Ricardo has a great idea for his mother’s birthday: he’ll make a special dinner. He’s done it before and been successful. Now he wants to cook her favourite dish—tacos (玉米卷).

Ricardo takes Home Economics class in school, and his teacher thinks he has a lot of abilities. She says that with a little work, his talent will be fully developed. Who knows, one day he may become a great cook like the ones he sees on television. When he tells his teacher about his idea for the birthday dinner, she speaks highly of it. “Cooking a dinner is a big task,” she also tells him. “If you break the task into small parts, you will make it.”

Ricardo puts his idea into practice as his teacher advises. First, he gets some money from his saving account. Then, he goes to Rosa’s Market to buy everything that he needs.

As soon as Ricardo gets home, he goes right into the kitchen. The kitchen seems to become an operating room: everything is in its place and ready to be used. He cooks up a storm. What a mess he makes! However, in the end he restores everything in the kitchen to exactly where it used to be before he started.

“Happy birthday!” everyone cheers as Ricardo puts the tacos on the table.

Now we are used to enjoying the convenience brought by different kinds of new apps. In fact, it is really difficult for people to create apps. The creators often need lots of knowledge. But some middle school students are making their own apps. It may be unbelievable, but it has truly taken place somewhere so far. Last year, there was an app competition for middle school students in Beijing, China. A group of competitors around China took part in it to show their inventions.

Lu Yichao, a student from Sichuan, invented an app. It is called Health Helper. His app is really helpful. It tells people when and where to do exercise every day. It can tell people to exercise on time when the smartphones ring.

Another student, Li Haochen, invented an app that could test PM2.5. In this way, people can know whether the air is bad or not by using their mobile phones before going out. “It is impossible to make an app without hard work. I have to be really careful and try again and again patiently to make the app work well. But every time I make an app successfully, I become much more interested in inventing some other ones. It has been one part of my life. Creating apps makes a big difference to my life.” he said when the reporter interviewed him.

Many engineers from big companies get interested in these great apps from the students and decide to spread their usage in different fields. They believe these apps are of great use and will certainly get popular around China, even the world in the near future.