Engineers in Finland created the world’s first fully working “sand battery” 【小题1】 (recent).

If you have ever visited a beach on a hot day, you must know how hot the sand is. We also know that sand not only 【小题2】 (get) very hot, but also is quite good at keeping heat. With this knowledge, engineers built a seven-meter-high “battery” full 【小题3】 sand, about 100 tons!

Energy can be stored as heat by the sand. The sand heats up to around 500℃ and stays hot for 【小题4】 (month). That heat 【小题5】 (use) to make homes, offices or even swimming pools warm often. 【小题6】 (help) with climate change, countries are moving away from fossil fuels and using more green energy. Finding ways to store the green energy is very 【小题7】 (importance). Scientists are trying different ways 【小题8】 create “batteries”. Switzerland just finished creating a big “water battery”!

Whether it’s a traditional battery 【小题9】 one that uses sand or water, they can all help 【小题10】 (we) deal with climate change.

Today making a phone call is as common as having a glass of water. But when telephones 【小题1】 (invent) more than 130 years ago, people believed that they were 【小题2】 (danger).

In 1876, when 【小题3】 (one) telephone was demonstrated to the public, electricity was still new and little understood. Many people had died working with electricity in the early days. That’s the reason 【小题4】 most people did not easily accept that it was safe to hear a human voice through the phone.

But 【小题5】 the morning of March 10, 1876, Alexander Bell and his assistant Thomas Watson, had no such fears. Bell, and Watson had been trying to make their new invention--the telephone 【小题6】 (work). Bell 【小题7】 (send) his assistant to a room in the basement. In a room upstairs, the telephone inventor spoke seven little words into his invention. These simple words changed the world forever, “Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.”

The telephone was born in March 1876, but 【小题8】 took a few more years for it to get respect. Bell had to overcome the fears about electricity before people took his invention seriously. He 【小题9】 had to convince(使……相信) people there was a need for such a machine.

Today, we take telephones in agreement. But on that day in March 1876, there were only two telephones in 【小题10】 whole world.

Our world sure has changed, don’t you think so?

The top Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, famous for his “Super Rice ”, died of illness at the age of 91 【小题1】 May 22nd, 2021.

Yuan Longping was born in Beijing in 1930. For almost 60 years, he gave most of his time 【小题2】 energy to rice research. So far, the hybrid rice (杂交水稻) 【小题3】 (help) millions of people out of hunger all over the world. His achievements were so great 【小题4】 he was called “The Father of Hybrid Rice” and won World Food Prize. During his lifetime, Yuan Longping spent 【小题5】 (much) time in the farm field than in his office. People could often see him watching plants 【小题6】 (careful) and thinking of ways to improve them, just as many Chinese 【小题7】 (farmer) do.

Yuan once said he had 【小题8】 dream—to “enjoy the cool under the rice plants taller than men”. 【小题9】 a pity it is that he can’t continue his dream now! But surely, people believe that 【小题10】 (he) dream will come true in the near future.