Question

WASHINGTON, March 13—When 17-year-old Mary Masterman set out to build a spectrograph（攝譜儀）, she knew it would be no easy task. The device, an instrument used to identify characteristics of different kinds of molecules, can cost thousands of dollars, and Mary was building on a budget. “I wanted to build one that was lower costing so it would be more available to anyone interested in spectrography（攝譜術(shù)）,” Mary said.

A senior at Westmoore High School in Oklahoma City, Mary built the spectrograph at home for $300, and her project won the top prize of a $100,000 scholarship in the Intel Science Talent Search Monday night in Washington. “The most challenging part was trying to get it to work,” said Mary, who said she hoped to attend Stanford or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“I had to keep coming up with creative ways to adjust or change something,” she said．“It took three months to build and another three months before it actually functioned properly.” Mary said she chose to build a spectrograph because of its many applications in forensics（法醫(yī)檢查）, medicine and artwork analysis.

Some 1,700 students entered this year’s contest, and 40 finalists were chosen, all of whom won a laptop computer and a cash prize. The finalists were almost equally divided by sex. Six women were among the top 10．The second-place winner was John Pardon, 17, of Chapel Hill, N.C., who researched the unfolding of simple closed curves. He won a $75,000 scholarship. Dmitry Vaintrob, 18, from South Eugene High School in Eugene, Ore., won the third-place, a $50,000 scholarship, for a mathematics project exploring loop homology.

New York produced 12 finalists, more than any other state. Two New Yorkers placed in the top 10．Elizabeth Marincola, president of Science Service, the nonprofit group that administers the contest, said winners had a certain “spark”. “They have a deep passion for their research,” Ms. Marincola said.

1．What is the best title of the passage? (Please answer within 10 words.)

2．Which sentence in the passage can be replaced by the following one?

Altogether Mary spent 6 months to build a cheap spectrograph which could work with real functions.

3．What was the final result of the contest? And what conclusion can we draw from the contest result? (Please answer within 30 words.)

4．Translate the underlined sentence in the fourth paragraph into Chinese.

Answer 1

1．Teenager’s Science Project Wins $100,000 Scholarship

2．It took three months to build and another three months before it actually functioned properly.

3．The finalists were almost equally divided by sex, and six women were among the top 10, which means that female can be as intelligent as male in scientific field.

4．大約1700人參加了今年的比賽，最后有40位選手參加決賽，他們都獲得了一臺(tái)筆記本電腦和現(xiàn)金獎(jiǎng)勵(lì)。