The Making of a Scientist · Class 10 English · Footprints Without Feet: 135 MCQs with answers

He published a new theory of how cells work in a leading scientific journal

He wrote the article with his college room-mate.

As an only child north of Reading, Pennsylvania

There was not much to do there, he says.

In kindergarten

With the same determination that has marked all his activities.

He had collected all twenty-five species of butterfly found around his hometown

The textbook prints the full list of species.

'The Travels of Monarch X'

It told how monarch butterflies migrate to Central America.

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Light adhesive tags on their wings

Finders were asked to send the tags back to Dr Urquhart.

He entered, won nothing, and felt sad watching everybody else win

It is the moment he calls a hint of what real science is.

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What the twelve tiny gold spots on a monarch pupa are for

He began it in his second year of high school.

It was the first time the journal had published the work of college students

The journal was the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Reaching the top flight at fifteen and hitting a home run the very first time up to bat

A footnote in the chapter explains what a home run is.

There was little else to do — you cannot play team games with a team of one

The reason is his own, and unanswerable.

Rocks, fossils and coins

He also became an eager astronomer, sometimes star-gazing all night.

A driving curiosity along with a bright mind

The final paragraph adds a third ingredient to these two.

Telescopes, microscopes, cameras, and materials for mounting specimens

These are the tools of observation rather than toys.

When Ebright was in the third grade

His mother said Richie was her whole life afterwards.

Not physical work, but learning things

And he liked it, because he wanted to learn.

It opened science up to the eager young collector

It replaced a completed collection with an open question.

1 and 2 only

His father died when he was in the third grade.

She bought him microscopes and mounting materials rather than toys

Equipment is a way of saying that an interest is real.

Six weeks in late summer

Which is why chasing them one by one would catch very few.

She supplied trips, equipment, company and work to do; the science was his own

The chapter lists exactly what she did, and lessons are not on the list.

An only child with nobody to play with became a collector, and a collector became a scientist

A good opening names the line of development the whole chapter traces.

Twenty-five species — the finished collection that nearly ended the hobby

Central America is where the monarchs migrate to; he began collecting in kindergarten.

A lonely collector with an encouraging mother finds a book that turns a hobby into science

The tagging belongs to the next section.

The determination that has marked all his activities

The chapter uses that word of his butterfly collecting from the very start.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include at least six of: the only child north of Reading and the 'team of one'; collecting from kindergarten with determination; rocks, fossils, coins and astronomy; the driving curiosity and bright mind; the mother's trips and equipment; her companionship and the f…

Help study butterfly migrations by tagging butterflies for research

The research was Dr Frederick A. Urquhart's, at the University of Toronto.

A researcher at the University of Toronto studying butterfly migration

Ebright's mother wrote to him, and the correspondence lasted for years.

His mother wrote to him after they read the book

Soon afterwards Ebright was tagging monarchs.

He caught a female, took her eggs and raised them through the life cycle

Egg to caterpillar to pupa to adult, in his own basement.

Egg, caterpillar, pupa, adult butterfly

For several years his basement held thousands at different stages.

It was tedious and brought very little feedback

Only two of his tagged butterflies were ever recaptured.

Two, neither more than seventy-five miles from his home

He laughs when he mentions it.

Slides of frog tissues shown under a microscope

A neat display rather than an experiment.

The winners had done real experiments, while he had only made a display

Showing something is not the same as asking something.

It was the subject he knew most about after several years' work

He wrote to Dr Urquhart for ideas and got a stack of suggestions.

Work all through high school and prize projects at county and international fairs

The correspondence turns a school hobby into a programme of research.

The cause of a viral disease that kills monarch caterpillars

He suspected that a beetle carried the disease.

He raised caterpillars in the presence of beetles

It is a genuine experiment, whatever the outcome.

Viceroys look like monarchs because monarchs taste bad to birds

Viceroys do taste good, so resembling a monarch protects them.

It refused ordinary bird food and ate all the monarchs it could get

Which complicates the assumption that monarchs taste bad to birds.

First in the zoology division and third overall

His second entry after the defeat, and a considerable advance.

1, 2 and 3

All three are stated directly in the chapter.

He got no real results; he won for having properly attempted the experiment

His own words are that he did not get any real results.

