Flawed Beauty: The Problem with Toughened Glass - IELTS Reading Answers With Explanations

The IELTS Reading passage, ‘Flawed Beauty: The Problem with Toughened Glass’ is a previously asked question in an IELTS test.

By solving these kinds of Sample Reading questions from past IELTS test papers, you can easily know the ways to approach and answer the different types of questions in the test!

So why wait? Let us take this IELTS reading passage on the topic, ‘Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass given below, now! 

The types of questions found in this passage are:

• IELTS Reading Matching Headings  
• IELTS Reading Yes/No/Not Given 
• IELTS Reading Matching Features 

Reading Passage - Flawed Beauty: The Problem with Toughened Glass

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on the Reading Passage below.

On 2nd August 1999, a particularly hot day in the town of Cirencester in the UK, a large pane of toughened glass in the roof of a shopping centre at Bishops Walk shattered without warning and fell from its frame.

When fragments were analysed by experts at the giant glass manufacturer Pilkington. which had made the pane, they found that minute crystals of nickel sulphide trapped inside the glass had almost certainly caused the failure.

'The glass industry is aware of the issue,' says Brian Waldron, chairman of the standards committee at tine Glass and Glazing Federation, a British trade association, and standards development officer at Pilkington. But he insists that cases are few and far between. ‘It's a very rare phenomenon.' he says.

Others disagree. 'On average I see about one or two buildings a month suffering from nickel sulphide related failures,' says Barrie Josie, a consultant engineer involved in the Bishops Walk investigation. Other experts tell of similar experiences. Tony Wilmott of London based consulting engineers Sandberg, and Simon Armstrong at CladTech Associates in Hampshire both say they know of hundreds of cases. 'What you hear is only the tip of the iceberg.' says Trevor Ford, a glass expert at Resolve Engineering in Brisbane. Queensland. He believes the reason is simple: 'No-one wants bad press.'

Toughened glass is found everywhere, from cars and bus shelters to the windows, walls and roofs of thousands of buildings around the world. It's easy to see why. This glass has five times the strength of standard glass, and when it does break it shatters into tiny cubes rather than large, razor-sharp shards. Architects love it because large panels can be bolted together to make transparent walls, and turning it into ceilings and floors is almost as easy.

It is made by heating a sheet of ordinary glass to about 620°C to soften it slightly, allowing its structure to expand, and then cooling it rapidly with jets of cold air. This causes the outer layer of the pane to contract and solidify before the interior. When the interior finally solidifies and shrinks, it exerts a pull on the outer layer that leaves It in permanent compression and produces a tensile force inside the glass. As cracks propagate best in materials under tension, the compressive force on the surface must be overcome before the pane will break, making it more resistant to cracking.

The problem starts when glass contains nickel sulphide impurities. Trace amounts of nickel and sulphur are usually present in the raw materials used to make glass, and nickel can also be introduced by fragments of nickel alloys falling into the molten glass. As the glass is heated, these atoms react to form tiny crystals of nickel sulphide. Just a tenth of a gram of nickel in the furnace can create up to 50,000 crystals.

These crystals can exist in two forms: a dense form called the alpha phase, which is stable at high temperatures, and a less dense form called the beta phase, which is stable at room temperatures. The high temperatures used in the toughening process convert all the crystals to the dense, compact alpha form. But the subsequent cooling is so rapid that the crystals don't have time to change back to the beta phase. This leaves unstable alpha crystals in the glass, primed like a coiled spring, ready to revert to the beta phase without warning.

When this happens, the crystals expand by up to 4%. And if they are within the central, tensile region of the pane, the stresses this unleashes can shatter the whole sheet. The time that elapses before failure occurs is unpredictable. It could happen just months after manufacture, or decades later, although if the glass is heated - by sunlight, for example - the process is speeded up. Ironically, says Graham Dodd, of consulting engineers Arup in London, the oldest pane of toughened glass known to have failed due to nickel sulphide inclusions was in Pilkington's glass research building in Lathom, Lancashire. The pane was 27 years old.

Data showing the scale of the nickel sulphide problem Is almost Impossible to find. The picture is made more complicated by the fact that these crystals occur in batches. So even if, on average, there is only one inclusion in 7 tonnes of glass, if you experience one nickel sulphide failure in your building, that probably means you've got a problem in more than one pane. Josie says that in the last decade he has worked on over 15 buildings with the number of failures into double figures.

