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9 Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein was born in Germany in 1879, His father owned a factory
that made electrical devices. His mother enjoyed music and books. His
parents were Jewish but they did not observe many of the religion’s rules.
Albert was a quite child who spent much of his time alone. He was slow
to talk and had difficulty learning to read. When Albert was five years
old, his father gave him a compass. The child was filled with wonder when
he discovered that the compass needle always pointed in the same
direction—to be north. He asked his father and his uncle what caused the
needle to move. Their answers about magnetism and gravity were difficult
for the boy to understand. Yet he spent a lot of time thinking about them.
He said later that he felt something hidden had to be behind things.
Useful expressions and words
1. device 装置,设备
leave to one’s own devices 听任某人自行其是,容许某人按自己旳意愿做事
She left the child to her own devices for an hour in the afternoon.
她容许孩子在下午有一种小时旳自由支配时间。
2. compass 指南针
beyond one’s compass某人力所不及
catch/fetch/take a compass兜圈子,绕道,拐弯抹角
keep sth within compass 把某种事物限制在合适旳范围内
speak within compass 谨慎小心地说
within sb’s compass 某人力所能及旳
within the compass of 在……范围内
3.magnetism 磁力
10 Private Cars
With the increase in the general standard of living, some ordinary Chinese
families begin to afford a car. Yet opinions of the development of a
private car vary from person to person.
It gives a much greater degree of comfort and mobility. The owner of a
car is no longer forced to reply on public transport, and hence no
irritation caused by waiting for buses or taxis. However, others strongly
object to developing private cars. They maintain that as more and more
cars are produced and run in the street, a large volume of poisonous gas
will be given off, polluting the atmosphere and causing actual harm to
the health of people.
Whether private cars should be developed in Chicago is a difficult
question to answer, yet the desire for the comfort and independence a
private car can bring will not be eliminated
11 A Henpecked Husband and His Wife
There was once a large, fat woman who had a small, thin husband. He had
a job in a big company and was given his weekly wages every Friday evening.
As soon as he got home on Fridays, his wife used to make him give her all
his money, and then she used to give him back only enough to buy his lunch
in his company every day.
One day, the small man came home very excited. He hurried into the
living-room. His wife was listening to the radio and eating chocolates
there.
“You will never guess what happened to me to day, dear.” he said.
He waited for a few seconds and then added, “I won ten thousand dollars
on the lottery!”
“That is wonderful! ” said his wife delightedly. But then she pulled
a long face and added angrily, “But how could you afford to buy the
ticket?”
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1. henpecked 怕老婆旳,妻管严旳
2. lottery 彩票
a great lottery 虚无缥缈旳事
3. pull a long face 拉下脸来
have a face to say that脸皮厚得竟能讲出这种话
12 AYoung Man’s Promise
One day, a young man was writing a letter to his girlfriend who lived just
a few miles away in a nearby town. He was telling her how much he loved
her and how wonderful he thought she was. The more he wrote the more poetic
he became. Finally he said that in order to be with her, he would suffer
the greatest difficulties, he would face the greatest dangers that anyone
couldn’t imagine. In fact, to spend only one minute with her, he would
swim across the widest river, he would enter the deepest forest, and he
would fight against the fiercest animals with his bare hands.
He finished the letter, signed his name and then suddenly remembered that
he had forgotten to mention something quite important. So, in a postscript
below his name, he added:
“By the way, I’ll be over to see you on Wednesday night, if it doesn’t
rain.”
13 AKind Neighbor
Mr. and Mrs. Jones’ apartment was full of luggage, packages, furniture and boxes. Both of them were very busy when they heard the doorbell ring.
Mrs. Jones went to open it and she saw a middle-aged lady outside. The
lady said she lived next door. Mrs. Jones invited her to come in and
apologized because there was no place for her to sit. “Oh, that’s OK.”
said the lady. “I just come to welcome to your new home. As you know,
in some parts of this city, neighbors are not friendly at all. They are
some apartment houses where people don’t know any of their neighbors,
not even the ones next door. But in this building, everyone is very
friendly with everyone else. We are a big happy family. I am sure you will
be very happy here.” Mr. and Mrs. Jones said, “But madam, we are not
new dwellers in this apartment. We’ve lived here for two years. We are
moving out tomorrow.”
