TPO 42

The main subject of both the reading and the lecture is whether there are solutions for using glass in erecting buildings without injuring birds, which cannot distinguish transparent glass from obstacles in their path. The reading offers three solutions for this problem, while the lecture repudiates them and states that they are not efficacious and pragmatic methods.

The first suggestion the author states is the use of one-way glass instead of ordinary glass in the construction of buildings. This kind of glass acts in a way that people can see outside from the inside of buildings, but birds cannot see through it. The lecture asserts that birds see this kind of glass as a mirror, and when the picture of trees or the sky is reflected by such kind of glass, birds cannot differentiate it as a block, thus colliding with it.

The second solution the reading offers is constructors and designers use colored patterns on glass such as colored stripes. The lecture rejects it and says there is transparent space in this method, which is regarded as holes by birds. Thus, the space between stripes has to be narrow to be efficient, resulting in another problem which is dim-lighted rooms.

Finally, since birds have an ability to sense the earth's magnetic field so as to direct themselves, the passage suggests that buildings use a magnetic field to divert birds from glass-made buildings. Nonetheless, the passage refutes it on the grounds that birds use this ability only for a long-distance migration rather than a short-distance displacement from one point of a city to another one.