Alfred Wegener Reading Answers with IELTS Passage

Alfred Wegener Reading Answers: Preparing for the IELTS Reading section requires strong comprehension skills and familiarity with different types of passages. One such academic passage is about Alfred Wegener, a renowned scientist known for his theory of continental drift. In this IELTS exam Reading practice, you will explore Wegener's scientific background, his major contributions, and how his work influenced modern geology. The passage includes a mix of sentence completion, multiple-choice, and matching information questions, allowing you to improve your accuracy and time management for IELTS Academic Reading tasks.

Free IELTS Reading Practice Tests

Alfred Wegener Reading Answers Passage

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-14 which are based on the Reading Passage below.

Alfred Wegener: science, exploration and the theory of continental drift by Mott T. Greene

A This is a book about the life and scientific work of Alfred Wegener, whose reputation today rests with his theory of continental displacements, better known as ‘continental drift’. Wegener proposed this theory in 1912 and developed it extensively for nearly 20 years. His book on the subject, The Origin of Continents and Oceans, went through four editions and was the focus of an international controversy in his lifetime and for some years after his death.

BWegener’s basic idea was that many mysteries about the Earth’s history could be solved if one supposed that the continents moved laterally, rather than supposing that they remained fixed in place. Wegener showed in great detail how such continental movements were plausible and how they worked, using evidence from a large number of sciences including geology, geophysics, paleontology, and climatology.

C Wegener’s idea – that the continents move – is at the heart of the theory that guides Earth sciences today: namely plate tectonics. Plate tectonics is in many respects quite different from Wegener’s proposal, in the same way that modern evolutionary theory is very different from the ideas Charles Darwin proposed in the 1850s about biological evolution. Yet plate tectonics is a descendant of Alfred Wegener’s theory of continental drift, in quite the same way that modern evolutionary theory is a descendant of Darwin’s theory of natural selection.

D When I started writing about Wegener’s life and work, one of the most intriguing things about him for me was that, although he came up with a theory on continental drift, he was not a geologist. He trained as an astronomer and pursued a career in atmospheric physics. When he proposed the theory of continental displacements in 1912, he was a lecturer in physics and astronomy at the University of Marburg, in southern Germany.

E However, he was not an ‘unknown’. In 1906 he had set a world record (with his brother Kurt) for time aloft in a hot-air balloon: 52 hours. Between 1906 and 1908 he had taken part in a highly publicized and extremely dangerous expedition to the coast of northeast Greenland. He had also made a name for himself amongst a small circle of meteorologists and atmospheric physicists in Germany as the author of a textbook, Thermodynamics of the Atmosphere (1911), and of a number of interesting scientific papers.

F As important as Wegener’s work on continental drift has turned out to be, it was largely a sideline to his interest in atmospheric physics, geophysics, and paleoclimatology*, and thus I have been at great pains to put Wegener’s work on continental drift in the larger context of his other scientific work, and in the even larger context of atmospheric sciences in his lifetime.

G This is a ‘continental drift book’ only to the extent that Wegener was interested in that topic and later became famous for it. My treatment of his other scientific work is no less detailed, though I certainly have devoted more attention to the reception of his ideas on continental displacement, as they were much more controversial than his other work.

H Readers interested in the specific detail of Wegener’s career will see that he often stopped pursuing a given line of investigation (sometimes for years on end), only to pick it up later. I have tried to provide guideposts to his rapidly shifting interests by characterizing different phases of his life as careers in different sciences, which is reflected in the titles of the chapters.

I Thus, the index should be a sufficient guide for those interested in a particular aspect of Wegener’s life but perhaps not all of it. My own feeling, however, is that the parts do not make as much sense on their own as do all of his activities taken together. In this respect I urge readers to try to experience Wegener’s life as he lived it, with all the interruptions, changes of mind, and renewed efforts this entailed.

J Wegener left behind a few published works but, as was standard practice, these reported the results of his work – not the journey he took to reach at point. Only a few hundred of the many thousands of letters he wrote and received in his lifetime have survived and he didn’t keep notebooks or diaries that recorded his life and activities. He was not active (with a few exceptions) in scientific societies, and did not seek to find influence or advance his ideas through professional contacts and politics, spending most of his time at home in his study reading and writing, or the field collecting observations.

K Some famous scientists, such as Newton, Darwin, and Einstein, left mountains of written material behind, hundreds of notebooks and letters numbering in the tens of thousands. Others, like Michael Faraday, left extensive journals of their thoughts and speculations, parallel to their scientific notebooks. The more such material a scientist leaves

behind, the better chance a biographer has of forming an accurate picture of how a scientist’s ideas took shape and evolved.

L I am firmly of the opinion that most of us, Wegener included, are not in any real sense the authors of our own lives. We plan, think, and act, often with apparent freedom, but most of the time our lives ‘happen to us’, and we only retrospectively turn this happenstance into a coherent narrative of fulfilled intentions. This book, therefore, is a story both of the life and scientific work that Alfred Wegener planned and intended and of the life and scientific work that actually ‘happened to him’. These are, as I think you will soon see, not always the same thing.

Also Read: 

• IELTS Reading Tips And Strategies

• IELTS Listening Tips

• IELTS Writing Tips

• IELTS Speaking Tips And Tricks

Alfred Wegener Reading Answers Sample Questions 

Questions 1–6: Complete the sentences below.

1. Alfred Wegener is best known for his theory of __________.

2. His theory was based on evidence drawn from various sciences including __________.

3. At the time he proposed continental drift, Wegener worked as a lecturer in __________.

4. Wegener set a world record for time spent in a __________.

5. His main scientific focus was not geology but __________.

6. Wegener didn’t document his thoughts because he didn’t keep __________.

Questions 7–10: Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.

7. What does the writer say about the theory of plate tectonics?
   A. It disproves Wegener’s ideas
   B. It builds on Wegener’s original concept
   C. It was developed during Wegener’s lifetime
   D. It is not widely accepted

8. What is suggested about Wegener’s other scientific work?
   A. It was not as original as continental drift
   B. It was equally controversial
   C. It is explained thoroughly in the book
   D. It is not well known

9. Why does the writer say the index is useful?
   A. To help locate Wegener’s publications
   B. To guide readers interested in specific areas
   C. To replace the need to read the full book
   D. To highlight the most significant events

10. According to the writer, what made Wegener’s life hard to document?
    A. He was always travelling
    B. His work changed over time
    C. He left few personal records
    D. He had no surviving family

Questions 11–14: Match the statements to the correct paragraph (A–L).

11. Wegener’s theories attracted more attention than his other work.

12. The writer tried to group Wegener’s changing interests into separate periods.

13. Wegener rarely participated in academic politics.

14. The book is about both the life Wegener wanted and the life he actually experienced.

Guidance of PW IELTS

Physics Wallah offers a few popular online IELTS courses for all students. Follow the latest IELTS articles to better prepare for the exam.