I have invented (发明) robots to make the cars work better. My love of making things began when I was a kid after I learned about Thomas Edison.

One day in the fourth grade, our teacher gave us a project in class. We had to write to a company and learn about the products (产品) . I thought and thought. 【小题1】 Soon after, the company sent me a book about the life of Thomas Edison. 【小题2】 I like the recorded sound and the electric light most. The inventions were clearly printed on my brain.

【小题3】 He showed me how to turn my ideas into plans and then into new things. Once, I surprised my dad with a model plane I made. Later, we found a similar (相似的) model plane in a store. I learned that different inventors often invented similar things. 【小题4】 I also learned that not all great ideas would succeed. Failure (失败) was a common part of the inventing.

As my father and I worked together, I began to realize that my dad was quite an inventor himself. 【小题5】 His guiding hands led me to become an engineer and an inventor.

The biggest secret about inventing is that anybody can do it! Perhaps this sounds crazy，but it's true.Maybe you have the wrong idea about inventing，so read on to discover the truth.

★Wrong idea No 1：An invention has to be something completely new.

Inventing means creating something “new”，but the idea could come from something that already exists(存在)．The Wright Brothers，for example，got the idea for building a “flying machine” from watching birds.

★Wrong idea No.2：Inventors are born，not made.

There are a lot of factors(因素) that make invention possible.Take Mozart for an example.He was born with a talent for musical composition.But other factors were also important for his creativity.His father was a music teacher，and Mozart practised for hours every day，from the time he was four years old.Thomas Edison said that being an inventor was “99%                           hard work and 1% inspiration”！

Very successful creators don't give up when they get something wrong.As one inventor said，“A failure was the right answer to the wrong question.”

★Wrong idea No.3：Inventors are always old people.

Don't believe that you can't invent something when you are young.Here are two examples of young inventors：Louis Braille went blind when he was a child.When he was fifteen，he invented a system of reading and writing for blind people that is still used in most countries today.

As a young man，George Nissen was watching some artists performing in a show.He watched how they fell into the safety net and then jumped back up again. This gave him an idea，and he invented the trampoline.

We all know that foods will easily go bad if they get too warm. So we usually put them into our fridges to keep cool in hot weather. But can you make it without fridges?

In 1995，Abba，a teacher from Nigeria，found a cool way. His invention was called Pot-in-Pot Cooling System.

It uses two clay pots (陶罐). There is a smaller pot inside a lager one. The space between the two pots is filled with wet sand. Some foods can be kept fresh for several weeks in it.

Abba built five thousand pot-in-pot systems for the villagers in his hometown. Then people all over the country began using the invention. Soon it became popular with farmers in other African countries.

In 2000, Abba got a prize--the Rolex Award. If you are trying to do something to improve human life，you may have the chance to get this prize.