最新中学生百科英语2Word文档下载推荐.docx

1、03 Pencils and Pens04 The Umbrella05 The Metric System06 Thai Boxing07 Sumo Wrestling08 Tarahumara Foot Races09 Olympic Sports10 Great athletes11 The Puffer Fish12 Foods from Around the World13 Chocolate14 The Blue Revolution15 Twenty-One Days Without Food16 The Marie Celeste17 The Roanoke Settlemen

2、t18 The Easter Island Statues19 The Tunguska Fireball20 Mystery of the Monarchs21 The History of Money22 Mass Marketing23 Inflation24 Doing Business Around the World25 Credit Cards1 The ZipperThe zipper is a wonderful invention. How did people ever live without zippers?They are very common, so we fo

3、rget that they are wonderful. They are very strong, but they open and close very easily. They come in many colors and sizes.In the 1890s, people in the United States wore high shoes with a long row of buttons. Clothes often had rows of buttons, too. People wished that clothes were easier to put on a

4、nd take off.Whitcomb L. Judson, an engineer from the United States, invented the zipper in 1893. However, his zippers didnt stay closed very well. This was embarrassing, and people didnt buy many of them. Then Dr. Gideon Sundback from Sweden solved this problem. His zipper stayed closed.A zipper has

5、 three parts: 1. There are dozens of metal or plastic hooks （called teeth） in two rows. 2. These hooks are fastened to two strips of cloth. The cloth strips are flexible. They bend easily. 3. A fastener slides along and joins the hooks together.When it slides the other way, it takes the hooks apart.

6、Dr. Sundback put the hooks on strips of cloth. The cloth holds all the hooks in place. They dont come apart very easily. This solved the problem of the first zippers.（212 words）2 The Postage StampBefore the invention of the postage stamp, it was difficult to send a letter to another country. The sen

7、der paid for the letter to travel in his or her own country.Then the person in the other country paid for the rest of the trip. If a letter crossed several countries, the problem was worse.Rowland Hill, a British teacher, had the idea of a postage stamp with glue on the back. The British post office

8、 made the first stamps in 1840. They were the Penny Black and the Twopence Blue. A person bought a stamp and put it on a letter. The post office delivered the letter. When people received letters, they didnt have to pay anything. The postage was prepaid.Postage stamps became popular in Great Britain

9、 immediately. Other countries started making their own postage stamps very quickly.There were still problems with international mail. Some countries did not want to accept letters with stamps from other countries. Finally, in 1874, a German organized the Universal Postal Union （UPU）. Each country in

10、 the UPU agreed to accept letters with prepaid postage from the other members. Today, the offices of the UPU are in Switzerland. Almost every country in the world is a member of this organization. It takes care of any international mail problems.Today, post offices in every country sell beautiful st

11、amps. Collecting stamps is one of the most popular hobbies in the world, and every stamp collector knows about the Penny Black and the Twopence Blue.（250 words）3 Pencils and PensNo one knows who invented pencils or when it happened. A Swiss described a pencil in a book in 1565. He said it was a piec

12、e of wood with lead inside it. （Lead is a very heavy, soft, dark gray metal.） Pencils werent popular, and people continued to write with pens. They used bird feathers as pens.Then, in 1795, someone started making pencils from graphite, and they became very popular. Graphite is like coal. （Coal is bl

13、ack, and we burn it for heat and energy.） Today, people make pencils in the same way. They grind the graphite, make it into the shape of a stick, and bake it. Then they put it inside a piece of wood. One pencil can write 50,000 English words or make a line 55 kilometers long.People wrote with feathe

14、r pens and then used pens with metal points. They had to dip the point into ink after every few letters. Next, someone invented a fountain pen that could hold ink inside it. A fountain pen can write several pages before you have to fill it again.Two Hungarian brothers, Ladislao and Georg Biro, inven

15、ted the ballpoint pen.They left Hungary and started making ballpoint pens in England in 1943, during World War II. English pilots liked the pens. They couldnt write with fountain pens in airplanes because the ink leaked out. Later, a French company called Bic bought the Biros company.Some people cal

16、l ballpoint pens Bics. Australians call them biros. Whatever we call them, we use them every day.（256 words）4 The UmbrellaThe umbrella is a very ordinary object. It keeps the rain and the sun off people.Most umbrellas fold up, so it is easy to carry them.However, the umbrella has not always been an ordinary