Here's an amazing way to get a hard-boiled egg into a bottle, even though the mouth of the boiled is smaller than the egg! What's more, you don't even need to touch the egg to get it to go in! For this experiment you will need: *a hard-boiled egg *a glass bottle with a mouth just slightly smaller than the egg (a fruit-drink bottle works well) *a 8-cm by 8-cm(3-inch by 3-inch)piece of newspaper *a match Remove the shell from the egg. Set the egg on the mouth of the bottle to see that the egg does not fit through the mouth. Light the paper. Remove the egg from the mouth of the bottle and drop the burning paper into the bottle. Before the fire goes out, set the egg back onto the mouth of the bottle. Within a few seconds the egg will squeeze  through the mouth and into the bottle. As it entered the bottle, the egg may have broken into pieces. This happens when the diameter  of the egg is more than about 0.5 cm(about 3/16 inch) larger than the diameter of the bottle's opening. Why does the egg slide into the bottle, even though no one is pushing it? Because the pressure of the air is pushing it. Before the burning paper is put into the bottle, the pressure of the air inside is the same as outside. The burning paper, however, heats the air inside. This causes the air inside to expand. When the egg is placed on top of the bottle, it seals  the bottle. When the fire goes out, the air inside cools. As it cools, the air contracts , and the pressure of the air inside becomes less than the pressure outside. Then, the higher outside pressure pushes the egg into the bottle! Why will the egg break into pieces while entering the bottle? A) Because of the burning paper. B) Because the diameter of the egg is too larger than that of the bottles opening. C) Because it is cool inside the bottle. D) Because the pressure of the air inside is larger.
B


(Question)
Almost a decade ago, the federal government dropped $10 million for an Earth-monitoring satellite that never made it into space. Today it sits in a closet in Maryland. Cost to taxpayers for storing it: $1 million a year. And _ . Who knows what's in the rest of them? Because we think the government should be held to at least the same standards as a publicly traded company, and because as taxpayers, we're America's shareholders, we performed an audit  of sorts of the federal books. We're not economists, but we do have common sense. We tried to get help from Congressional staffers from both parties, as well as various watchdog groups and agencies. In the end, we found that the federal government wastes nearly $1 trillion every year. That's roughly equal to the amount collected annually by the Internal Revenue Service in personal income taxes. Put another way, it's also equal to about one-third of the country's $2.9 trillion total annual budget. And reclaiming that lost trillion could help wipe out the country's annual budget deficit , improve education, and provide health insurance for those who don't have it. So how do you define "waste"? David Walker of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), a federal watchdog agency, calls it "the government's failure to give taxpayers the most for their money." For our part, we used the kind of household test you would use on a piece of meat sitting in your refrigerator: If it smells rotten, it's waste. Our government regularly pays for products and services it never gets, wildly overpays companies to do things it could do more cheaply itself, loses money outright due to lax accounting and oversight, and spends money randomly on unnecessary programs. How exactly does the federal government waste your hard-earned tax dollars? We've identified what we consider ten of the worst ways. The best title for the passage would be  _  . A) Protecting Our Rights! B) Our Country Is In Danger! C) The Government Is Wasting Our Tax Dollars! D) How to Prevent Government from Wasting Money!
(Answer)
C


Ques: Like many other places in the world, recently, Indiana education officials decided that the schools of the state will not be required to teach handwriting skills to students any longer. Instead, they will focus their energies on teaching students how to type. Is handwriting still an important skill? An online survey received some surprising responses. Handwriting is not necessary. Students only need to know how to read it, and the only time that they must write something is to make a signature. Why stress them more than they need to be stressed? We already put so much pressure on them to perform on state tests. --Rita Children don't write letters now. They send e-mails or text messages. A lot of those old ways are going away. How many bills do you pay by writing a check anymore? --Brown Although my son is not comfortable with writing, I bought a workbook for him to practice his handwriting. Can you imagine being an adult and not being able to sign a document? --Susan What a shame! I guess one day it will be a lost art, because handwriting is that personal and beautiful. It has personality --Anna The school where I worked dropped handwriting several years ago. Unless the students have computers in class, they will not be able to take notes at high speed. I have to speak very slowly and stop after a sentence or two because many students write very slowly. --Helen The same thing happened here in Tennessee this past year. I think it's a shame. I just received a handwritten letter from my stepmother and it meant that she spent time sitting and writing. Such a letter brought me a good feeling. --Kathy Children should still learn writing, for the sake of having a skill that all people can communicate with. I certainly appreciate a handwritten note of thanks or news from my children and grandchildren. --Ruth In Kathy's opinion, in a way, handwriting  _  . A) Could work as a feeling connection B) Was her stepmother's favorite C) Was completely dropped in Tennessee D) Brought much fun to her family
Ans: A


A 13-year-old Shenzhen girl has written a novel about life in junior high school, and the book is expected to hit the city's bookshelves in June, the Shenzhen Economic Dailyreported on Thursday. "A Fresh Summer Day," a 180,000-character novel which Zhao Yue completed writing in three months, is in fact Zhao's second published book. Her first book, "A Better Present," is a collection of the articles she wrote when she was still a primary school student. Zhao is a Junior One student of a middle school in Longgang District. She started writing the novel after her first book was published. "I was very much motivated  to write a new book when I saw many of my schoolmates reading my first book," said Zhao. She added that she wrote most of the novel at night, sometimes until the early hours of the morning. "I attended school as usual during the three months of writing. I felt all right every day even though I slept for only four hours a day," said the girl. "A Fresh Summer Day" is about puppy love between two junior high school students, which is becoming very common among young children, the paper said. AShenzhen Economic Daily reporter who read the draft of Zhao's story said the plot  develops smoothly and naturally, while the descriptions of the characters' feelings are true. Zhao said the story was based on interviews she carried with some of her fellow students, "I myself don't have such a story to tell yet." Zhao has loved writing since early childhood. When Zhao Yue wrote the second novel, she   _  . A) spent most of her day writing B) found it hard to keep awake in class C) stayed up for three months D) got up early every day

C