Lesson 5 Clothes washing machines Part 1

If there's one household appliance most of us simply could not do without, it's the clothes washer. If you've ever been without your machine for a few days or weeks, you'll know just how hard it is to wash clothes by hand. Although clothes washers look pretty straightforward, they pull off a really clever trick: with the help of detergents, they separate the dirt from your clothes and then rinse it away. But how exactly do they work?

The parts of a clothes washer

The basic idea of a clothes washer is simple: it sloshes your clothes about in soap suds for a while and then spins fast to remove the water afterward. But there's a bit more to it than that. Think of a clothes washer and you probably think of a big drum that fills with water—but there are actually two drums, one inside the other. The inner drum is the one you can see when you open the door or the lid. In a front-loading clothes washer the drum stands upright. You push your clothes inside the door from the front and the whole drum rotates about a horizontal axis (like a car wheel). The drum has lots of small holes to let water in and out that paddles around the edge to slosh the clothes around. In a toploader you open a lid on top and drop your clothes into the drum from above. The drum is mounted about a vertical axis but doesn't actually move. Instead, there's a paddle in the middle of it called an agitator that turns the clothes around in the water. There's a second, bigger drum outside the inner drum that you cannot see. Its job is to hold the water while the inner drum (in a front-loader) or the agitator (in a toploader) rotates. Unlike the inner drum, the outer drum has to be completely water-tight—or you'd have water all over the floor!

The two drums are the most important parts of a clothes washer, but there are lots of other interesting bits too. There's a thermostat (thermometer mechanism) to test the temperature of the incoming water and a heating element that warms it up to the required temperature. There's also an electrically operated pump that removes water from the drum when the wash is over. There's a mechanical or electronic control mechanism called a programmer, which makes the various parts of the clothes washer go through a series of steps to wash, rinse, and spin your clothes. There are two pipes that let clean hot and cold water into the machine and a third pipe that lets the dirty water out again. All these pipes have valves on them (like little doors across them that open and shut when necessary).

Vocabulary

Detergent – моющее средство

rinse – полоскать

soap suds – мыльная пена

slosh – заливать, полоскать, шлепать

paddle – плескаться, лопасть,

lid – крышка, люк, заслонка

agitator – смеситель, мешалка

Exercise 1

Find Russian equivalents to the following words in the text. Learn them by heart.

Стиральная машина (2), разделять, моющее средство, вращаться, барабан, вертикально, ось, впускать, выпускать, нажимать/толкать, внутренний, внешний, крышка/люк, лопасть, герметичный, деталь/кусок, закончится,

Exercise 2

Which of the following is the odd-one-out?

1) waterproof, leaking, water-resistant, water-tight

2) revolve, rotate, turn round, twist, spin, go straight

3) be over, finish, end, continue

4) outside, external, superstitious, outer, exterior, superficial

Exercise 3

Match the words to their definitions.

1) outer 2) detergent 3) water-tight 4) inner 5) upright 6) spin

a) closely sealed, fastened, or fitted so that no water enters or passes through b) turn or whirl round quickly c) on the outside of something d) placed in a vertical position e) situated inside or further in; internal f) a liquid or powder that helps remove dirt, for example from clothes or dishes

Exercise 4

Replace the underlined words with the words from Exercise 1.

1) The dish lay in pieces on the floor.

2) The cliffs rose up vertically out of the water.

3) This laundry powder leaves your clothes clean and soft without the use of harsh (агрессивный) chemicals or fillers.

4) Old-age pensioners are admitted free to the museum.

5) My head is going around and I can't balance.

Exercise 5

Answer the questions

1) What is the main difference between inner and outer drums?

2) What parts does a washing machine consist of?

3) What is the basic idea of a clothes washer?

4) How many pipes does a clothes washer have?

5) What is a washing machine? Give a definition to a clothes washer with your own words.