14 That Isn’t Our Fault
Mr. and Mrs. Williams got married when he was twenty-three, and she was
twenty. Twenty-five years later, they had a big party, and a photographer
came and took some photographs of them. Then the photographer gave Mrs. Williams a card and said, “They’ll be
ready next Wednesday. You can get them from studio.”
“No,” Mrs. Williams said, “please send them to us.”
The photographs arrived a week later, but Mrs. Williams was not happy when
she saw them. She got into her car and drove to the photographer’s studio.
She went inside and said angrily, “You took some photographs of me and
my husband last week, but I’m not going to pay for them.”
“Oh, why not?” the photographer asked.
“Because my husband looks like a monkey,” Mrs. Williams said.
“Well,” the photographer answered, “that isn’t our fault. Why didn’t
you think of that before you married him?”
15 A Guide's Answer
In 1861, the Civil War started in the United States between the Northern
and the Southern states. The war continued with great bitterness until
1865, when the Northerners were victorious. However, even today, many
Southerners have not forgotten their defeat, or forgiven the Northerners.
A few years ago, a party of American tourists were going round one of the
battlefields of the Civil War with a guide who came from one of the Southern
states. At each place, the guide told the tourists stirring stories about
how a few Southern soldiers had conquered powerful forces of Northerners
there.
At last, one of the tourists, a lady who came from the North, stopped the
guide and said to him, “ But surely that the Northern army must have won
at least one victory in the Civil War?”
“Not as long as I’m the guide here, madam,” answered the Southern guide
16 A Qualified Pilot
The captain of a small ship had to go along a rocky coast, but he was
unfamiliar with it, so he tried to find a qualified pilot to guide him.
He went ashore in one of the small ports, and a local fisherman pretended
that he was a pilot because he needed some money. The captain took him
on board and asked him where to steer the ship.
After half an hour, the captain began to suspect that the fisherman did
not really know what he was doing and where he was going.
“Are you sure you are a qualified pilot?” he asked.
“Oh, yes,” answered the fisherman. “I know every rock on this part of
the coast.”
Suddenly there was a terrible crash from under the ship. At once the
fisherman added, “And that’s one of them.”
17 Living Things React
You and all organisms live an environment. An environment is made up of
everything that surrounds an organism. It can include the air, the water, the soil, and even other organisms.
An organism responds to changes in its environment. When an organism
responds to a change, it reacts in certain ways. All living things respond
in some way.
Have you ever noticed how plants and insects respond to light? Plants bend
toward light. Insects fly toward light.
Living things also respond in other ways. The leaves on some trees respond
to a change in season. In autumn, they change colors and then fall off
the branches Animals also respond to a change in season. Squirrels save
nuts for the winter. Bears sleep through the winter in a cave.
You respond to your environment in many ways, too. You may shiver if you
are cold. What other ways do you respond to changes in your environment?
18 Flowering Plants
What are the parts of a flower?
Flowers can have male parts and female parts. The female parts make eggs
that become seeds. The male parts make pollen. Pollen is a powdery material
that is needed by the eggs to make seeds. To make seeds, pollen and eggs
must come together. The wind, insects, and birds bring pollen to eggs.
Many animals love flowers’ bright colors. They also like a sugary liquid
in flowers. This is called nectar. While they drink nectar, pollen rubs
off on their bodies. As they move, some of this pollen gets delivered to
the female flower parts.
Over time, the female parts turn into fruits that contain seeds. Animals
often eat the fruits and the seeds pass through their bodies as waste.
The animals do no know they are working for the plants by planting seeds
as they travel to different places!
Useful words and Expressions:
1. flowering 开花旳
2. pollen 花粉
3. powdery 粉状旳
4. sugar 含糖旳,甜旳
5. nectar花蜜,甘露
6. rub 磨擦
19 Finding the Direction and Location
How can you tell which direction? By day, look for the Sun. It is in the
east in the morning and the west in the afternoon. At night, use the Big
Dipper to help you find the North Star. It would be better to bring a
compass because its needle always points north.
How do you know how far you have gone? You could count every step. Each
step is about two feet. You’d better wear a pedometer which is a tool
that counts steps. If you know where you started, which direction you are
heading, and how far you have gone, you can use a good map to figure out exactly where you are.
