设计师建造球形的屋顶可不仅是为了美观，节约我们地球上有限的资源也是这样做的重要目的之一。下面的新托福考试阅读练习资料就来说说球形屋顶的奥秘之处。

Ever heard of a man named Buckminster Fuller, or Bucky, as his friends called him? R. Buckminster Fuller was a twentieth century scientist, philosopher, inventor, and was also named a great architect.

Part of what made Bucky so special was his concern for the planet and humanity. When you have a shortage of resources, he said, you get war. Thus, he developed an idea called Comprehensive Anticipatory Design Science. It’s a mouthful, but what it entails is his belief that to solve humanity’s major problems, we have to look forward to the future; we have to anticipate what will become problems as resources diminish, etc.

His goal? Quote: “More and more life support for everybody, with less and less resources.” He was especially interested in developing more efficient housing; that is, a new way of constructing buildings so that they provide more housing space with the use of fewer resources. One solution he came up with in the late 1940′s is the geodesic dome, the invention he is most famous for.

The geodesic dome is a structure shaped like a piece of a sphere. It’s made up of a complex network of triangles, and the more complex this network the closer the comes to the shape of a true sphere. What’s so great about the dome is that it does exactly what Bucky wanted; that is, it has the highest ratio of enclosed area to external surface. In other words, it uses fewer materials to create more housing space.

以上就是这篇托福阅读材料，同学们可以积累其中的词汇及优美句式，找到托福阅读段的主题句，了解托福阅读的几个出题点。托福阅读训练是个长期的过程。大家如果每天做几篇阅读，坚持下来，一定会有不小的进步。预祝大家能有一个好的阅读成绩。