Before going outside in the morning, many of us check a window thermometer (温度计) for the temperature. This helps us decide what to wear.

    {#blank#}1{#/blank#}. We want our food to be a certain coldness in the refrigerator. We want it a certain hotness in the oven. If we don't feel well, we use a thermometer to see if we have a fever. We keep our rooms a certain warmth in the winter and a certain coolness in the summer.

    Not all the thermometers use the same system to measure temperature. We use a system called the Fahrenheit scale. But most other countries use the Centigrade scale. Both systems use the freezing and boiling points of water as their guide. {#blank#}2{#/blank#}.

    The most common kind of thermometer is made with mercury inside a clear glass tube. As mercury (or any other liquid) becomes hot, it expands. As it gets colder, it contracts. That is why on hot days the mercury line is high in the glass tube. {#blank#}3{#/blank#}.

    First, take a clear glass juice bottle that has a cap; fill the bottle with colored water. Tap a hole in the center of the cap using a hammer and thick nail. Put the cap on the jar. Then stick a plastic straw through the nail hole.

{#blank#}4{#/blank#}.

    Finally, place a white card on the outside of the bottle and behind the straw. Now you can see the water lever easily.

    {#blank#}5{#/blank#}. As the temperature goes down, the water will contract, and the lever in the straw will come down. Perhaps you will want to keep a record of the water lever in the straw each morning for a week.

    Some people think that success is only for those with talent or those who grow up in the right family, and others believe that success mostly comes down to luck. I'm not going to say luck, talent, and circumstances don't come into play because they do. Some people are born into the right family while others are born with great intelligence, and that's just the reality of how life is.

    However, to succeed in life, one first needs to set a goal and then gradually make it more practical. And, in addition to that, in order to get really good at something, one needs to spend at least 10,000 hours studying and practicing. To become great at certain things, it'll require even more time, time that most people won't put in.

    This is a big reason why many successful people advise you to do something you love. If you don't enjoy what you do, it is going to feel like unbearable pain and will likely make you quit well before you ever become good at it.

    When you see people exhibiting some great skills or having achieved great success, you know that they have put in a huge part of their life to get there at a huge cost. It's sometimes easy to think they got lucky or they were born with some rare talent, but thinking that way does you no good, and there's a huge chance that you're wrong anyway.

    Whatever you do, if you want to become great at it, you need to work day in and day out, almost to the point of addiction（沉迷）, and over a long period of time. If you're not willing to put in the time and work, don't expect to receive any rewards. Consistent, hard work won't guarantee you the level of success you may want, but it will guarantee that you will become really good at whatever it is you put all that work into.

    You've got your fancy new suitcase and you're ready to take it with you on your travels across the globe.

    You get to the airport, quickly moving through the crowds on the uneven pavement, rushing to check in. Then, your heart sinks when you realize your new suitcase has got a serious case of the wobbles (摇晃).

    Why does this happen?

    Scientists from the Universite Paris-Diderot in France investigated this matter and published their findings in the science journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A. They also suggested some solutions to overcome this modern-day problem.

    To learn more about the issue, they put a suitcase on a treadmill (跑步机) and observed what happened.

    It was soon noted that the "wobble" was actually a result of repeated actions that caused the suitcase to sway from side to side. They discovered that if one of the wheels encountered an obstacle such as a small bump, it jumped into the air for just a moment and then banged back down to the ground. That second action caused the opposite wheel to lift off the ground and then to bang back down, causing the first to lift again and so on. This swaying increased as the luggage was pulled along.

    "The suitcase is a fun way to tackle the problem, but the study would be the same for any trolley with two wheels or blades (桨叶)," Sylvain Courrech du Pont, lead author of the study, told BBC News. "So it will be the same for a caravan (大篷车) or maybe also for airplanes."

    Instead of slowing down when we see a rocky part of the path, the scientists recommended doing the exact opposite and speeding up. This is because going faster gives the wheels less time to rise and fall, preventing the case from swaying. They also said that reducing the angle of the suitcase by lowering its handle to the ground would help keep it steady.

    "These findings could help researchers simulate and design better rolling suitcases and other pulled trolleys, such as towed trailers," Courrech du Pont added.

With these masterminds (智者) working on perfecting our suitcase problems, wobbly luggage may soon be a thing of history, leaving us to enjoy our travels.

    Do women make BETTER astronauts? Russia locks an all-female crew in space simulator (太空模拟器) for eight days to find out. Six Russian women have been sent into a spaceship to begin a unique experiment testing how an all- female crew would relate to others on a trip to the Moon and back.

    "It's interesting for us to see what is special about the way a female crew communicates," said Sergei Ponomaryov, the experiment's leader." it will be particularly interesting in terms of psychology," said the institute's director Igor Ushakov. "I'd like to wish you a lack of conflicts, even though they say that in one kitchen, two housewives find it hard to live together," he added.

    The volunteers include scientific researchers, a doctor and a psychologist. The test period simulates (模仿) a flight to the Moon and back, with the women carrying out 10 experiments covering psychology and human biology. Russia sent the first woman into space, Valentina Tereshkova, in 1963 but has fallen behind since. Last year, it sent its fourth female astronaut into space, Yelena Serova. Serava complained of a great deal of media interest in how she would wash her hair aboard the International Space Station, pointing out that male astronauts did not face the same line of questioning.

    The women found themselves fielding questions at a press conference about how they would act without men or makeup for eight days, "We are very beautiful without makeup," said participant Darya Komissarova. Her colleague Anna Kussmaul was more direct: "We are doing work. When you're doing your work, you don't think about men and women." They plan to spend their 11/2 hours per day of free time watching films, reading and playing board games. Team leader Yelena Luchnitskaya said she expected the women to deal with any conflict.

    Owning a smartphone may not be as smart as you think. They may let you surf the Internet, listen to music and snap photos wherever you are…but they also turn you into a workaholic, it seems. A study suggests that, by giving you access to emails at all times. The all-singing, all-dancing mobile phone adds as much as two hours to your working day.

    Researchers found that Britons work an additional 460 hours a year on average as they are able to respond to emails on their mobiles. The study by technology retailer Pixmania, reveals the average UK working day is between nine and ten hours, but a further two hours is spent responding to or sending work emails, or making work calls.

    Almost one in ten admits spending up to three hours outside their normal working day checking work emails. Some workers confess they are on call almost 24 hours a day, with nine out of ten saying they take work emails and calls outside their normal working hours. Nearly two-thirds say they often check work emails just before they go to bed and as soon as they wake up, while over a third have replied to one in the middle of the night.

    Ghadi Hobeika, marketing director of Pixmania, said:" The ability to access literally millions of apps, keep in contact via social networks and take photos and video as well as text and call has made smartphones valuable for many people. However, there are drawbacks. Many companies expect their employees to be on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and smartphones mean that people literally cannot get away from work. The more constantly in contact we become. The more is expected of us in a work capacity."