Do you find bikes boring? Or growing tired of walking? Now you can "surf" the1on the new invention from Germany: Scrooser. It combines a bike and scooter (滑板车) in one!
Its design makes turning easy, so it feels2surfing. It can reach 25km per hour, which is as3as a bike. And one charge(充电) can last 25 days! Because it's powered by electricity, it's4for the environment.
People can operate the Scrooser easily. It's controlled by manpower and electricity. To first get it moving, the rider needs to push off with his5, like a scooter. After it reaches 3km per. hour, the electricity will take over and control the speed. What's more, you don't need a license to drive it around town. This6that it is OK for people of any age to use.
The maker, Jens Thieme,7the Scrooser as a "completely new vehicle type". You can stand8driving, like a scooter. But if you're feeling lazy, you can take a seat while you ride. The choice is yours.
After its9test, the Scrooser has been awarded a huge fund of $ 120，000. The company that made Scrooser hopes10it to the market soon, making it available to all of us. Could you be "surfing" to school on a Scrooser soon?
Scientists are always trying to find new green energy. Now, some scientists in Sweden have found one: the heat from our own bodies. They are putting together the heat that our bodies give off naturally, and using it to heat buildings.
In general, the temperature of the human body is about 36.8C and we are always giving off some heat because our bodies are usually much warmer than our environments around us. When many people get together, they can produce a lot of heat.
About 250,000 people pass through Stockholm Central Station each day.' Their bodies produce a lot of warm air. Usually, ventilator fans(换气扇) would guide this warm air to the outside of the station and it would be lost. But the Swedish scientists are using a piece of equipment to catch the warm air and guide it to heat underground water tanks (水箱). The warmed water from these tanks makes heat enter an office building about 60 metres away. As a result, the building's energy costs are down by 20%.
There are problems, of course. “It's very hard to move low-temperature heat very far," says Lester Lane of Carnegie Melon University. "You must be careful," he says," not to use more energy than you save when passing on the warmed water to another place.
The Swedish scientists say that, however, this is not a big problem and, after. all， they want to use body heat more to heat homes and other buildings. This would make energy cheaper and the environment better.
①The heat makes underground water tanks become warmer.
②The heat is passed on to enter an office building.
③Use a piece of equipment to collect our body heat.
Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple was one of the fathers of the personal computing time. Here are some of his greatest inventions.
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Apple Ⅱ Jobs and Wozniak founded Apple Computer Inc. in 1976. A year later, the Apple I was invented. This production was the world's first personal computer. |
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The iPad By 2010, Steve Jobs was confident the world was ready to have a tablet computer that would be great for watching movies And playing games. The iPad is a great success. |
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The iMac Under Jobo's leadership, (Apple introduced the all-in-one iMac computer in 1998. The iMac became the first machine，which offered only a CD-ROM slot(狭槽). |
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iPhone 4s The iPhone 4s came out on October 4, 2011，in America. It looks like the iPhone 4. It has a better camera. |
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Few of us have heard of Nils Bohlin, but whenever we take a car journey his invention makes us safer. Found in almost every modern car, the three- point seat belt reduces our chances of death or injury (伤害) by at least 50%. While feeling thankful to this engineer from Volvo, you may also wonder how he came up with such a great idea.
Having worked as a plane designer before, Nils knew clearly that the pilots were willing to put on anything to keep them safe in an accident, but to his surprise, most people in the cars just didn't want to be uncomfortable for even a minute. To improve the safety for people in the car, he decided to find a perfect system which should be simple, effective and convenient. In the end, he invented the three-point seat belt, which has been considered as one of the greatest inventions in history.
Seat belts prevent people in the cars from serious injury in five ways.
Keep people inside. People who are thrown out from a car are four times more likely to be killed than those who stay inside.
Protect the strongest parts of the body. Seat belts are designed to fix your body at its strongest parts. For an older child and adult, these parts are the hips (臀部) and shoulders.
Spread out the force in an accident. Seat belts spread the force of the accident over a wide area of the body. By putting less stress on one area, they can help you avoid serious injury. Seat belts also help keep your upper body away from the hard parts of the car if you stop suddenly or are hit by another car.
Help the body to slow down, A quick speed causes injury. With the help of the seat belts, your body can have more time to slow down in an accident.
Protect your brain and spinal cord (脊髓). Seat belts are designed to protect these two key areas of the human body. Head and spinal cord injuries may be hard to see immediately, but they can cause death. Therefore, it's of great importance to protect these parts.
It takes only a few seconds to buckle up (系好安全带) once you get in the car, but this simple action could save your life. Why wouldn't you?
Driven to see movies
Have you ever thought of a new idea that you would like to try? In the 1930s， a man named Richard Hollingshead did. He thought of an idea to bring together his two favourite interests: cars and movies. He wanted to start a business. .
Richard tested the idea in his driveway. First he put a machine called a movie projector (放映机) on his car. Then he put up a sheet (床单) between two trees. The sheet was like the white screen used in theatres. Richard played a movie on the screen using the movie projector. Next, Richard placed a radio behind the sheet. . He tried to test whether the sound could be heard from the car. He rolled his car windows up and down to find the best way to hear the movie. Finally, he tested whether a movie could be seen and heard in the rain. .
In 1933, he opened the first drive-in movie theatre. The theatre was as big as a football field. . The screen was 30 feet high and 40 feet wide. Speakers were placed next to the screen so the sound could be heard. Right away, the drive-in movie theatre became popular. The cost to see a movie was just 25 cents per person. By the 1950s, there were about 5,000 drive-in movie theatres. They remained popular until the television came along.
But people who live near the theatre still enjoy this fun activity. Today drive-in movie theatres give people the same joy as they did more than 80 years ago.
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A. Every test he tried was successful B. And it was big enough for about 400 cars C. Sound for the movie came from the radio D. People could watch movies from their cars E. Today there are fewer than 800 drive-in movie theatres |
Creator of e-mail makes use of "@" sign
Does your class use e-mail? Have you ever tried to write a story for our newspaper and send it in by e-mail? E-mail is used for everything, and it makes life easier. But do you know where e-mail came from?
The man who invented it was Ray Tomlinson, a US engineer. He died early last month at the age of 74.
Back in 1971, Tomlinson was working on something that could send messages from one computer to another. Tomlinson tried to find a way to separate users' name from the names of their computers. He needed some kind of symbol (符号). However, it couldn't be a popular one, and it couldn't be one that computers might know in a different context (语境). It also needed to be on keyboard at the same time. The "@" sign was there, and pretty much no one. used it. It was perfect.
“The '@' sign made the most sense," he told Wired in 2012.“It said where the user was... at." For example, by writing “Alex at 2lst Century Teens” you can send a message to somebody named Alex who works at 21st Century Teens. This was the early form of e-mail.
The interesting thing is that Tomlinson didn't remember what the very first test message he sent was. “Probably the first message was QWERTYUIOP or something like that," Yahoo reported, guessing the first row of letters on the keyboard.
Tomlinson, the father of e-mail, changed the way the world communicates and more importantly saved the symbol"@"
Today, the "@" symbol is finding new life outside of our inboxes (收件箱)，Most famously, social media like weibo and WeChat use it at the beginning of user names. So even if we don't use e-mail some day, Tomlinson's contribution (贡献) will certainly live on.