Ebright learned more from the fair he lost than from any he won

The point of the episode is what the defeat taught him.

The beetle project — no results, and a prize for trying

The viceroy project placed first in zoology and third overall.

It shows the hobby turning into method, and defeat turning into ambition

Everything the gold-spot research needs is assembled here.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the development and include at least seven of: the invitation at the end of the book; the mother's letter and Dr Urquhart at Toronto; the adhesive tags and the returned tags; the six-week season and the failure of one-by-one catching; the breeding method and…

That they were purely ornamental and nothing more

Dr Urquhart did not believe it, which is why the question was worth asking.

Produce a hormone necessary for the butterfly's full development

So they were not ornaments at all.

First place in the county fair, entry to the International Fair, and a summer at an army laboratory

At the International Science and Engineering Fair he won third place for zoology.

In the Walter Reed Army Institute's entomology laboratory

Entomology, the glossary notes, is the study of insects.

Growing monarch wing cells in a culture and feeding them the hormone

The chemical structure came later, at the Department of Agriculture.

At the laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture

He used the laboratory's sophisticated instruments after his freshman year.

In his junior year, while looking at X-ray photographs of a hormone's structure

A year and a half after identifying the chemical structure.

How a cell can read the blueprint of its DNA

The chapter calls it one of biology's puzzles.

The substance in the nucleus that controls heredity and determines the cell's form and function

Which is why it calls DNA the blueprint for life.

Made drawings and built molecule models from plastic to show how it might work

The paper came later.

With highest honours, second in a class of 1,510

The chapter says this surprised nobody who knew him.

New ideas for preventing some types of cancer and other diseases

And a big step towards understanding the processes of life.

Playing baseball for his own college team

As a child he could not play team games — there was nobody to play with.

Ebright's social studies teacher and adviser to the debating clubs

Ebright says he opened his mind to new ideas.

A first-class mind, curiosity, and a determination to come first for reasons worth having

It gives them in that order in its final paragraph.

1 and 3 only

DNA was already known; his theory was about how a cell reads it.

DNA was already known; his theory was about how a cell reads its blueprint

The chapter defines DNA for the reader before stating the puzzle.

The chapter names three ingredients and then shows a fourth on every page

A first-class mind, curiosity and the right kind of competitiveness — plus the determination shown throughout.

James R. Wong — the room-mate who helped build the models and write the paper

Peterson is the writer of the chapter, and the other two are the wrong way round.

That he has never lost the scientific curiosity a children's book began

It returns to 'The Travels of Monarch X' by name.

A question about spots leads to a hormone, a structure, a theory — and a portrait of the qualities behind them

The chapter ends by naming the ingredients it has been demonstrating.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should follow the sequence and include at least seven of: the question about the twelve gold spots; the general assumption and Urquhart's doubt; the device built with another student; the finding that the spots produce a hormone necessary for full development; the county a…

She was his only companion until school, and then brought friends home for him

At night, she says, they simply did things together.

That he was an ordinary boy in every way except his appetite for learning

The chapter is describing a scientist who is made, not a freak of nature.

A finished collection leaves no further question to pursue

He says himself that it would probably have been the end of his collecting.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

A drawer of specimens can be finished; a migration cannot.

So that every childhood detail is read as evidence of how a scientist is made

The title promises a making, and the structure delivers it.

Sorting, naming, patience and the wish to complete a set

All of them are working habits of a scientist, learned before the word applies.

She supplied opportunity, equipment and company, and left the curiosity to him

The chapter is specific about trips, instruments and evenings, not lessons.

It pushed him into work rather than merely making him wonder

Star-gazing all night is curiosity that costs something.

It turns a list of achievements into the story of how they began

Everything after it is the making promised by the title.

By curiosity, opportunity and habit rather than by sudden genius

The title says 'making', and the evidence is a mother, a hobby and a book.

Her account supplies the everyday detail that makes the making visible

The dining room table and the evening work come from her, not from him.

It shows how completely a second-grader had worked through his own district

All twenty-five, gathered in a six-week season.

That his interests cost him something and were not merely passing

Curiosity that keeps a child awake is the 'driving' kind.

