001_Star women_7A_基础_12

Have you ever heard of Wang Zhenyi (1768-1797)? Perhaps most of us didn't know this great name until she was introduced in a CCTV programme.

Wang Zhenyi was a great Chinese s_____. She was born in the Qing Dynasty. At that time, girls had no chance to get a formal education. However, her father and grandfather were open-minded, They thought girls should share equal o_____ with boys. They e_____ her to read the books in their home library. Wang Zhenyi educated herself and read a lot about astronomy ( thestudy of the stars, planets, etc. ), maths, geography as well as medicine. Later, she decided to f_____ on astronomy.
In her time, many people expected the stars to tell what was going to happen. They thought certain events in the sky, such as lunar eclipses (月食) happened when gods were angry. But Wang Zhenyi thought d______.

She believed in facts and observation. To explain those "strange" events, she did some experiments. In one, she used a round table as the earth, a lamp as the sun anda mirror as the moon.

She moved them around to show what actually happens during a lunar eclipse : when the earth is passing directly between the sun and the moon, the sunlight cannot reach the moonand the moon "disappears”.

Throughout her short life, Wang Zhenyi wrote many articles about her research. In her articles.she explained difficult ideas in clear and s______ ways so that people could understand science more easily. She helped make science available to more people.