Elevators and Escalators

Vocabulary

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Elevators and escalators make it easy to go up and down between the floors of a building. They use electricity to move us up and down.

Elevators

An elevator has two main parts. The shaft is like a long tunnel that goes from the bottom of a building to the top.

The elevator car is the part that people stand in. The elevator car moves up and down inside the shaft. One elevator can move both up and down.

There are buttons with numbers inside an elevator. If you want to go to the third floor, you press the button with the number 3 on it. That tells the elevator to stop and let you get off on the third floor. When you press an elevator button, it lights up.

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Escalators

An escalator is a stairway with steps that move. It goes from one floor of a building to the next floor. An escalator moves people in only one direction—up or down. That’s why you usually see two escalators beside each other. One is moving people up, and the other one is moving people down.

Most people stand on an escalator. They wait until it takes them to the next floor. Some people are in a hurry. They walk up or down the escalator steps to get to the next floor faster. People who want to stand should stay on the right side of an escalator. That way, people who want to walk on the escalator have room to get by on the left side.

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