“Was he using his work to avoid ……………… her question?”
“No, I think he really had something important to do.”
Have you ever heard the sound of a hummingbird? They make a buzzing noise when they fly. They make this noise because they beat their wings so fast. They beat their wings up to 80 times a second. All that waving activity makes a lot of noise. That’s why we call them hummingbirds.
Hummingbirds fly in a totally different way. They move their wings so fast that they can hover. This means that they can stay in one spot in the middle of the air, like a helicopter. Sometimes they fly or hover upside down. They are the only birds that fly backward.
Hummingbirds are small. One type called the bee hummingbird is the smallest bird in the world. Bee hummingbirds weigh less than a penny. They are just a little bit bigger than bees. That’s probably where they get their name. Bee hummingbirds build tiny nests. They use small pieces of bark on the hard outer covering of trees to make their homes. Their homes are only an inch around. This is big enough for their eggs, though. Their eggs are smaller than peas. People have found these tiny nests on a clothespin.
Hummingbirds move fast. It takes lots of energy to move as fast as they do. This means they need to eat a lot of food. Their favorite food is nectar, a sweet liquid inside some flowers. They drink more than their own weight in nectar daily. They have to visit hundreds of flowers to get enough nectar to live. They can only store enough energy to survive through the night. They live on the edge.
The inventors of the first airplane were not scientists. In fact, they did not even finish high school! The inventors of the first airplane were just ordinary brothers with a big dream , a dream of flying. Wilbur and Orville Wright grew up in Indiana in a large family. Neither of the brothers finished high school. Instead of sitting in class and reading, they wanted to work and make things, like machines. When the brothers were 18 and 22 years old, they started up their own printing press and bicycle shop.
One day, Wilbur read an interesting story in the newspaper about a man trying to fly in a glider. The man died, but the story gave Wilbur an idea. He decided to teach himself about flying in order to make the perfect glider. Together, Orville and Wilbur successfully tested their new glider on the beach. Then the brothers decided to make their glider into a flying machine. They put an engine and propeller on the glider and called their new machine the “Wright Flyer.” The plane broke down on its first test, but the Wright brothers didn’t give up.