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
- state
- skills
- audacity
- sputnik
- western
- 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
- amount
- audacity
- blame
- called
- caught
- child
- fire
- funding
- generation
- hold
- hysterical
- job
- kids
- launch
- lovely
- mathematics
- meetings
- money
- normal
- peers
- primitive
- product
- reproduce
- satellite
- science
- scientific
- skills
- soviet
- sputnik
- state
- tailspin
- talk
- tiny
- tremendous
- union
- western
- work
- world