Passage Three
Doctor Ben Carson grew up in a poor single parent household in Detroit. His mother, who had only a third-grade education, worked two jobs cleaning bathrooms. To his classmates and even to his teachers, he was thought of as the dumbest kid in the class, according to his own not so fond memories. He had a terrible temper, and once threatened to kill another child. Doctor Carson was headed down a path of self-destruction until a critical moment in his youth. His mother, convinced that she had to do something dramatic to prevent him from leading a life of failure, laid down some rules. He could not watch television except for two programs a week, could not play with his friends after school until he finished his homework, and had to read two books a week and write book reports about them. His mother’s strategy worked. “Of course, I didn’t know she couldn’t read, so there I was submitting these reports.” He said. “She would put check marks on them like she had been reading them. As I began to read about scientists, economists and philosophers, I started imaging myself in their shoes. As he got in the habit of hard work, his grades began to soar. Ultimately, he received a scholarship to attend Yale University. And later, he was admitted to the University of Michigan Medical School. He is now a leading surgeon at John’s Hopkins Medical School, and he’s also the author of three books.
Q23. What do we learn about Ben Carson?
Q24. What did Ben Carson classmates and teachers think about him when he was first in school?
Q25. What does Ben Carson mother tell him to do when he was a school boy?
When you look up at the night sky, what do you see? There are other (26) heavenly bodies out there besides the moon and stars. One of the most (27) fascinating of these is a comet.
Comets were formed around the same time the Earth was formed. They are (28) made up of ice and other frozen liquids and gases. (29) Now and then these “dirty snowballs” begin to orbit the sun, just as the planets do.
As a comet gets closer to the sun, some gases in it begin to unfreeze. They (30) combine with dust particles from the comet to form a huge cloud. As the comet gets even nearer to the sun, a solar wind blows the cloud behind the comet, thus forming its tail. The tail and the (31) generally fuzzy atmosphere around a comet are (32) characteristics that can help identify this (33) phenomenon in the night sky.
In any given year, about a dozen known comets come close to the sun in their orbits. The average person can’t see them all, of course. Usually there is only one or two a year bright enough to be seen with the (34) naked eye. Comet Hale-Bopp, discovered in 1995, was an unusually bright comet. Its orbit brought it (35) relatively close to the Earth, within 122 million miles of it. But Hale-Bopp came a long way on its earthly visit. It won’t be back for another four thousand years or so.
