Do you want to really impress your friend with a birthday gift? How about flying a drone (无人机) made of chocolate?
It can be done, and it was done by a team of three Duke University students, with help from a chocolate maker called Chocolove. About a year ago, mechanical engineering student Anuj Thakkar and his friends were talking over coffee. “Wouldn't it be cool if we had eatable drones?" they wondered.
Over the summer, that idea began to take shape. "We tried cheese. We tried bread. Chocolate was what we settled on." said Thakkar. Chocolate is moldable, making the design process a little easier. Thakkar, Carlo Lindner and Ben Succop started designing. Eventually, to make their friend Kristine Stanner smile, they managed to build a fleet of drones out of chocolate. On Stanner's birthday, they flew a drone to her. She ate a piece of the one-of-a-kind drone at once.
However, they worked really hard for it. The summer in Durham, North Carolina, is very hot, and it's not a great time to work with chocolate. "The first drone — chocolate was falling from the sky," Thakkar said. “It was flowing in drops.” Hearing the news, Chocolove enthusiastically provided his high-quality dark chocolate for them. But the high-quality chocolate is more fragile than the cheap one, so the team had to fix it again. They put the plastic on the airframe at first and then put sweet vermicelli (细面条) to give the airframe more flexibility. The drone crashed a lot, but it always held. And it had a tendency to tear, which may be why real planes aren't made of chocolate.
Thakkar said, “I got tired of chocolate in the first day of designing, but I like to make strange gifts for my friends."
4. What does the underlined word “moldable" in paragraph 3 probably mean?
A.Delicious. | B.Flexible. | C.Soft. | D.Solid. |
5. What did Chocolove do to help the students?
A.Planning a birthday surprise. | B.Advising some useful guidance. |
C.Offering higher-quality materials. | D.Introducing some guests to them. |
6. What was the biggest difficulty when the three students made the special drone?
A.The lack of chocolate. | B.The change of the weather. |
C.Their unprofessional skills. | D.The unstability of the airframe. |
7. Which of the following best describes Thakkar?
A.Creative. | B.Humorous. | C.Ambitious. | D.Strict. |