test platform was too short that only seven or eight steps could be measured at one time, the “walking on the spot” test did not accurately replicate forward walking, although many footsteps could be observed using this method. Neither test could investigate any influence of other people in a crowd on the behavior of the individual tested.
10. The results of the laboratory tests provided information which enabled the initial design of a retrofit to be progressed. However, unless the usage of the bridge was to be greatly restricted, only two generic options to improve its performance were considered feasible. The first was to increase the stiffness of the bridge to move all its lateral natural frequencies out of the range that could be excited by the lateral footfall forces, and the second was to increase the damping of the bridge to reduce the resonant response.

Danh sách câu hỏi

Questions 14 – 17

Which FOUR of the following could be seen on the day when the bridge opened to the public?

1. The bridge moved vertically
2. The bridge swayed from side to side
3. The bridge swayed violently throughout the opening ceremony
4. It was hard to keep balance on the bridge
5. Pedestrians walked in synchronized steps
6. Pedestrians lengthened their footsteps
7. A music band marched across the bridge
8. The swaying rhythm varied to the portions of the bridge
9. The swaying rhythm varied to the portions of the bridge (Lưu ý: Tùy chọn I bị trùng lặp với H trong đề bài gốc)

Questions 18 – 23

Complete the summary below. Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer

To understand why the Millennium Bridge swayed, engineers of Arup studied the videotape taken on the day of the opening ceremony. In the beginning they thought the forces of 18 ________ might have caused the movement because there were many flags and banners on the bridge that day. But quickly new understandings arose after series of tests were conducted on how people walk on 19 ________ floors. The tests showed people would place their leg 20 ________ to keep balance when the floor is shaking. Pat Dallard even believes pedestrians may unknowingly adjust their 21 ________ to match the sway of the bridge. Professor Fujino Yozo’s study found that the vibration of a bridge could be caused by the 22 ________ of people walking, running and jumping on it because the lateral rhythm of the sway could make pedestrians adjust their walk and reach the same step until it is impossible to stand 23 ________.

Questions 24 – 26

Complete the table below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from passage for each answer

Bảng tổng hợp đáp án

1. Bảng đáp án tất cả các câu

(Ghi chú: Với câu 14-17 thứ tự các đáp án B, D, E, H có thể hoán đổi cho nhau)

2. Giải thích chi tiết

Questions 14 – 17: Multiple Choice (Choose 4)

Question 14

• Đáp án: B
• Vị trí: Đoạn C, câu 3 và câu 6

Question 15

• Đáp án: D
• Vị trí: Đoạn C, câu 8

Question 16

• Đáp án: E
• Vị trí: Đoạn G, câu 3

Question 17

• Đáp án: H
• Vị trí: Đoạn E, câu 3

Questions 18 – 23: Summary Completion

Question 18

• Đáp án: winds / wind
• Vị trí: Đoạn E, câu 4

Question 19

• Đáp án: swaying
• Vị trí: Đoạn E, câu 5

Question 20

• Đáp án: further apart
• Vị trí: Đoạn F, câu 3

Question 21

• Đáp án: footsteps
• Vị trí: Đoạn F, câu 5

Question 22

• Đáp án: horizontal forces
• Vị trí: Đoạn G, câu 1

Question 23

• Đáp án: upright
• Vị trí: Đoạn G, câu 3

Questions 24 – 26: Table Completion

Question 24 & 25

• Đáp án: Imperial College
• Vị trí: Đoạn I, câu 4

Question 26

• Đáp án: University of Southampton
• Vị trí: Đoạn I, câu 4

2. Bảng tổng hợp từ vựng bài đọc The bridge that swayed IELTS Reading

3. Luyện thi IELTS Reading hiệu quả cùng IKES

Nếu bạn luôn gặp khó khăn với các bài thi đánh giá học thuật mang tính chuyên môn cao, IELTS IKES chính là bến đỗ lý tưởng để giải quyết các rào cản từ vựng hay lập luận.

• Mô hình 5 KÈM 1 và phương pháp MTC độc quyền: Các giảng viên, Mentor cùng Trợ giảng sẽ đồng hành sâu sát, kịp thời uốn nắn mọi lỗ hổng trong kỹ năng Reading của bạn. Phương pháp MTC giúp người học xây dựng tư duy phản biện, nắm bắt mạch logic của cả những bài luận tiếng Anh phức tạp nhất.
• Lộ trình cá nhân hóa và cam kết đầu ra 6.5+: Không học dàn trải, IKES thiết kế một lộ trình riêng đáp ứng đúng năng lực nền của mỗi cá nhân, cam kết hiệu quả bằng văn bản minh bạch, rõ ràng.
• Nền tảng tương tác đỉnh cao: Môi trường học Online thân thiện giúp tối ưu hóa thời gian luyện tập tại nhà, giải tỏa tối đa áp lực trước kì thi thật.

Hy vọng bài giải chi tiết này giúp bạn nắm vững đáp án và hiểu sâu hơn nội dung bài đọc “The bridge that swayed”. Nếu bạn cần người đồng hành để rút ngắn lộ trình ôn luyện IELTS, hãy nhắn tin cho IKES ngay. Với Mô hình 5 KÈM 1, phương pháp MTC độc quyền và Cam kết đầu ra 6.5+, IKES tự tin giúp bạn đạt mục tiêu!

>>>> Luyện tập thêm bài IELTS Reading nâng cao kỹ năng:

• The Concept of Childhood in Western Countries – Đáp Án
• The connection between culture and thought IELTS Reading
• The Construction of Roads and Bridges – Đáp Án IELTS