Unit 8 – Science and Us Homework 1

Reading comprehension
1. Read the two stories about lucky breaks. What were they doing before they got their lucky
breaks? What was their lucky break1?

Yang Zhifa
Thirty years ago, Yang Zhifa was just an ordinary Chinese farmer. He
was living off the land and was very poor. Today he is
recognized as the man who discovered a highly important 1) What was Yang Zhifa
archaeological site, sometimes called the "Eighth Wonder of doing when he got his
the World." What happened? lucky break?
One morning in March 1974, Zhifa and some other
local farmers were looking for water. As they were drilling a
well, they hit something hard. They found pieces of pottery
and ancient weapons. Immediately, the head of the village
2) What was his lucky break?
reported the news to the local government, and in May
1976, the digging began. To everyone's surprise, there were
over 8,000 soldiers made of terracotta lying underneath his
land. The soldiers were over 2,000 years old, and had been
buried along with the Emperor Qin, who wanted to take an
army with him to his next life.
Today Yang Zhifa spends much of his time at the Terracotta Army museum. He sits, poses for
pictures, and proudly signs autographs for the millions of tourists who visit from all over the world.

Gwyneth Paltrow
You could say that actress Gwyneth Paltrow was born 1) What was Gwyneth
lucky. After all, she is the daughter of two well-known Paltrow doing when she
talents. Her mother is an actress and her father was a writer, got her lucky break?
producer, and director. But like all people wanting to break
into movies, she had to go to drama school and learn how to
act. Today Gwyneth Paltrow is a successful international
actress, and has even won an Oscar award. So how did it all
2) What was her lucky
begin?
break?
According to Ms. Paltrow, her lucky break came when
she was 18 years old. She was at a movie theater with her
parents. While they were waiting in line to buy some
popcorn, she noticed that Steven Spielberg was also in line.
She was just about to order when he came over to her and
said, "Hey, can I ask you a favor? Would you play Wendy in
the movie Hook?" "Sure," she said, and so she got her first
movie role.

1
lucky break 好运气，好机运

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 Unit 8 – Science and Us Homework 1

2. Read the passage about Galileo and his telescope. Answer the questions next to the passage.

Galileo Galilei was born in the year 1564. He was 1) Galileo’s father was

born in the town of Pisa, in what is now Italy. When he disappointed when he

was 20 years old, he was studying in Pisa. His father became a mathematician.
What did he want him to be
wanted him to be a doctor. Galileo was bored with
instead?
school. The only subject he really liked was math.
Because he was doing well in math, the court
mathematician offered to tutor him privately. He said he
could become a qualified mathematician. Galileo’s father
was disappointed, but he agreed.
Because he needed to earn money, Galileo began 2) Why did Galileo become an
experimenting with different things. He tried to come up inventor?
with an invention he could sell for money. He had some
success with one invention. It was like a compass that
could be used to measure land. He experimented2 with
pendulums, thermometers, and magnets.
3) Where did Galileo get the
He heard that a Dutch inventor had invented
idea for his telescope?
something called a spyglass. The inventor was trying to
keep it a secret. Galileo decided to work on one of his
own. Within 24 hours, he had invented a telescope. It
could magnify3 things to make them appear ten times
larger than real life. One night, he pointed his telescope 4) What did Galileo discover
toward the sky. He made his first of many space about the moon?

observations4. Everyone thought the moon was smooth.

Galileo saw that it wasn’t. The moon was covered in
bumps and craters.
As technology has improved, Galileo and many
5) Do you think Galileo’s
others have made improvements on the telescope.
inventions made a
Today, the telescope is a wonderful device that lets us difference in the world?
see objects far, far away. How?

2
experiment vt. 做试验
3
magnify vt. 放大
4
observation n. 观察

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 Unit 8 – Science and Us Homework 1

3. Read the four texts about great inventions and discoveries in history and answer the questions
to the right of the texts.

Galileo explores the heavens

When Galileo became the first person to look at the 1) What did Galileo observe?
sky through a telescope, it changed our view of the
universe. His discoveries about the Sun, Moon and other
planets disagreed with older theories5, because he
claimed6 that the Earth revolved around the Sun and was 2) What did Galileo discover?
not the center of the universe. He then wrote a book, Two
World Systems, published7 in Italy in 1630, which led to his
problems with the Roman Catholic Church, which insisted
on the older theory. At his trial, Galileo was found guilty of 3) Why was it important?

