Activity 27 .Origin of Popular Inventions
Activity 27 .Origin of Popular Inventions
Activity 27 .Origin of Popular Inventions
Elemento de Competencia:
Establecer las diferencias y similitudes entre el desarrollo científico y tecnológico en
Inglaterra, Estados Unidos y México de manera integral a través de una reflexión
crítica y responsable identificando las aportaciones científicas y tecnológicas que
cada país ha hecho para mejorar las condiciones de la vida diaria.
A) Choose from the inventions given the five things that you think were
invented by a Mexican. Inventions and write the inventors
A) Write 7 Inventions from the United Kingdom and the United States of America
B) Now write a short text about advantages that one of these inventions brought to
the world. Take 10-15 minutes to do this task.
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The Telephone
Penicillin
Stamps
Radar
Steam engine
James Watt was a Scottish inventor whose work played an important part
in the development of the steam engine in 1774. His designs for engines
improved on those in existence at the time because they used much less
fuel. Watt’s engines were the first to be suitable for use in factories and
were therefore one of the major advances in industry that led to the
Industrial Revolution.
Charles Darwin
the US, interpret the Bible account literally and believe that only creationism, also called
creation science, should be taught in schools.
Richard Trevithick was an English engineer who was the first man to
develop steam engines into vehicles carrying passengers. The first of
these were to be used on roads, but in 1804 he built the first steam
engine that moved on rails.
Barnes Wallis was an English engineer. He designed some of the most important aircraft
and weapons of World War II, including the Wellington and Wellesley bombers and a
bouncing bomb used to destroy dams. After the war he invented the ‘swing-wing’ aircraft
and helped to design Concorde.
William Thomson was a British physicist and inventor. He did much work on the laws of
thermodynamics and in 1848 produced a temperature scale that
later became known as the Kelvin Scale. He also did important
work in the areas of magnetism and electricity. He invented many
scientific instruments, especially for use at sea, and was involved
in the laying of the first cable under the Atlantic.
Dorothy Hodgkin was an English scientist who did important work on the structure of
crystals. She discovered the structure of penicillin, vitamin B12 and insulin. In 1964 she
received the Nobel Prize for chemistry.
new planet to be identified since ancient times, and proved the existence of double stars
after becoming the official astronomer to King George III.
Edmond Halley was an English astronomer and mathematician who was a close friend of
Isaac Newton. He is best remembered for Halley’s Comet, which was named after him.
A comet is a bright object that moves through space round the sun with a tail of burning
gas and dust. Halley correctly predicted that this one would return regularly to be seen in
the night sky approximately every 76 years.
Rowland Hill was a British Post Office worker who invented the
postage stamp, originally costing one penny. Before this, postage was
paid by the person receiving a letter or parcel. Hill was made a knight
in 1860.
Jane Goodall is remembered as a British scientist who became famous for her study of
chimpanzees. She discovered that these animals can use tools. Before her studies,
people thought that these animals could not use tools. Before her studies, people thought
that only humans understood how to make and use tools with their hands. At the age of
23, she met Dr. Louis Leakey on a trip to Africa and became his assistant. Then she went
to Gombe National Park in Tanzania in 1960. She lived and worked there studying how
chimpanzees live. She has won many prizes for her work and in 1977 she started the
Jane Goodall Institute for Wildlife Research, Education and Conservation. She was made
a dame in 2004.
JJ Thomson was an English physicist who won the Nobel Prize for
physics in 1906 for discovering the electron. He was also
responsible for running the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge,
England, which became the world’s leading center for research into
atomic physics. His son George Thomson (1892-1975) and seven of
his assistants all won Nobel Prizes.
Activity 30.
A) Write about an invention that you consider is the best invention ever, it does not
matter its nationality. Use the next key words (Helped, brought, improved, today,
invention, design, idea). Write more than 100 words in your text.
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Camera
Light Bulb
Airplane
Revolver
Cell phone
Richard Feynman (1918-88) was a US Physicist who began the first research into
quantum electrodynamics. He shared the 1965 Nobel Prize for physics for his work in this
field. His Feynman diagrams help to explain the behavior of substances and light during
World War II, Feynman Worked on the Manhattan Project. In 1986, he was a member of
the Committee that investigated the explosion of the Challenger Spacecraft.
R Buckminster Fuller was an engineer from US and inventor of devices and buildings
that made the most efficient use of materials. His best-known
inventions include the geodesic dome and the Dymaxion House.
Fuller also created the idea of ‘Spaceship Earth’ which imagines all
people on earth as travelers together through space. He was
awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1983.
University in 1934, and he spent the rest of his life looking, without success, for a theory
that combined those of gravitation and electromagnetism. In 1952 he was offered the
presidency, the position of president of the state of Israel, but he did not accept it.
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Dolby is an electronic system that reduces noise to improve the sound
of tape recordings, films, etc. It was invented in London by Ray Dolby
(1933-), a recording engineer born in the US.
Bill Gates is a US businessman who, in association with Paul Allen, started the
Microsoft Corporation when he was only 19 on April 4th, 1975. Microsoft is a company
dedicated to the computer industry and it is established in Redmond Washington, USA.
Microsoft was the creator of the operating system windows. This product is being used
as Microsoft Windows operating system. He is thought to be the richest person in the
world. His foundation called Gates Foundation, gives money to educational and health
projects. He was made an honorary knight by the British government in 2005.
Larry Page & Sergey Brin (Google Funders) were two doctoral students in computer
from Stanford University who improved searches. Coordination and advice were due to
Mexican Hector Garcia Molina on September 4th, 1998. They had a server with 80 CPUs
and two HP routers. This search engine beat a more popular time Altavista, which was
created in 1995.
An invention can be patented only if it is new, if it has an inventive step that is not
obvious to someone with knowledge and experience in the subject and if it has the
capacity of being made or used in some kind of industry.
A) If it were possible, what would you invent in order to improve quality of life?
Describe you invention by giving it a name, mentioning the characteristics, its
benefits and the country where you would patent it. Use more than 100 words in
your text.
Invention:
Characteristics:
Benefits:
Find more Information about Mexican Inventions. Write 30 words about each
invention. (Do not repeat the inventions mentioned before). Take 40 minutes to do
this task.
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5.