(IME - 2021/2022 - 2ª fase)
Considere o texto a seguir e escolha a alternativa que completa a lacuna (23)
THE PROMISE OF MR TRASH WHEEL
Carolyn Kormann
John Kellett, the former director of Baltimore’s Maritime Museum, used to cross a footbridge over Jones Falls, the largest tributary (21) into Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, every day on his way to work. “When it rained, there was a river of trash flowing down,” he told me. He (22) twenty years working on the harbor, primarily in environmental education and shipbuilding, and had a deep knowledge of its hydrodynamics and history. City officials, he told me, “said they were open to ideas, so I started sketching.” He drew plans for a machine powered by an (23) water wheel—a technology that (24) a staple throughout the city—designed to intercept trash at the mouth of Jones Falls, which is the main (25) of harbor pollution. A prototype was installed in 2008. By 2014, Kellett’s invention was reborn as Mr. Trash Wheel—a fifty-foot-long machine, weighing nearly a hundred thousand pounds, which resembles a friendly mollusk, with giant, (26) eyes and its own Twitter account.
Years later, Mr. Trash Wheel has spawned three replicas around Baltimore—Professor Trash Wheel, Captain Trash Wheel, and another that was announced last week but has yet to be named or installed in the water. Three local beers are named in their honor, and the city has both a trash-wheel (27) festival and a society dedicated to promoting environmental awareness known as the Order of the Wheel. As plastic pollution in the world’s oceans has become a growing crisis, the trash wheels have gained an international following. “Over the last few years, I’ve been getting calls and e-mails from all over the world,” Kellett said. A Japanese film (28) visited last week. “I’m still kind of in shock about how much attention it has garnered,” he went on. “Never in my wildest dreams would I ever have thought that this idea I sketched on a napkin would lead to all this.”
Adapted from: The New Yorker in https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-promise-of-mr-trash-wheel [Accessed on 7th April 2021]
old-fashioned
out of order
blacksmith
earthward
age-barred
Gabarito:
old-fashioned
a) CORRETA, uma vez que, considerando o sentido do trecho e também já pensando na lacuna 24, podemos perceber que aqui se trata de algo mais antigo, uma water wheel, um mecanismo utilizado há muito tempo em fazendas para coletar água de maneira rústica. Então podemos colocar o termo “old-fashioned” nessa lacuna tranquilamente.
b) INCORRETA, pois aqui não se trata de algo “out of order”, ou seja, “fora de serviço”, mas sim de uma tecnologia que foi substituída por outras, não que deixou de ser empregada pois parou de funcionar.
c) INCORRETA, visto que “blacksmith” é um termo que indica “ferreiro”, o que até tem relação com “water wheel”, porém não é algo que faz tanto sentido assim pois desde a revolução industrial a produção de artefatos de ferro não exige a presença ou a expertise de um ferreiro em si martelando a roda d’água.
d) INCORRETA, dado que “earthward” indica “em direção à terra”, o que não faz sentido considerando que é uma roda d’água.
e) INCORRETA, já que aqui não estamos falando de uma roda d’água consumida pela idade, mas sim de um mecanismo que inspirou o desenvolvimento da tecnologia criada por John.