One of the worst examples of this is Waterfront Place, which was completed in 1990. Over the following decade the 40- storey Brisbane block suffered a rash of failures. Eighty panes of its toughened glass shattered due to inclusions before experts were finally called in. John Barry, an expert in nickel sulphide contamination at the University of Queensland, analysed every glass pane in the building. Using a studio camera, a photographer went up in a cradle to take photos of every pane. These were scanned under a modified microfiche reader for signs of nickel sulphide crystals. ‘We discovered at least another 120 panes with potentially dangerous inclusions which were then replaced,’ says Barry. ‘It was a very expensive and time consuming process that took around six months to complete.'

Though the project cost A$1.6 million (nearly £700,000), the alternative - re-cladding the entire building - would have cost ten times as much.

Questions

Questions 1-3

• Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-C.
• Choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below.

List of Headings

i The expansion of international tourism in recent years

ii How local communities can balance their own needs with the demands of wilderness tourism ili Fragile regions and the reasons for the expansion of tourism there

iv Traditional methods of food-supply in fragile regions

v Some of the disruptive effects of wilderness tourism

vi The economic benefits of mass tourism

1 Section A

2 Section B

3 Section C

Questions 4-9

Do the following statements reflect the claims of the writer in Reading Passage l?

In boxes 4-9 on your answer sheet, write

• YES if the statement reflects the claims of the writer
• NO if the statement contradicts the claims of the writer
• NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this.

4 The low financial cost of setting up wilderness tourism makes it attractive to many countries.

5 Deserts, mountains and Arctic regions are examples of environments that are both ecologically and culturally fragile.

6 Wilderness tourism operates throughout the year in fragile areas.

7 The spread of tourism in certain hill regions has resulted in a fall in the amount of food produced locally.

Questions 10-13

Choose ONE WORD from Reading Passage 1 for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 10-13

on your answer sheet.

The positive ways in which some local communities have responded to tourism

People/ Location          Activity

Swiss Pays d'Enhaut.     revived production of (10)…….

Arctic communities.     operate (11)…….. businesses

Acoma and San

Ildefonso.                      produce and sell (12)……..

Navajo and Hopi

Activity                         produce and sell (13).………

Answers to the IELTS Reading ‘Flawed Beauty: the Problem with Toughened Glass’ Along With Location

Tips for Answering the Question Types in the ‘Flawed Beauty: The Problem with Toughened Glass’” IELTS Reading Passage

Let us get started with the IELTS exam preparation tips for each question type. It’ll help you understand how to approach the problem of each question type in this “Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass” reading passage! 

Matching Headings

In the Matching Headings Question, a list of headings will be given and you must try and match these headings with a paragraph in the passage. 

• Skim through the headings and the text to get a general idea of what each section is about. Each heading represents the main idea of a paragraph or section, so understanding this will help you match them more effectively.
• Focus on the first and last sentences of each paragraph. They often contain the main idea or summary of the paragraph, which can help you identify the correct heading.
• Pay attention to keywords or phrases in the heading and find them or related synonyms in the paragraph. Matching these can guide you to the right heading.
• Don’t get bogged down by details. The heading will usually summarize the overall idea of the paragraph, not the specifics. Focus on the broader theme or concept.
• If you’re unsure, eliminate headings that clearly don’t fit the section. This can narrow down your choices and increase your chances of selecting the correct heading.

Yes/No/Not Given Questions

Just like the IELTS Reading True/False/Not given questions, this question type also has various statements. But here you are asked to agree or disagree with the statement based on the opinion of the author.

• Determine if the statement matches the passage (“Yes”), contradicts it (“No”), or if there’s insufficient information (“Not Given”).
• Scan the passage for keywords related to the statement using the IELTS Reading keyword techniques to locate relevant information.
• Ensure the statement aligns exactly with the passage for “Yes” or directly contradicts it for “No.”
• Words like “always” or “never” can alter the meaning and impact your answer.
• Choose “Not Given” if the passage doesn’t provide enough information to confirm or refute the statement.

Matching Features

In this type of question, you will have to match a list of options with the relevant set of statements. Some tips to answer matching features questions and obtain a high IELTS Reading band score: 

• Read questions and underline or circle keywords. This will help you find out where you would have to read and find later.
• Also, focus on how often every detail or name appears in the passage.
• Scan the passage and look for the information given in the features and questions.
• Skim through the areas that are surrounded by keywords and features in the passage.
• Don’t get confused in case the text has synonyms of the information that is originally present in the question.
• Keep in mind that answers will not be in an order as questions. 

Cheers for solving the “Flawed Beauty: the problem with toughened glass” IELTS Reading passage! Now, to do even better in your reading section, also try solving the recent IELTS Reading Passages!

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