Listening audioscript

1. WHY DOES THE STUDENT GO TO SEE THE ADVISOR?
2. WHAT DIFFERENTIATES BIOLOGY 101 FROM THE OTHER COURSE? 
3. LISTEN AGAIN TO PART OF THE PASSAGE. THEN ANSWER THE QUESTION. 
(Student)
OK, so you mean that in Introduction to Biological Science, the students 
read and talk about science, but in Biology 101, the students actually 
take part in science by doing experiments in the lab. 
(Advisor) 
Oh, uh… I suppose that’s not totally off the mark. 
WHAT DOES THE ADVISOR MEAN WHEN SHE SAYS THIS: 
 (Advisor) 
Oh, uh… I suppose that’s not totally off the mark. 
4. WHAT DECISION DOES THE ADVISOR SEEM TO THINK THAT THE STUDENT 
SHOULD MAKE FAIRLY SOON? 
5. WHAT CAN BE CONCLUDED FROM THE CONVERSATION? 
 
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Questions 6 through 11. 
Listen to a lecture in a gemology class. 
(Professor)
Today, I’ll be talking about four different styles of gem-cutting: the 
cabochon, the table cut, the rose cut, and the brilliant cut. Now, if you 
look in your book…or check online, frankly…um, you’ll find more types of 
cuts than the four major ones I’m going to present here, and you’ll see a 
lot of variations on these cuts. But today I want to give you some idea of 
how these different types demonstrated different stages in the historical 
development of gem-cutting. 
The first style of gem-cutting, which you can see in this drawing, is 
the cabochon. The cabochon is a rounded shape, without facets. A facet, 
for those of you who don’t know, is a flat surface cut into a gem, but 
cabochons pre-date faceting by a very long time. Carbochon was the 
earliest style used to finish gems, and we’re talking hundreds or 
thousands of years before the other types I’ll be discussing came into 
being. The cabochons in these drawings are shown from the side. A 
cabochon could be a simple cabochon, with a rounded top and a flat 
bottom, or it could be a double cabochon, which is rounded on both the 
top and the bottom.
So how were cabochons made, you ask. Well, it was discovered 
early on that powders of harder materials such as diamonds could be 
used to polish gemstones, and many ancient cultures used this method 
to finish gems. 

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LPREP IBT 3 E AudioScript 
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Now, we’ll look at one of the earliest styles of faceted gems, the table 
cut. It’s not clear when faceting of stones first developed. Stones were 
faceted as early as the fifteenth century in Europe, and they may have 
been faceted earlier than that in other cultures. You can see a table-cut 
stone, from the top and from the side, in these drawings. An interesting 
thing to note is that early stones faceted in this way were probably not 
actually cut but were polished to this shape, using powders of harder 
stones such as diamonds. It does look like it was cut, but this stone was 
polished to this shape. Some stones, including diamonds, occur naturally 
in eight-sided double pyramids. To create a table cut from an eight-sided 
double pyramid, it’s necessary only to polish a flat surface on the top of 
one side of the naturally occurring eight-sided shapes. 
One of the great advantages that the table cut has over the cabochon is 
that the different facets reflect light more. The table cut gives the gem 
more life…um, it has more sparkle. As you can see, however, there is a 
disadvantage. You can see that the bottom side of this table cut is very 
long and pointed, especially if the gem is large, and it is difficult to set 
into jewelry. 
OK, so the next stage in the development of gem-cutting is the rose 
cut. In a rose cut, a stone is actually cut rather than polished. This was 
one of the earliest methods of faceting the entire surface of a diamond, 
or other gem. It’s a very pretty cut, isn’t it? As you can tell from its name, 
it’s supposed to look like a rose in bloom. The rose cut involved cutting 
up to thirty-two triangular facets on the top of a diamond and a flat 
surface on the bottom. You can see a rose cut in the drawing from the 
top and from the bottom. . . . Oh, excuse me, that’s a top view and a side 
view. There’s no bottom view of the rose cut. . . . Now, you should note 
that this type of cut was beneficial because it maintained much of the 
original stone. However, it doesn’t reflect light in a way that maximizes 
the stone’s shine and brilliance. It still does not use the mathematical 
principles of optics to maximize reflection, as these were still not well 
understood in terms of gems. Because it doesn’t reflect light as well as 
other cuts, the rose cut’s no longer used much today. 
The last type of cut we’ll look at is the brilliant cut. The brilliant cut 
came into use after the other styles. You can see a brilliant cut from the 
top and from the side and from the bottom. The brilliant cut is faceted on 
the sides and top and also on the bottom. A stone with a brilliant cut in 
the correct proportion reflects the maximum amount of light out through 
the top of the stone and creates a stone that, as its name indicates, 
shines the most brilliantly. This style of stone is used quite often today 
because it’s so reflective. 
 
We’ve seen four different styles of gems so far. Two of them, the 
cabochon and the table cut, are polished rather than cut to create the 
style, while the other two are actually cut. Before we go on, let me clarify 
one of the assignments for the next class. This is on the syllabus, but 
now that you’ve seen the types of cuts, this will make more sense. What 
I want you to do is please look over the photos of gems at the end of the 
chapter and identify the style of each stone. You’re going to see some 
variations on what we’ve covered here today, so not every one of the 
photos will be perfectly straightforward. 

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LPREP IBT 3 E AudioScript 
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