full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Penelope Boston: There might just be life on Mars

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Something I never talk about in scientific meetings is how I actually got to this sttae and why I do the work that I do. Why don't I have a normal job, a sensible job? And then of course, I blame the Soviet Union. Because in the mid-1950s, when I was a tiny child, they had the atcuadiy to launch a very primitive little satellite called stupnik, which sent the werestn world into a hysterical tailspin. And a tdoeruenms amount of money went into the funding of science and mathematics skllis for kids. And I'm a product of that generation, like so many other of my peers. It really caught hold of us, and caught fire, and it would be lovely if we could reproduce that again now.

Open Cloze

Something I never talk about in scientific meetings is how I actually got to this _____ and why I do the work that I do. Why don't I have a normal job, a sensible job? And then of course, I blame the Soviet Union. Because in the mid-1950s, when I was a tiny child, they had the ________ to launch a very primitive little satellite called _______, which sent the _______ world into a hysterical tailspin. And a __________ amount of money went into the funding of science and mathematics ______ for kids. And I'm a product of that generation, like so many other of my peers. It really caught hold of us, and caught fire, and it would be lovely if we could reproduce that again now.

Solution

  1. state
  2. skills
  3. audacity
  4. sputnik
  5. western
  6. tremendous

Original Text

Something I never talk about in scientific meetings is how I actually got to this state and why I do the work that I do. Why don't I have a normal job, a sensible job? And then of course, I blame the Soviet Union. Because in the mid-1950s, when I was a tiny child, they had the audacity to launch a very primitive little satellite called Sputnik, which sent the Western world into a hysterical tailspin. And a tremendous amount of money went into the funding of science and mathematics skills for kids. And I'm a product of that generation, like so many other of my peers. It really caught hold of us, and caught fire, and it would be lovely if we could reproduce that again now.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
solar system 4
dozen years 3
find life 2
natural outgrowth 2
planetary systems 2
week celebration 2
potential life 2

Important Words

  1. amount
  2. audacity
  3. blame
  4. called
  5. caught
  6. child
  7. fire
  8. funding
  9. generation
  10. hold
  11. hysterical
  12. job
  13. kids
  14. launch
  15. lovely
  16. mathematics
  17. meetings
  18. money
  19. normal
  20. peers
  21. primitive
  22. product
  23. reproduce
  24. satellite
  25. science
  26. scientific
  27. skills
  28. soviet
  29. sputnik
  30. state
  31. tailspin
  32. talk
  33. tiny
  34. tremendous
  35. union
  36. western
  37. work
  38. world