Reading: two inventions that rewrote the laboratory
Reading comprehension. Read the passage carefully, then answer the questions.
Modern laboratories depend on machines that extend the human eye. In the twentieth century, James Hillier helped invent the electron microscope. Unlike the older optical microscope, this invention could magnify objects thousands of times their actual size, so researchers could examine structures that light alone could not reveal. Around the same period of scientific ambition, Ahmed H. Zewail pioneered a rapid laser technique that shows molecules inside atoms during chemical reactions. His work turned chemistry into a kind of slow-motion replay of events that last only femtoseconds.
These stories matter beyond the laboratory. Every invention begins as a plan, then becomes an apparatus — a machine dedicated to a precise task. Today, digital records, internet archives and search engines make older research easier to find, yet the core idea remains: technology is only as useful as the careful mind that designs and checks it. Students who study invention should notice both the tool and the method: observation, measurement, and the courage to improve what already exists.
1. True or false? Write T or F and justify with a short quotation from the text.
- Hillier’s invention is presented as an improvement on the optical microscope.
- Zewail’s laser technique is described as lasting for several hours per experiment.
- The passage claims that technology is useful even without careful human design.
2. Answer the questions.
- According to paragraph 1, what could the electron microscope do that ordinary light microscopes could not?
- Name two modern tools, mentioned in paragraph 2, that help researchers find older studies.
3. Vocabulary. Find in the text words or short phrases that mean:
- a device / piece of equipment (one word) → __________
- to invent something completely new or lead the way → __________
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1. True / false with justification
1. T — “Unlike the older optical microscope, this invention could magnify objects thousands of times…”
2. F — The text links his work to events that last only femtoseconds / a slow-motion replay, not multi-hour laser sessions.
3. F — “technology is only as useful as the careful mind that designs and checks it.”
2. Comprehension
1. It could examine / reveal structures that light alone could not reveal (by magnifying objects thousands of times).
2. Digital records, internet archives and/or search engines (any two).
3. Vocabulary
1. machine (or apparatus)
2. pioneered (also accepted: invent / helped invent if the learner points to the matching sentence)
Method: For true/false, find the idea first, then copy a short phrase that proves T or F. Do not add laboratory details from memory that the passage does not contain.