课时跟踪练(一) Introduction & Reading - Pre reading

　　Ⅰ.阅读理解

　　A

　　A home science experiment recently took_the_world_by_storm. Two teens from Toronto, in Canada, sent a Lego man rising above the Earth and captured their tiny astronaut's trip on film.

　　Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad, both 17, used a weather balloon to launch their plastic lego model 16 miles above the Earth. This is inside a part of Earth's atmosphere.

　　The two teens were inspired by a similar project performed by students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The MIT students had launched a weather balloon with a camera into near space and taken many unusual images of the Earth. Mathew and Asad then spent four months figuring out how to launch their own spacecraft into the space.

　　Traveling to space is expensive for NASA, but Mathew and Asad worked hard to keep their costs down. They bought much of their equipment used and even sewed the Lego man's parachute (降落伞) by hand. In total, the project cost only $400.

　　"We had a lot of anxiety on launch day because there were high winds when we were going up，" Mathew told reporters. They had to pump extra helium (氦) into the balloon so that it would rise quickly and avoid being blown too far off course by the strong winds.

　　The toy astronaut's journey lasted 97 minutes before the balloon broke and he fell back to Earth. Mathew and Asad then spent two weekends looking for their spacecraft. It had landed 76 miles away from the launch site.

　　The student scientists are currently finishing up their final year of high school and applying for colleges. They are also looking into more do­it­yourself space projects.

　　"I guess the sky is not really the limit anymore，" Mathew told reporters. "We never knew we'd get this far. It's been a lesson for us that hard work pays off."

　　语篇解读：本文主要介绍了两个青少年利用气象气球把他们的玩具乐高人送到太空的过程和结果。

　　1．By saying "took the world by storm" in the first paragraph, the writer meant the experiment ________.

　　A．destroyed the world

　　B．flooded the world

　　C．fascinated the world

　　D．managed the world

解析：选C　词义猜测题。根据第一段的第二句话可知两个青少年把一个玩具乐高人