SECOND SENIORS DICTATIONS 9,10,11

Sharks            

           Sharks are amazing fish which have existed since long before the time of the dinosaurs. They live in waters all over the world, in every ocean, and even in some rivers and lakes. 

           Unlike bony fish, sharks have no bones; their skeleton is made of cartilage, which is a tough, fibrous substance, not nearly as hard as bone.

           Sharks may have up to 3,000 teeth at one time. Most sharks do not chew their food, but gulp it down whole in large pieces. The teeth are arranged in rows; when one tooth is damaged or lost, it is replaced by another. Most sharks have about five rows of teeth at any time.             
   

           Sharks are different from other fish.  They can only swim forwards, whereas other fish can also swim backwards. Sharks’ eggs are fertilized in the female’s body. Other fish fertilize their eggs in the water.  Sharks can range in size from eighteen cm long to fifteen metres long.

Jack the Ripper

 

            "Jack the Ripper!" Few names in history are as instantly recognizable. Fewer still evoke such vivid images: noisy courts and alleys, hansom cabs and gaslights, swirling fog, prostitutes decked out in the tawdriest of finery, the shrill cry of newsboys - and silent, cruel death personified in the cape-shrouded figure of a faceless prowler of the night, armed with a long knife and carrying a black Gladstone bag.

 

But by today's standards of crime, Jack the Ripper would barely make the headlines. Why is this symbol of terror as popular a subject today as he was in Victorian London?

            Because Jack the Ripper represents the classical whodunit. The case is an enduring unsolved mystery, which professionals and amateurs have tried to solve for over a hundred years. Between the months of August and November, 1888, the Whitechapel area of London was witness to a series of horrific murders, which remain unresolved to this day. He comes out from the fog, kills violently and quickly and disappears without a trace. The perfect ingredients for an everlasting thriller.

Earthquakes    

            An earthquake is what happens when two blocks of the earth suddenly slip past one another. The surface where they slip is called the fault. The location below the earth’s surface where the earthquake starts is called the hypocentre, and the location directly above it on the surface is called the epicentre.

 

            The earth shakes when there is an earthquake because of the movement of the tectonic plates which form a layer on the surface. These plates are like the pieces of a puzzle, and they keep moving around slowly all the time. The edges of the plates are called plate boundaries and these are made up of many faults . Most of the earthquakes around the world occur on these faults.

             To measure the intensity of earthquakes, scientists use an instrument called a seismograph, which records the movements on a strip of paper, called a seismogram. An international scale shows the magnitude of an earthquake.

The scale goes from 1 to 12, and Chile is the country which has had the strongest earthquake in the world.