LET English

Put one ear against a long iron rail. Ask a friend to stand a few hundred feet away and hit the iron rail with a hammer or a metal pipe. You will hear the noise in the iron rail before the sound reaches you through the air. What does this experiment prove about sound waves? You can tell that sound travels:

• only through solids

• faster through metal than through the air

• faster through air than through metal

• always at the same speed

Snakes are cold-blooded animals. They have no way of keeping a steady body temperature. The heat of their bodies depends on the temperature of their surroundings. If it is a very hot day, their body temperature rises greatly. If it gets hot enough, snakes die. If it is very cold, they are likely to freeze to death. You can tell that snakes:

• are suited to extreme climates

• are suited to very cold climates

• are best suited to steady temperatures

• are suited to very high climates

When we think of flowers, we think of those we gather to make a bouquet. We think of roses, tulips, and carnations. We rarely think of flowers as food. Yet people eat flowers today, as they have for thousands of years. Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli are really flowers. The blossoms of plants are not merely decorations for our homes! The story mentions:

• just one use of flowers

• ten flowers

• only two flowers

• two uses of flowers

If you get the “lion’s share” of something, you have more than half of it. The expression “lion’s share” refers to the amount a grown-up lion will eat. The adult lion eats his share, which is plenty. What the adult lion can’t eat is left for the rest of the family. Sometimes this isn’t very much! The “lion’s share” of a dollar would be:

• one hundred cents

• more than fifty cents

• not more than forty cents

• twenty cents

Someone once said that for every minute we spend in anger we lose sixty seconds of happiness. Everyone knows how it feels when he is very angry. It certainly isn’t any fun at all to have this feeling. Those sixty seconds that could have been spent in happiness are gone forever. You can tell that people:

• can’t be angry

• can’t be angry and happy at the same time

• are angry only for six seconds

• to get angry

While pain is one of man’s oldest enemies, it is also a great friend of man. Pain is the body’s way of reporting disease or injury of body parts. If a person could feel no pain, he would live a life of danger. Such person might even die because of a disease he did not find about in time. All people should realize that:

• pain is pleasure

• knowing about pain is frightening

• suffering pain can sometimes be helpful

• pain has no meaning

Long ago, men began to invent ways to take salt out of seawater. Early man discovered that if he blocked off the sea water in a small pond, the sun would dry up the water. There, on the bottom of the pond, would be left a layer of the white crystals so important to him. Early man knew that without salt neither he nor his animals could live. This method of getting salt:

• wasn’t effective

• took very little time

• isn’t old

• depended partly on nature

Someone once said, “Never follow a crowd if you want the crowd to follow you”. What this really means is that people who follow the crowd do so without thinking for themselves. They see what others are doing and then copy them. To be a leader, a person has to think for himself and not to do something just because other does it. You can tell that:

• “copy cats” don’t make good leaders

• All followers think for themselves

• Good leaders follow the crowd

• There are more leaders than followers.

Long ago, people who sent letter didn’t have to pay postage. Postage had to be paid by the person who received the letter. People didn’t like to pay for the letters that they didn’t want. Sometimes they just wouldn’t accept the letter. Thus it happened that the sender had to pay the postage. Long ago, when the receiver was asked to pay:

• the post office made more money

• he didn’t waste any time

• post office wasn’t always paid

• everyone liked it better

Did you ever wonder how many bones there are in your body? It is strange to think that an infant’s body has more bones than an adult’s. a baby may have 30 bones. As the child grows older, some of the bones grow together. The growing together process, however, is not the same for everyone. It is likely that many adults have:

• weak bones

• very strong bones

• a different number of bones

• no bones