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Before the end of the year, employees at Ubiquitous Energy, a company in Redwood City, Calif, will gather in a window-lined conference room to stare toward the future. That’s because their new glass windows will offer more than an amazing view of the mountains and blue skies of the North California landscape. They will also function as solar panels (太阳能电池板), able to power the company’s lights, computers and air conditioners.

Several years in the making, Ubiquitous’ energy-producing glass is a great technological achievement whose power lies in the layers of organic polymers (聚合物) between sheets of glass. As light enters the window, the flow of electrons between the polymer layers creates an electric current, which is then collected by tiny wires in the glass.

“It’s sort of like a transparent (透明的) computer display run backwards,” says Veeral Hardev, director of business development at Ubiquitous Energy. “That is, instead of electricity being sent to different points in a display to light them up, light is producing electricity to be sent out of different points in the window.”

Right now the windows produce about a third as much electricity from a given amount of sunlight as the typical solar batteries used in roof panels (板), and these windows, about half as transparent as ordinary glass, don’t work as well as transparent ones. But those standards are already enough to make the windows a promising product, says Hardev, adding the company is likely to improve the transparency significantly. As for the lower output of electricity, he notes that windows can cover a much greater surface area than a roof, so numerous windows will produce a surprisingly larger amount of electricity than the production from a rooftop full of higher-efficiency solar panels. “You could do both.” says Hardev. “But you’ll get more from the windows. The biggest challenge, he adds, is to make the windows from less than two square feet currently to about 50 square feet.”

1．What makes the new glass windows special?

A．They can offer an amazing view.

B．They are controlled by computers.

C．They can power the conference room.

D．They can help stare toward the future.

2．What is Hardev trying to explain in paragraph 3?

A．Where the light comes from

B．The importance of different points

C．The similarity of computers and glass

D．How the energy-producing glass works

3．What can affect power production according to the passage?

A．The transparency of the glass.	B．The quality of the rooftop.
C．The height of the solar panels.	D．The thickness of the glass.

4．What is the biggest problem Ubiquitous Energy needs to solve?

A．To change the window structure	B．To increase the size of the window
C．To protect the windows from lighting	D．To fix windows reasonably in an office

5．Which of the following is the best title for the passage?

A．Windows: A New Challenge of Technology

B．Windows: No Longer Just for Letting in the Light

C．Power: A Pressing Problem in the Near Future

D．Power: Not Enough from Rooftop Solar Panels