Name

Unit 9  Inventors Class

Date

Start thinking
1 Answer the questions.
1 What do you think are the greatest inventions of the last fifty years?

2 Which invention could you not live without?

3 Have you got a mobile phone? What do you use it for?

Comprehension check
2 Watch the video. Choose the correct answers.
1 Emily Cummins got a … when she was four years old.
a garden b hammer c shed
2 It has taken Josh Silver … years to develop his special glasses.
a eight b twenty c sixty
3 Dirty drinking water kills … of people every day around the world.
a thousands b millions c billions

3 Watch the video again. Answer the questions.

1 How many people in the world own a mobile phone?

2 Who inspired Emily Cummins to invent things?

3 What does Emily’s invention keep cold?

4 What percentage of people need glasses in the world?

5 What does Professor Silver teach at university?

6 What is Henry AJ Mensa’s job?

7 What made Michael Pritchard decide to make his invention?

8 What is removed from sea water when it moves from the sea to the clouds?

4 Complete the summary. Write a word in each gap.

The video shows three inventions that help people. The first is a 1 which is made of one small cylinder
inside a larger one. The wet 2 or soil between the cylinders pulls the heat out of the small cylinder, so
that the contents stay 3  . The second invention is a new kind of glasses which work by adding
4
to the lenses. The first person to try the invention was able to 5 much faster with them
on. The third invention helps to stop people getting 6 from drinking dirty water. The ‘Lifesaver’ bottle
has a 7 which cleans water and makes it 8 to drink.

5 Work in pairs. Answer the questions.

1 Which people have inspired you in your life? Why?
2 Why is it important to have your eyes checked regularly?
3 What things would be difficult to do if you didn’t have any clean water?

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 Vocabulary
6 Match the words 1–8 with the definitions a–h.
1 cylinder a a piece of glass you look through to see things more clearly
2 dump b when a liquid changes into steam or gas and moves into the air
3 evaporate c the ability to see
4 lens e a long, round container
5 properties d a piece of equipment you use to make something with, e.g. a hammer
6 shed f the special qualities or characteristics that something has
7 tool g to drop (a lot of ) something in a careless way
8 vision h a small building that is used for keeping things in

7 Join a word in A to a word in B. Then complete the sentences.

A eye-care modern Mother phone sewing water

B app bottle convenience machine Nature professional

1 Our latest allows you to test your own eye sight!
2 My sister makes a lot of her own clothes on her  .
3 I always carry a with me when I go hiking in the mountains.
4 You should ask your for advice about reading glasses.
5 The mobile phone is an essential for most people in the UK.
6 Even the most powerful countries in the world cannot control  .

Extension
Work in small groups. Make a poster about a famous inventor. Present it to the class.
1 Make a list of the famous inventors you know about. What did they invent?
2 Research one inventor each. Ask questions about each inventor in your group.
3 Choose one of the inventors in your group and make a poster about the inventor and their inventions.
4 Present your poster to the class. Use the expressions in the box to help you.

Useful expressions: Talking about people’s lives and achievements

… spent his / her early life …
… was inspired by …
… started researching …
… developed the … between … and …
… created the … to …
The aim of … was to …
… made a huge difference to …

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 Name
Unit 9  DVD teacher’s notes Class
Date

Video summary
The video is about three inventions which aim to help other people instead of making money. The inventions
are Emily Cummins’ portable fridge, Josh Silver’s eye glasses and Michael Pritchard’s water bottle. This video links
to page 112 of the Student’s Book.

Background culture notes

Emily Cummins is an English inventor and entrepreneur. When she was fifteen, she invented a toothpaste holder
for her grandfather, whose arthritis made it difficult for him to squeeze the tube. She then went on to design a
portable water carrier and a portable fridge which is powered by the sun. She has won a number of important
awards for her contribution to science.
Professor Joshua D. Silver is a professor at Oxford University. When he was studying mirrors, Professor Silver
found a new way to change the shape of lenses. He used this to create a new type of lens that could be easily
adjusted by adding or taking away liquid in the lens. So far, 30,000 pairs of glasses using these lenses have been
distributed in fifteen different countries in Africa and Asia.
Michael Pritchard is a water-treatment expert from England. After the 2004 Asian tsunami, he started to develop
the Lifesaver bottle. The bottle can filter 0.7 litres of water in 20 seconds and it removes harmful things in the
water, including bacteria, viruses and heavy metals. When he presented the bottle in 2007, he sold his entire
stock of 1,000 bottles in four hours and it was named Best Technological Development.

Start thinking
1 Read the questions with the class and elicit answers from individual students. Encourage students to give a
personal response and use their suggestions to start a class discussion.
Answer key
Students’ own answers.

