Through a student exchange program, I got the chance to experience life in Germany. The school I went to     1     (locate) in Berlin and was named     2     the famous writer Achim von Arnim (1781-1831).

The school has about a dozen classrooms     3     are used to develop students^’interests in auto repair (汽车维修), woodwork, art design, and decoration making.

Among the many classes, the craft lessons     4     (impress) me the most. In the workshop, there was special equipment for each project. Our visiting group decided     5     (make) a padlock (挂锁). At first, all we had was a piece of metal and some bristles (刷毛). The task was to make the rough surface     6     the sharp edge smooth, then hollow (挖空) out a circle in the middle of the metal block.

Small things, yes, but they all required a considerable amount of time. Sometimes one edge was not smooth, but after     7    (sharpen) it, I found out the other side became skewed (歪斜的). It seemed like I would never be able to make a perfect padlock.

But German students could do them     8     (good). They learned to be patient through these small difficulties. They will always carry these     9     (quality) with them，and be grateful for what they get. That’s the main     10     (believe) of “craftsman’s spirit”.

Mount Everest, which is part of China,     1     (lie) between Nepal and Tibet. On Tuesday, Nepal and China made a surprising     2     (announce) on the height of the world’s highest mountain. After years of not reaching an agreement on the mountain’s height, both sides have measured again and discovered it’s higher    3    anyone thought.

Sir George Everest, after     4     the mountain is named, was the main surveyor (测量员) of India in the mid-1800s. Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian man who worked for Mr. Everest, was the first     5     (realize) it was the highest mountain in the world. He     6     (exact) calculated the height as being 29,000 feet. But Mr. Sikdar’s boss added two feet to the height because he was afraid people wouldn’t trust     7     round number like 29,000.

But the height most people have been using for Mount Everest came from a 1955 survey     8     (conduct) by India, which put the mountain’s height at 29,029 feet   (8,848 meters) . Since that time, other attempts     9     (make) to measure the mountain, each coming up with a different result.

Last year, four surveyors from Nepal climbed Mount Everest and made new measurements, using GPS and satellite information. And in May, China sent up     10     (it) own team of surveyors, who were the only ones to climb Mount Everest this year. Working together to determine the mountain’s exact height, the two countries announced the new height: 29,031.7 feet (8,848. 86 meters).

A Chinese university has built the world’s longest 3D-printed bridge. The creation has a     1     (long) of 26.3 meters and a width of 2.6 meters. Its design came from the historic Zhaozhou Bridge     2     (build) in A.D. 605.

While the ancient Zhaozhou Bridge required a decade to build, the team spent only 450 hours     3     (finish) all of their new bridge’s concrete parts. Besides, the bridge’s cost came in at just two thirds of that of an ordinary bridge.

The bridge consisted     4     44 individual 3D-printed concrete units, each of them approximately 3 by 3 by 5 feet. The sides, influenced by the Zhaozhou Bridge,     5     (make) with 68 individual concrete plates moved into place by robot arms.

The leader of the team noted that the demand for labor in construction projects will be     6     (increasing) in short supply in the future. If China cannot find people to build bridges, intelligent construction will be     7     important channel to solve this problem.

There have been other 3D-printed architectural     8     (project) over the last few years, as the technology has become     9     (popular) than before. A team at MIT built a sample house in 14 hours.     10     there are ever houses on Mars, NASA suspects the houses also will be built by robots using 3D printing.

Recently, a video of a Peking University math teacher has become popular on the Internet. In the video, he introduces himself     1     an undergraduate and graduate student in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University, the champion of Shandong province in the high school mathematics league, and a gold medalist in the Mathematics Olympiad, which has also guaranteed him     2    (admit) to Peking University.     

Netizens immediately recognized that this unassuming teacher was a real big shot,     3    (know) as Chen Jingrun’s successor and a rare mathematical genius — Wei Dongyi! But the viewers     4    (impress) by his humble lifestyle as he held a bottle of water and a bag of steamed buns.

Born in 1991 in Shandong to a highly intellectual family, Wei Dongyi showed great talent in maths from     5     early age. He joined the middle school’s Olympiad training team in     6    (he) junior year and trained with a group of high school students. But     7     made him famous was his amazing performance at the 49^th and 50^th IMO. After winning the IMO twice, Wei Dongyi enrolled in the School of Mathematical Sciences at Peking University and got his master’s degree and PhD in only three and a half     8    (year). In 2019, he became an assistant professor of the university.

    9    (avoid) disturbances, the university called for reducing attention on Wei himself. “We     10    (sincere) hope that society will join us in creating an environment for young scholars to focus on research,” the university wrote in a statement.

Solar terms, which     1     (be) also called Jieqi in Chinese, are days marking one of the 24 time buckets or the solar year in traditional Chinese calendar, used to indicate the alternation of seasons and climate changes in ancient China.

As far back as the Spring and Autumn period, there were four solar terms: mid-spring, mid-summer, mid-autumn    2     mid-winter. After continuous improvement, by the Qin and Han dynasties, 24 solar terms have been     3     (full) established.

The Yellow River Basin in Northern China is believed to be the cradle of the solar terms system. China’s 24 solar terms are a knowledge system and     4     (society) practice formed through observations of the sun’s annual motion and cognition of the year’s changes in season, climate and phenology. Ancient Chinese divided the sun’s movement through the sky     5     24 segments, with each segment     6     (equal) one roughly two-week-long “solar term”.     7     (base) on the sun’s position in the zodiac, the 24 solar terms were created by farmers in ancient China     8     (guide) the agricultural affairs and farming activities. They serve as an instruction manual of sorts for farmers, allowing them to know     9     conditions to expect or what agricultural activities to carry out during certain periods of the year.

Solar terms are often called “the     10     (five) great invention” of China after paper making, printing, gunpowder and the compass.