'heresy' (anti-religious beliefs). It was only in the twentieth

century that the Vatican finally agreed with him. If Galileo
hadn't defended his theories, he would have been a free
man, but we wouldn't have understood the science of our
universe.

The steam engine

For most of human history we were not very 1) What was this
development?
different from other animals, which also have language,
act as a group, and have organizational systems. But the
steam engine gave us the ability to do things faster and to 2) Where did it take place?
do things that other animals couldn't. This development,
which took place8 in Britain in the 18th century, was not 3) When did it take place?
one invention, but many. Different people were involved
at different stages: Thomas Newcomen, James Watt and
4) Why was it important?
George Stephenson. The steam engine allowed us to
transform9 the way we use energy. It changed so many
things, including transportation, manufacturing and
communication. Life would have been totally different if
we hadn't invented it.

5
theory n. 理论
6
claim vt. 声称
7
publish vt. 出版
8
take place 发生
9
transform vt. 改变

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 Unit 8 – Science and Us Homework 1

Learning to eat meat

Humans are badly designed animals. We are slow, we
1) What was this
have weak teeth, and we don’t have tails. That’s why we development?
need something extra to match other animals. And that's
why eating meat – a development that probably started in 2) When did it take place?
Africa around 2.5 million years ago – became so important.
Meat gives you fats and proteins that you can't get with
3) Where did it take place?
other food. But more importantly, meat-eating led10 to
hunting, and hunting helped to develop our imaginations.
4) Why was it important?
When you hunt, you need to see what isn't there, to see
what’s behind the next tree or over the next hill. We
wouldn't have become the most imaginative – and the most
intelligent – of the animals if we had continued eating only
plants.

Teaching people to read

Until the end of the twelfth century, Latin11 was very 1) What was this
difficult to learn. Students read and memorized texts for development?

years. Then a Frenchman called Alexander de Villedieu

developed a fast method to teach Latin: he used simple
rules and wrote them in verse so the students could 2) Where did it take place?

remember them more easily. Seeing the success of his

method, Alexander wrote a grammar book, Doctrinale, 3) When did it take place?

published in France in 1199. It became a bestseller and

spread quickly through Europe, and started a great literacy 4) Why was it important?

movement12. This new type of learning became the

foundation13 of modern education. If he hadn't written
Doctrinale, education would probably have remained the
same for hundreds of years.

10
lead to 导致；引出
11
Latin n. 拉丁语
12
movement n. 运动
13
foundation n. 基础

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 Unit 8 – Science and Us Homework 1

Past continuous vs past simple (P76)

past continuous (过去进行) past simple (一般过去)
事情的背景 主要的事情
先开始的事 后发生的事
时间长的动作 时间短的动作
We were doing an experiment when a fire started.
While he was watching the women, Jenner had an idea.
1. Complete these sentences with the correct past tense form of the verbs.
1) My brother was ________________ when he ________________ his leg in several places.
(snowboard / break).
2) Several years ago, I ________________ problems with chemistry, so I ________________ a
tutor to help me. (have / find)
3) While I ________________ in Scotland a few years ago, I ________________ I was on the
wrong side of the road. (drive / realize)
4) Joey ________________ a fascinating novel, but someone ________________ him the
ending. (read / tell)
5) While my mom ________________ dinner last night, her cell phone ________________
three times and then ________________. (cook / ring / stop)
2. Make sentences with the words given. The first one is an example.

1) I / run / start to snow. So …

I was running when it started to snow. So I ran faster!
2) I / wait for a bus/meet my boss. So . . .

3) I / watch TV / see my best friend! So . . .

4) I /walk home / find $5,000 in a bag. So . . .

5) We / travel by plane / a man with a gun stand up. So . . .

6) We / ride our bicycles / a cow walk across the road. So . . .

7) We / eat in a restaurant / see a mouse. So . . .

8) I / study in my room / hear loud music next door. So . . .