Comprehension check
2 Answer key
1  b  2 b  3 a

3 Answer key
1 Almost six billion
2 Her grandad / grandfather
3 Food or medicine
4 About sixty per cent
5 Physics
6 He’s a tailor
7 The Asian tsunami in 2004
8 Salt

4 Answer key
1 fridge  2 sand  3  cool / cold  4 liquid  5  work / sew  6  sick / ill  7 filter  8 safe

5 Students’ own answers.

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 Vocabulary
6 Answer key
1 e  2 g  3 b  4 a  5 f  6 h  7 d  8 c

7 Answer key
1 phone app
2 sewing machine
3 water bottle
4 eye-care professional
5 modern convenience
6 Mother Nature

Extension
Stage 1: Preparation before the class
• Ask: What inventors do you know about? Write the answers on the board.
• Ask: What did these people invent? Write the answers on the board.
• Tell students they are going to make a poster about a famous inventor. Ask them to choose a person and
research him / her on the internet. Tell them to bring a picture of the person and some information about their
life and inventions to the next class.
• Prepare one large piece of coloured card, scissors and glue per group of three students.
Stage 2: Procedure in the class
• Divide students into small groups of three of four. Ask them to move their desks together, if possible.
• Ask students to take out their information about the inventor they researched.
• Number the students from one to three or four in each group.
• Explain that they are going to ask Student 1 questions about the person they researched. Then, continue with
Students 2, 3 and 4.
• Explain that the group must now choose one of the people they have researched.
• Give out the card, scissors and glue to each group and ask them to make a poster about this person using the
information they have.
• Ask each group to present their poster to the class. Finally, have a class vote on the best poster.
Extra ideas
Try searching for information about famous inventors on sites such as Wikipedia.

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 Unit 9 DVD scripts  Inventors
Many inventions of the past one hundred years have changed the way we live our lives.
Today, when almost six billion people worldwide own a mobile phone, many of us believe that we can’t live without all
these modern conveniences.
People are always trying to think of the next big invention that’s going to change the world. But for some inventors,
this doesn’t mean designing a new phone app, or building a smaller, quicker, lighter computer. For some inventors, it’s
about looking at what everyone really can’t live without.
Emily Cummins is a young inventor who is looking for new ways to help people. She started inventing at a very young
age.
“At the age of four, my grandad gave me a hammer. I used to spend hours with him, in his shed, at the bottom of the garden.
As I got older, he would teach me about the different properties of materials and how to use the tools and machinery in his
shed.”
Emily invented a fridge. The design was very simple: a small cylinder inside a larger one. You put your food, or medicine,
in the small cylinder. Between the two cylinders you put some material that stays wet, like sand or soil. The water
evaporates and pulls the heat out of the small cylinder and the contents stay cool. The fridge was designed so anyone
anywhere could make it, with simple tools and materials.
About 60% of the world’s population can’t live without eyeglasses. Everyone should have their eyes checked regularly
by an eye-care professional. But in parts of Africa, where there’s only one eye-care professional for eight million of the
population, it’s impossible to have this done.
If you can’t see, you might not be able to read, drive, or even work. Josh Silver is a professor of physics who has
invented a new kind of glasses to solve this problem. The eyeglasses work by adding liquid to the lenses.
“I want to see clearly in the distance … I just … I’m covering up one eye, I’m adjusting the lens in the other eye till I’ve got nice
clear vision. I then do the same with the other eye and … there we are! I can now see clearly in the distance.”
It’s taken Josh over twenty years of research to develop these glasses. He travelled to Africa to see how his glasses
could help people. Henry AJ Mensa was the first person to get a pair of Josh’s glasses.
“Shall we try the glasses and see if that helps you with threading it …”
Henry was a tailor in a small village in Ghana who needed good eyesight to do his job. But his eyesight was getting
worse.
“He was trying to thread a needle and he couldn’t and he put these on and he adjusted them and he threaded the needle
immediately and what he did was, he then started operating his sewing machine much faster.”
This experience proved that Josh’s glasses can work.
No one can live without water. But today there are over a billion people whose access to clean water is limited.
Drinking dirty water makes millions of people sick and kills thousands of people every day. After seeing the terrible
result of the tsunami that unexpectedly hit Asia in 2004, inventor Michael Pritchard decided he wanted to do
something about this problem.
“Water is everywhere and Mother Nature has her own way of getting water to people. They’re called the clouds. They pick the
water up from the sea – for free. They take the salt out of it – for free. They transport it hundreds of miles – for free. And then
they dump it on the mountains and the rivers and the streams. And where do people live? Near water.”
So Michael Pritchard invented the Lifesaver water bottle. The bottle, which uses a special filter, can clean any water,
making it safe to drink. This new technology saves people’s lives by making it easier to provide clean water to the
people who need it most.
In the western world, it’s easy to think that we really need all our modern conveniences. But food, water and sight –
these are things that we really can’t live without.

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