II. Reading

Exercise 5. Read and translate text A “Cotton”.

Text A

Cotton

1. Cotton is the most important vegetable fiber used in the textiles industry.

2. The cotton fiber is a soft substance growing around the cotton seeds. When the seeds are ripening, their fibers spring out of the burst boll and are picked manually or mechanically. Having been picked cotton is mechanically cleaned and separated from the seeds before it is subjected to further treatment.

3. The ease with which cotton fiber can be transformed into yarn and its suitability for all forms of woven and knitted fabrics, together with its cheapness of production, have caused it to take the leading place among textiles.

4. The cotton plant is usually grown as an annual and requires a warm climate. The leading cotton-cultivating countries are the Middle East countries, the South of the USA, India, Pakistan, the South-American countries, Egypt, and China.

5. The strength of cotton fibers is relatively high compared with their fineness and it further increases when wet.

Cotton fibers are, however, not very elastic, that it why cotton fabrics crease easily. Absorbing moisture well cotton fibers can be easily dyed. As cotton fibers are good conductors of heat, cotton textiles have a cooling effect when worn in hot weather.

6. On account of their durability in wear, cotton fibers are the most important of all vegetable raw materials of the textile industry. For example cotton is used for clothes of all kinds, for shoe uppers, for household textiles and for canvas and sailcloths which must be very strong though rather thin.

7. Cotton is also used for radio insulation and wire insulation in the industrial electrical world and in many other branches of industry.

Being chemically cellulose, cotton linters are used in the manufacture of chemical fibers as well.