It began a chain that ran from tagging to hormones to a theory of cell life

The chapter's last paragraph returns to it by name.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the equipment (telescopes, microscopes, cameras, mounting materials) and what it signalled; the opportunities (trips, the letter to Urquhart, the book); the companionship before and after school and the father's death; the evening routine and the 'learning…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the content of the opening paragraph (the theory, the room-mate, the journal, the first-ever publication by college students, the baseball comparison); the pivot sentence about butterflies; the effect of turning childhood detail into evidence; the exchange…

The season lasts only six weeks, and one-by-one chasing catches very few

So he changed the method: he raised his own.

A competitive spirit that turns disappointment into a plan

He decided at once what next year's entry would have to be.

No real results — but he showed he had tried the experiment, and won

The fair rewarded the method rather than the outcome.

It shows that science values a properly attempted experiment

He had learned exactly the lesson the previous year's defeat taught.

Whether birds would in fact eat monarchs

He tests the assumption the theory rests on, rather than the theory itself.

That other people's work showed viceroys probably do copy the monarch

The fairness of the remark is itself scientific.

A is false, but R is true

He won nothing that year, and the loss is the point of the episode, so the assertion is false. The reason describes what the defeat actually taught him.

That he adapted his method when it could not answer the question

Fitting the method to the question is itself a scientific step.

Citizen science — many volunteers collecting data for one study

One researcher in Toronto could not tag a continent alone.

A scientific habit of reporting what happened rather than what he hoped

And he entered it in that form, which is why it counts.

His plain account of boredom and failure is more convincing than praise

'Tedious', 'not much feedback' and 'a really sad feeling' are not the language of a legend.

A competitive spirit aimed at doing better work, not merely at winning

The chapter returns to this idea in its final paragraphs.

A schoolboy's guesswork, since the questions now come from a working researcher

A stack of suggestions kept him busy all through high school.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include: the frog-tissue entry and the loss; his own description of the feeling; the distinction he drew between real experiments and a neat display; the immediate plan for the following year and the choice of subject; the letter to Urquhart and the stack of suggest…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should include at least five of: research beginning as somebody else's question (the tagging for Urquhart); method fitted to the question (breeding rather than chasing); the tedium and poor feedback, with the two recaptures; a failed experiment still counting (the beetle p…

Build a device to test what the spots were doing

With it they showed the spots produced a hormone necessary for full development.

The cells became normal wing scales only when fed the hormone from the gold spots

It closes the question he had asked three years earlier.

He did not shout 'Eureka!' or even 'I've got it!'

The chapter is careful to show that real discovery is quieter than the legend.

Because learning came easily to him and he had energy to spare

He was a straight-A student in high school.

Three or four hours of debate research at night, on top of all his other work

'Richard always put in the extra effort,' he said.

Competitive, but not in a bad sense — he wanted to make the work as good as he could

Not winning for winning's sake, and not for a prize.

Both A and R are true, and R is the correct explanation of A

The chapter says his high-school research eventually led him to the theory.

To show that real discovery is quieter and less theatrical than the legend

The glossary explains the cry as originally attributed to Archimedes.

DNA carries the instructions, and a blueprint is useless unless something can read it

Ebright's theory was precisely about the reading.

That he was a whole person, not a specialist shut away with his work

Debating, canoeing, photography and the outdoors are all named.

His mother, Dr Urquhart and Mr Weiherer

Encouragement, problems to work on, and new ideas respectively.

One question pressed further each year as the instruments improved

Home-built device, army laboratory, then the Department of Agriculture's instruments.

It separates wanting to do excellent work from wanting to beat other people

The chapter then makes it one of the ingredients of a scientist.

An appetite for work — debate research at night on top of research with butterflies

It is what pleased Mr Weiherer most about him.

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should state the chapter's three named ingredients and support each with evidence, and should add at least three demonstrated qualities: determination and appetite for work; honesty about failed experiments; the ability to learn from defeat; and the role of encouraging adu…

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Content 3 · Expression 2 · Accuracy 1. Content should distinguish the contributions: the mother (trips, equipment, company, evening learning, the book); Dr Urquhart (the tagging study, the stack of experiment suggestions, the doubt about the gold spots); Mr Weiherer (opening his mind to new ideas, and the analysis of h…