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Maria curie

(1867—1934)

Maria Curie was born in Warsaw on the 7th of November 1867. Her father was a teacher of science and mathematics in a school in the town, and from him little Maria Sklodovska — which was her Polish name — learnt her first lessons in science. Maria wanted to study at the Sorbonne in Paris, and after many years of waiting she finally left her native land for Paris in 1891.

In Paris Maria began a course of hard study and simple living. She determined to work for two Master's degrees - one in physics, the other in mathematics. So she had to work twice as hard as any other student. Yet she did not have enough money to live on, and soon her strength was weakened, because she had no proper food and warmth.

A French physicist, Henry Becquerel discovered that a metal called uranium gave off a kind of radiation, which later Maria Curie called radioactivity. But where did this radiation come from and what was it like? Here was a secret of nature which she decided to discover. She made experiments.

Text 2 (14) Read the text without a dictionary and retell it in English or in Ukrainian: yuri gagarin

It was on the 12th of April 1961, when the first flight by man into cosmic space took place. Yuri Gagarin, the first cosmonaut in the world, was a 27-year old Air Force pilot at that lime.

The spaceship flew at the speed of 300 miles a minute. That's six times faster than man ever travelled before. His flight lasted 108 minutes, but a circuit round the Earth took 89 minutes.

It was a brilliant achievement on the part of the Soviet scientists and technologists, and on the part of Yuri Gagarin who risked his life to achieve a victory for his country and mankind.

This is what Yuri Gagarin said at his press-conference: "On my flight the 'day' side of the Earth was clearly seen: the continents, islands, seas, and big rivers.

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Mayflower

If you go to New Plymouth, a small town in the United States of America, you will see there a rock which reaches the sea. Many thousands of people from different parts of the United States and from many other countries in the world come to this small town and they always go to see the Rock. They take off their hats, stand there and think about the brave men and women who, more than three hundred years ago, were standing on this Rock and looking at the country where they had come to begin a new life.

They had built a small village there, and American people say that out of this small village grew a big country—the United States of America.

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Discovery of volta

In the beginning of the year 1800 Volta made the first electric battery. He made it of copper and zinc disks which he placed alternately. Above each pair of disks he placed a piece of wet cloth

This first battery was a form of “dry battery”.

Later Volta made a wet battery. Thus Volta showed that by bringing two different metals into contact he could produce an electrical charge. He discovered by experiments that if he placed copper and zinc in sulphuric acid, he could produce a continuous flow of electricity.

He discovered the electric current and with this discovery a new era began in electric inventions.