2.3 Chewing gum and other inventions

CHEWING GUM RESEARCH

• Find out how chewing gum became a headache for train schedules in Japan.
• Find out what your dentist’s opinion of chewing gum is.
• What flavours of chewing gum are available today?
• Conduct a survey (per group) to find the most popular flavour among your schoolmates. Graph the results of your survey.

How about this!

Can you believe chewing gum actually improves your memory? A British study found people recalled words and numbers better while chewing gum. The reason? Chewing increases your heart rate which boosts the oxygen supply to your brain, allowing you to remember more effectively. ( YOU magazine, 4 April 2002)

So what do YOU think about Thomas Adam’s claims about chewing gum so long ago? He was not far off the mark, was he!

PREPARE TO DEBATE THE STATEMENT BELOW.

CHEWING GUM SHOULD BE ALLOWED AT OUR SCHOOL.

REMEMBER: PNI your ideas (Positive/Negative/Interesting)

Write your speech. Then reduce it to key phrases on cue cards.

Now try your creative by ‘inventing’ new words from old ones.

1. to perform on stage
2. goods marked down
3. changing
4. hair on chin
5. paintings, sculptures
6. more than is needed
7. to brag

FOLLOW THE RECIPE BELOW AND YOU WILL BE ABLE TO MAKE A FUN INVENTION.

The sentences are in the wrong order. Rearrange them correctly and write the sentences on the lines provided. Maybe you would like to write a secret message to a friend.

INVISIBLE INK

1. Transfer the juice to a bottle.
2. Your friend can read the message by holding it near a heater or bedside lamp.
3. Cut an onion in half and squeeze the juice into a dish.
4. Write your message with this ink on a sheet of paper.
5. Let the message dry slowly by itself.
6. You now have a bottle of invisible ink

Take a look at the mind map below. I have already supplied some of the information to flesh out the mind map . More information will follow in this module. But I am sure that you will jump at the opportunity to find out more yourself.

DENIM JEANS

Blue denim jeans are probably the most long-lasting fashionable items to date.

Before you pull on your jeans, take a close look at them. They may be battered and stained if you’ve had them for a while, but they probably aren’t torn or worn thin unless they’re absolutely ancient. It’s no accident that jeans are almost indestructible. Their inventor, Oscar Levi Strauss, designed them that way.

When he arrived in California in 1849, he saw the need for super-tough trousers. The Gold Rush was on, and miners who spent much of their time panning for gold were forever wearing through their trousers. Strauss came up with the idea of making trousers from the strongest fabric around - leftover tent canvas. The miners loved them and he was flooded with orders. To fill all the orders, he bought heavy fabric made in Nimes (pronounced neems) in France. The cloth from Nimes (de neems) soon became known as denim.

The early blue jeans weren’t always blue. Until 1896, they were also made in brown. And they did not have the rivets that Levi Strauss jeans have today. They came about because of an absent-minded miner named Alkali Ike. Alkali stuffed miners’ tools into the pockets of his jeans until they ripped off. Tired of continually sewing Alkili’s pockets back on, his tailor took them to a blacksmith and, as a joke, told him to hammer rivets into the corners. The rivets reinforced the pockets so well that Levi Strauss soon put them on all his jeans.