People often grumble that plastics are too durable. Water bottles, shopping bags, and other trash litter the planet, from Mount Everest to the Mariana Trench, because plastics are ubiquitous and don't break down easily. But some plastic materials change over time. They crack and frizzle They “weep” out additives. They melt into sludge. All of which creates huge headaches for institutions, such as museums, trying to preserve culturally important objects. Until recently, museums only had to worry about traditional materials. The variety of plastic objects at risk is dizzying: early radios, avant-garde sculptures, celluloid animation stills from Disney films, David Bowie costumes, the first artificial heart.
Certain artifacts are especially vulnerable because some pioneers in plastic art didn’t always know how to mix ingredients properly, says Thea van Oosten, a polymer chemist who, until retiring a few years ago, worked for decades at the Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands (RCE). “It’s like baking a cake: If you don’t have exact amounts, it goes wrong,” she says. “The object you make is already a time bomb.”
And sometimes, it’s not the artist’s fault. In the 1960s, the Italian artist Piero Gilardi began to create hundreds of bright, colorful foam pieces. Those pieces included small beds of roses and other items as well as a few dozen “nature carpet” — large rectangles decorated with foam pumpkins, cabbages, and watermelons. He wanted viewers to walk around on the carpets—which meant they had to be durable
Unfortunately, the polyurethane foam he used is inherently unstable. It’s especially vulnerable to light damage, and by the mid-1990s, Gilardi’s pumpkins, roses, and other figures were splitting and crumbling. Museums locked some of them away in the dark.
 So van Oosten and colleagues at RCE began to study ways to protect polyurethane. First, they took foam samples similar to the nature carpets and infused some with stabilizing and consolidating chemicals that modern manufacturers often use. Van Oosten calls those chemicals “sunscreens” because their goal was to prevent further light damage and rebuild worn polymer fibers. Then the team used xenon lamps to artificially age both treated and untreated samples, and examined them under high-powered microscopes. The results were encouraging. Samples that lacked sunscreen had withered under the barrage of photons: The molecular “struts” shoring up the foam were 42% thinner and notably more brittle than before the lamp treatment. The struts in samples with sunscreen decreased by as little as 12.5%. Armed with that knowledge, conservators working with RCE infused several Gilardi sculptures, including two nature carpets, with the sunscreen to stabilize them. Van Oosten is proud that several have even gone on display again, albeit sometimes beneath protective cases. Long called the “queen of plastics,” in 2012, van Oosten was knighted in the Netherlands for her efforts to preserve plastic objects and spread knowledge to other institutes.
 Despite such success stories, preservation of plastics will likely get harder. Old objects continue to deteriorate. Worse, biodegradable plastics, designed to disintegrate, are increasingly common.
And more is at stake here than individual objects. Ferreira notes that archaeologists first defined the great material ages of human history — Stone Age, Iron Age, and so on — after examining artifacts in museums. We now live in an age of plastic, she says, “and what we decide to collect today, what we decide to preserve...will have a strong impact on how in the future we'll be seen.”

21. According to paragraph 1, museums are faced with difficulties in_______.
[A] maintaining their plastic items
[B] Obtaining durable plastic artifacts
[C] Handling outdated plastic exhibits
[D] Classifying their plastic collections
22. Van Oosten holds certain plastic are_______.
[A] immune to decay
[B] improperly shaped
[C] inherently flawed
[D] complex in structure
23. Museums stopped exhibiting artworks of G’s to ______.
[A] keep them from hurting visitors
[B] duplicate them for future display
[C] have ingredients for future analyzed
[D] prevent them from further damage
24. The author thinks that preservation of plastics is______.
[A] costly
[B] unworthy
[C] unpopular
[D] challenging
25. In Ferreisia’s opinion, the preservation of plastic artifacts______.
[A] will inspire future scientific research
[B] has profound historical significance
[C] will help us separate the material ages
[D] has the impact on today’s cultural life

解答：21、【解题思路】 题目问的是博物馆所面临的困难，可定位到第一段“All of which creates hugeheadaches for institutions, such as museums, trying to preserve culturally important objects.”即：让博 物馆之类的机构头疼的是如何保存这些有文化意义的物品，对应 A 选项保养他们的塑料品，原 文preserve 对应选项中的 maintain。【干扰排除】选项【B】 Obtaining durable plastic artifacts 获得耐用的塑料手工艺品在文中未提及；选 项【C】 Handling outdated plastic exhibits 处理过时的塑料展品有一定干扰性， 但“过时的”这一层意 思在文章中为体现；选项【D】 Classifying their plastic collections 分类塑料收藏品在文章中未提及。
22、【解析思路】由题干关键词人名 Van Oosten 定位到第二段第一句话， 首先上来就点明 certainartifacts are vulnerable是有弱点的，同义词替换约等于选项【C】 flawed 即“有缺陷的”，“本质上是 有缺陷的” 。【干扰排除】 【B】干扰性极强，定位到原文中 artifacts有弱点的原因部分， 即艺术家们不知道如何 恰当地混合各种原材料，才致使塑料成品存在弱点，而非是【B】选项中不恰当的形状 shape 。【A】和【D】属于弱干扰， 第二段没有提及【A】中的“免于腐烂”， 虽然在第一段提到 don’t break down easily不易降解，但【A】选项仍未偷换概念 。【D】选项“结构复杂”在原文中未提及，结构不等于原 材料，更不等于原材料的配比情况。
23、【解题思路】本题答案为【D】“防止这些塑料艺术品的进一步损坏” 。根据本道题所定位的 段落。题干出现在段落末尾。此段一开始谈到了一些塑料艺术品用的一些 poly 之类的化学物质， 会易受光源的影响，这就会导致艺术品的进一步损坏。【干扰排除】 【A】选项谈到的游客在全段话没有提及，属于无关定位的错误选项；【B】选项复制艺术品为了未来展示也未提及；而【C】选项的 ingredients 属于定位错误理解，作者提到成分是为了指 出一些成分易受光源影响而非是为了进一步分析。
24、【解题思路】本题正确答案【D】。Challenging (有挑战的）。题干问“作者认为塑料的保存__”， 问的是作者观点，根据顺序原则，第 5 段讲的是 Oosten 的具体做法，第 7 段讲的是 25 题题干 中提到的Ferrira，可以确定该题答案位于第 6 段 。第 6 段第一句说 “Despite successful stories as Van Oosten,preserve plastics will likely get harder”（尽管有 Oosten这样成功的案例，保存塑料似 乎变得愈发困难）【干扰排除】 四个选项【A】 Costly（昂贵的），【B】Unworthy（不值得的），【C】Unpopular（不受欢迎的）， 只有【D】 Challenging （有挑战性的）对应原文 get harder（更加困难的），其余 概念并未提及。
25、【解题思路】 本题答案为【B】“有着深远的历史意义” 。根据本道题题干信息，细节题，定位 在文章最后 一 段 。 【F】这个 人的观 点中， 提到的 文章主 题词围 绕 the preservation of plastic artifacts“塑料人造艺术品的保留”会决定未来人们如何定义我们，也就是同义替换为在未来如何 看到过去的历史， 即为【B】选项中历史意义。【干扰排除】 【A】选项有诱惑原词 future，将鼓励未来科学研究“scientific research”为未提到信息的 错误选项； 【C】选项“帮助我们分隔材料的年限”；D 选项“影响我们当今的文化生活”均为最后一 段没有提到的信息，属于无中生有的错误选项。