H O UG H T O N MIF F L IN by Christine Forrest PHOTOGRAPHY CREDITS: Cover © Dorling Kindersley © Artville © Shutterstock (t) © JUPITERIMAGES/ Creatas/ Alamy (b) © Brand X Pictures © Judith Collins/Alamy (t) © Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy (b) © Shutterstock © Sue Bennett/Alamy (t) © Artville (b) © www.imagesource.com (t) Trip/Alamy (b) ©1995 PhotoDisc, Inc All rights reserved Images ©1995 CMCD, Inc © Dorling Kindersley 10 © Christina Kennedy/Alamy Copyright © by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company All rights reserved No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal copyright law Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be addressed to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt School Publishers, Attn: Permissions, 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777 Printed in China ISBN-13: 978-0-547-02135-5 ISBN-10: 0-547-02135-6 0940 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 If you have received these materials as examination copies free of charge, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt School Publishers retains title to the materials and they may not be resold Resale of examination copies is strictly prohibited Possession of this publication in print format does not entitle users to convert this publication, or any portion of it, into electronic format Introduction Imagine this scene: The telephone rings You answer it The call is for your mom, but she’s out You grab a pencil from the plastic pencil holder You write the message on a piece of paper After you leave the note on the desk, you zip up your jacket and head out the door The telephone is one of the most popular inventions ever made Inventions are all around us Maybe that scene once happened to you Did you stop to think about all of the gadgets you used? The telephone? The zipper? Those things are inventions We use many inventions every day Let’s find out about some Their stories may surprise you Often it took someone many tries before they came up with the inventions we use today Plastic Plastic is over one hundred years old An English scientist cut himself He looked in his medicine cabinet for something to stop the bleeding He saw a tough, rubbery substance there He had an idea He worked on the materials in his laboratory Soon he had created a new material that we know today as plastic Over the years, other scientists worked to make plastic better Today, plastic is everywhere Today many products are made from recycled plastic Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone made it possible for us to have radios and cell phones The Telephone “Mr Watson—come here—I want to see you.” Those simple words changed history How? Those were the first words spoken on the telephone Alexander Graham Bell spoke them in 1876 Bell found a way to send the sound of a voice over wires The sounds turned into electric signals This led to the first telephone Today paper is made in factories Paper Paper is one of the oldest inventions The ancient Egyptians made a kind of paper over 3,000 years ago They used a plant called papyrus That is where we get the word paper Long ago, paper was not cheap, so only the rich used it There were no ways to erase mistakes Only scribes, people with special training, learned to write on paper The Pencil Pencils are a very old invention Long ago, people found a rock that made dark marks on paper The rock was graphite But there was a problem writing with these rocks Graphite breaks very easily So what was the answer? About 400 years ago, a clever person in Germany thought of putting the graphite into wooden tubes The first pencil was made Did you know… A normal pencil can write up to 45,000 words? That’s a lot of writing! The rubber used to make erasers and other things comes from the rubber tree The Eraser The eraser was not invented at the same time as the first pencil People used to erase pencil marks with pieces of bread What a mess! Then an explorer found people in South America using rubber He brought it back to Europe The rubber could erase pencil marks These first erasers were called rubber because they rubbed out pencil marks The Zipper There are many stories about how inventors created the zipper One is about an inventor who had a friend with a bad back The friend could not tie his shoes The inventor used his genius, and after many experiments, made a sliding fastener It could open and close the man’s shoes It led to our modern zipper Today zippers are on many items, from coats to luggage to backpacks The word zipper comes from the sound that the fastener makes Conclusion Every day you use inventions Some inventions have occasional uses, and others are used every day Inventions make life better for all of us Do you have an idea for something new? Stick with it Maybe someday you will invent an exciting and useful new thing, too Maybe you will be the next great inventor 10 Responding Word Builder Make a chart listing some inventions that you know about Name the invention Tell what the invention is used for Then write whether you use it often, sometimes, or never TARGET VOCABULARY Inventions Use How Often I Use It telephone ? ? to communicate ? ? often ? ? Write About It Text to Self Write a paragraph about an invention that you think is important Choose one of the inventions from your chart Tell who invented it, how it is used, and why it is important to you 11 TARGET VOCABULARY electric experiment gadget genius invention laboratory occasional signal Summarize Tell the important parts of the text in your own words TARGET STRATEGY Which word has a short nickname? 12 Level: N DRA: 34 Science Strategy: Summarize Word Count: 641 3.2.10 Build Vocabulary HOUGHTON MIFFLIN Online Leveled Books ISBN-13: 978-0-547-02135-5 ISBN-10: 0-547-02135-6 1032021 ... popular inventions ever made Inventions are all around us Maybe that scene once happened to you Did you stop to think about all of the gadgets you used? The telephone? The zipper? Those things are inventions. .. sound that the fastener makes Conclusion Every day you use inventions Some inventions have occasional uses, and others are used every day Inventions make life better for all of us Do you have an... are inventions We use many inventions every day Let’s find out about some Their stories may surprise you Often it took someone many tries before they came up with the inventions we use today Plastic