阅读理解

B

    Animals grow up in different ways. Some newborn animals are helpless but their mothers protect them. A newborn kangaroo is very small. It is only a few centimeters(cm) long. It closes its eyes and doesn't have hair. It stays safe in its mother' s pouch(育儿袋) for a long time.A newborn monkey can not walk. Its mother carries it everywhere.

Other baby animals can walk soon after they're born. They learn to run with their mothers when danger is near. A baby zebra can run, an hour after it is born.

    Some baby animals are born in a place that is safe. Baby wolves are usually born in big holes with little light. Other baby animals are born in the open. A baby elephant is often born on open land.

    Animals that drink their mothers' milk are called mammals. A mother bear's milk is rich. Baby bears have milk for a few months. This is the same with baby zebras. As baby animals grow, they need solid(固体) food. Baby lions eat what their mother can catch!

    Benjamin Banneker was born a few months before another great American—George Washington. Benjamin was black, but he was not a slave (奴隶). He and his mother and his grandmother were free. Benjamin's grandmother came from England. In America she got a job and worked for many years to pay for her boat trip across the ocean. After working many years, she saved enough money to buy a farm. Benjamin lived with her for a while. She taught him to read, write and do arithmetic (算术).

    Benjamin's neighbours knew that he was clever. They were not surprised when he built a large wooden clock. He made each piece after studying a small pocket watch. The clock made him famous, for it was one of the first clocks built in America. People from other places began to send hard problems of all kinds to Benjamin to settle.

    Thomas Jefferson heard of Benjamin Banneker's ability to settle hard problems. He asked Banneker to help build the city that was to be the capital of the United States—Washington, D.C. Banneker worked hard on the plans for the city. He marked where the streets and buildings—the Capitol (美国国会大厦), the White House, and many other places should be built.

    Later, L' Enfant, the Frenchman who had designed the new city, had a quarrel, and went back to France in anger. He took all of the plans away. The workmen couldn't build without any plans to follow.

    For a while it seemed that the plans for the capital might have to be changed, but Benjamin Banneker remembered the plans he had helped draw. He drew each again as he had built each piece of his clock.

    If it weren't for Benjamin Banneker, Washington,

    D.C might look very different from the way it does today.

Every year，TIME magazine puts out its list of best inventions. They change how we live，work

Do you know this place of interest? It is Guqintai (古琴台) in Hubei. It is in memory of (为了纪念) Yu Boya. 

Yu Boya is good at music and he is famous for (因. . . 而出名) playing the qin. But he is always unhappy because he thinks no one can understand his music. On the night of one Mid-Autumn Festival, Yu is playing the qin on a boat. When he finishes playing it, he hears someone's word, "I can feel high mountains and running water in your music. " It comes from a man, Zhong Ziqi. Yu invites him to the boat, and talks about music with him. He is quite surprised at Zhong's deep understanding, and he thinks Zhong is his "zhi yin". When Zhong leaves the world, Yu breaks his qin. Nobody will understand his music, Yu thinks. 

From then on, when people meet a true friend, they say they meet a "zhi yin". 

The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The National Air and Space Museum in Washington. And the German Historical Museum in Berlin.

 And those are only part of the list. 

 Children from more than 180, 000 families in China can now go on virtual(虚拟的) tours of ten world-famous museums. The programs provide video clips, cartoons and commentary(实时解说) by Chinese experts. The shows are produced by Aha School, an education company. The families each pay 15 yuan to watch. The company also gives away the programs to 174 rural(乡村的) classrooms. 

 Ma Xiaoyan is a teacher in Sichuan. He says the children there are very poor. They have never visited a museum. For some of them, even going to the closest town is difficult. 

 Educators are excited about the museum project. It shows how live streaming(在线直播) can help improve rural education. The technology is already widely popular on social media. However, it was not until recently that it had been used for education. 

 Aha School is not alone. A few urban schools in China have also begun sharing their lessons with rural schools. But some of the projects fail to produce the expected effect. That is because students in rural classrooms have very different backgrounds. 

 The museum project of Aha School has been a success. Pan Lisheng, the head of the company, says the problem doesn't lie in the technology. Instead, it is because few educators have worked out how to make the lessons interesting. 

 Pan and his workmates make sure that their programs will interest children from any background. "Every child is a unique(独一无二的) flower, " Pan said.