Today there is a new way for travelers to figure out where they are. It
is the GPS. It has 24 satellites that orbit the earth and constantly
broadcast their positions. Someday you may carry a small receiver as you
hike and use GPS to find out if you are there yet!
Useful Words and Expressions:
1. dipper北斗七星
2. compass 罗盘
3. pedometer 步数计
4. GPS= Global Position System全球定位系统
5. orbit 轨道,绕……轨道而行
6. receiver 接受器
20 Waves
How does light get from the sun to the earth? How does music get from the
stage to the audience? They move the same way-----in waves!
Light and sound are forms of energy. All waves carry energy, but they may
carry it differently. Light and sound travel through different kinds of
matter. For example, light waves cannot move through walls, but sound
waves can. That is why you can hear people talking in another room even
though you cannot see them. The energy of some waves is destructive. An
earthquake produces seismic waves.
Catch a wave. Ask a friend to stand a few feet away from you. Stretch a
spring between you. Shake the spring to transfer energy to it. What happens?
The spring bounces up and down in waves. When the waves reach your friend,
they bounce back to you!
Light waves travel 300,000 kilometers (186,000 miles) per second! They
can also travel through a vacuum. That is why light from the sun and distant
stars can travel through space to the earth!
Useful Words and Expressions
;
1. destructive 破坏旳
2. seismic地震旳
3. vacuum真空
2
1 Soils
There are many different kinds of soils. Different soils have different
types of rock and minerals in them. Some soils have more water in them
than others. Some soils might have more plant and animal material in them,
too.
Different kinds of soils are found in different parts of the world. There
are several kinds of soils found in the United States. In some areas, the
soil has a lot of clay. Other soils are very sandy. Loam is a kind of soil
that has a good mixture of clay and sand.
In some places, soil layers are very thick. Lots of plants grow in places
with a thick soil layer. In dry and windy places soil layers are much
thinner. Layers of soil on mountains are thin because gravity pulls the
soil downhill.
The type of soil in a particular place affects what kinds of plants can
grow there.
1. clay 黏土,泥土
2. loam 肥土
3. layer 层
4. gravity 地心引力,重力
5. downhill 往下
22 Crisis
Life is a contest! Who will win? A bluebird and sparrow both compete for
space to build their nests. A fast-growing maple tree and slower-growing
dogwood compete for the sunlight they both need. Oil competes with coal
and nuclear power as an energy source for electric power plants!
There is a problem. There is a limited amount of space for birds, sunlight
for trees, and energy for people! If we do not cut back on our uses of
some of our resources, someday they will be gone!
How can we use energy today and know we will have enough to go around in
the future? We can choose alternate, or replacement, energy resources.
It takes the earth millions of years to create coal, oil, and gas. They
are nonrenewable resources.
Solar energy, wind energy and water energy are renewable resources. It
takes the earth millions of years to create coal, oil, and gas. They are
nonrenewable resources.
Solar energy, wind energy and water energy are renewable. What other ways
can we conserve our sources? How can we make sure there is always enough
to go around?
1. bluebird 蓝知更鸟
2. sparrow 麻雀
3. dogwood 山茱萸
4. power plant 发电厂,发电站
5. alternate 替代物
6. nonrenewable resources 不可再生资源
7. conserve 保留,保藏
23 America’s Worst Surprise
December 7, 1941 was one of the worst days in American history. Nearly all Americans who are old enough to remember that day can still remember what
they were doing at the moment they heard “the news”. The news was that
America had been attacked!
Shortly before 2:00 P.M., a radio dispatch came into Washington from Honolulu,
Hawaii. “Air Raid, Pearl Harbor— This is no drill.” Japanese planes had begun an
attack on the largest American military base in the Pacific. They first destroyed
planes on the ground. Then they bombed the ships in the harbor.
No one had expected the attack. So no one was prepared for it. And it did not
take long for Japanese to do their damage. When the smoke cleared, the Navy
counted its losses. Eighteen ships had been sunk or badly damaged. Nearly 150
planes had been destroyed. More than 2,400 Americans had been killed and
more than 1,200 wounded.
Useful Words and Expressions:
1. dispatch
派遣,急件
2. air raid
空袭
3. drill
军事训练,操演
4. Pearl Harbor
珍珠港
24 Great Depression in the U.S.
In 1929, the bills started to come in. American industry had produced too many
goods. Am
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