Tpo 30 integrated writing
A little over 2,200 years ago, the Roman navy attacked the Greek port city of Syracuse. According to some ancient historians, the Greeks defended themselves with an ingenious weapon called a "burning mirror": a polished copper surface curved to focus the Sun's rays onto Roman ships, causing them to catch fire. However, we have several reasons to suspect that the story of the burning mirror is just a myth and the Greeks of Syracuse never rally built such a device.
First, the ancient Greeks were not technologically advanced enough to make such a device. A mirror that would focus sunlight with sufficient intensity to set ships on fire would have to be several meters wide. Moreover, the mirror would have to have a very precise parabolic curvature(a curvature derived from a geometric shape known as the parabola). The technology for manufacturing a large sheet of copper with such specifications did not exist in the ancient world.
Second, the burning mirror would have taken a long time to set the ships on fire. In an experiment conducted to determine whether a burning mirror was feasible, a device concentrating the Sun's rays on a wooden object 30 meters away took ten minutes to set the object on fire: and during that time, the object had to be unmoving. It is unlikely that Roman ships stayed perfectly still for that much time, Such a weapon would therefore have been very impractical and ineffective.
Third, a burning mirror does not seem like an improvement on a weapon that the Greeks already had: flaming arrows. Shooting at an enemy's ships with flaming arrows was a common way of setting the ships on fire. The burning mirror and flaming arrows would have been effective at about the same distance. So the Greeks had no reason to build a weapon like a burning mirror.
The reading passage perceive that the story of burnig mirror is just myth and shows several reasons, while the lecturer holds a different point of view. In the reading, the author begins by stating that the technology they needed to build a mirror device was absent as the large sheet of copper was not developed on that time.It is mentioned that the design they need for this device is unlikely to be set up. The professor refutes this statement by contending that their argument is unconvincing as they had many math experts so they could have built on that shape.He claims that it was not a prodigious size. Secondly, the writer points out that , to focus on sun rays, it would take a long time around ten minutes. The article notes that the object could not move. The lecturer, however, rejects this challenge by mentioning that they could set up with a few minutes and for that they added others material. He believes that they used pitch to run fire towards their enemies. Finally, the text says that the enemies also used flaming arrows . So the greeks did not build a weapon like a burning mirror. The speaker, nonetheless disagree and says that they were also familiar with that weapon. He suggests that they looked at the mirror and ran fire
flaws:
Not in correct format.
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Attribute Value Ideal
Final score: 17 out of 30
Category: Satisfactory Excellent
No. of Grammatical Errors: 4 2
No. of Spelling Errors: 1 2
No. of Sentences: 11 12
No. of Words: 223 250
No. of Characters: 1008 1200
No. of Different Words: 130 150
Fourth Root of Number of Words: 3.864 4.2
Average Word Length: 4.52 4.6
Word Length SD: 2.172 2.4
No. of Words greater than 5 chars: 67 80
No. of Words greater than 6 chars: 43 60
No. of Words greater than 7 chars: 23 40
No. of Words greater than 8 chars: 12 20
Use of Passive Voice (%): 0 0
Avg. Sentence Length: 20.273 21.0
Sentence Length SD: 11.925 7.5
Use of Discourse Markers (%): 0.636 0.12
Sentence-Text Coherence: 0.341 0.35
Sentence-Para Coherence: 0.341 0.50
Sentence-Sentence Coherence: 0.096 0.07
Number of Paragraphs: 1 4