Footprints ch06 The Making of a Scientist - CBSE Test Papers

CBSE Test Paper 01
The Making of a Scientist
  1. Which project of Ebright was placed first in zoology division and third overall in the County Science Fair?
  2. What did Ebright do when he found it difficult to chase each butterfly?
  3. What are the ingredients that make a true scientist?
  4. How did a book become a turning point in Richard Ebright's life?
  5. What did Richard Ebright learn from the Country Science Fair?
  6. Richard Ebright displayed a well-rounded personality. Do you agree? Elucidate in the context of the given text.
  7. "Richard Ebright was a successful scientist who gave a new theory of cells to the scientific world". Elucidate.
  8. What was the turning point in Ebright’s life?
CBSE Test Paper 01
The Making of a Scientist
Solution
  1. Ebright intended to prove the theory that viceroys look like monarchs because monarchs don’t taste good to birds. Viceroys, on the other hand, do taste good to birds. So the more they look like monarchs, the less likely they are to become a bird’s dinner. His project was to see, whether, in fact, birds would catch monarchs. He found that a starling would not eat ordinary bird food. It would eat all the monarchs it could get. This project was placed first in zoology division and then overall in the County Science Fair.
  2. Richard Ebright started to raise a flock of butterflies in his basement because it was difficult for him to catch a large number of butterflies for research. He caught female monarch butterflies and their eggs. He watched their life cycle from egg to adult butterfly carefully and then let them go with a tag on their wings.
  3. The ingredients that make a true scientist are an intelligent brain, high curiosity and desire to win, who follows the scientific way of thinking which includes observation, testing or experimentation, obtaining results and then drawing conclusions.
  4. Ebright’s mother brought him a book entitled The 'Travels of Monarch X' which became a turning point in his life. This book changed his life. This book explained how monarch butterflies migrate to central America. This book opened the world of science to him and proved to be a turning point in his life. At the end of the book, readers were invited to help study butterfly migration. He started to tag butterflies and then he caught a female butterfly and took its eggs. He observed its life cycle carefully.
  5. When Richard Ebright was in seventh grade, he participated in a county science fair. There he showed slides of frog tissues but he lost. Then he learned that he would have to do some real experiments. So he decided to do further research in his favourite field, that is, research on insects.
  6. Richard’s genius was obvious by the time he was in second grade. He managed to collect all twenty-five species of butterflies around his hometown and classify them. He also loved to collect coins, fossils and rocks. Furthermore, he was an active member of his school’s oratory club and model United Nations club. He was also an effective debater and a public speaker. He loved photography as well. He was an enthusiastic canoeist and an all-round outdoors person. Learning new things was easy for him, so he found it easy to devote his time and energy to pursue many other interests. He believed in the spirit of competition to win, but, he did not wish to defeat others just to win. He worked very hard to prove his hypotheses and was able to follow other people's advice.   He was perseverant and was dedicated. 
  7. Richard Ebright conducted an experiment on a flock of butterflies and raised the eggs of female monarchs. In addition to this, he also studied the cause of a viral disease that killed all Monarch caterpillars. He also tried to find out the similarities between Viceroy butterflies and Monarch butterflies. The study of insect hormones helped him in giving a new theory on the life of cells. Eventually, he was able to find the significance of the hormone supporting the full development of butterfly wings. All these experiments led him to conclude that cells grew from a Monarch's wings. He found that cells would divide and grow into a normal butterfly if they were fed a hormone that was found in the gold spots of a Monarch pupa. Hence, Ebright proved a new theory which formed the blueprint of DNA. He discovered how the cell can ‘read’ the blueprint of its DNA which is the substance in the nucleus of a cell that controls heredity. It also determines the form and function of the cell. Hence, we can conclude that the experiments conducted by Ebright amply show him to be a successful scientist.
  8. The book The Travels of Monarch X became a turning point in Richard Ebright’s life. His mother gave him this book. This book inspired him to know how Monarch butterflies migrate to Central America. This book opened the world of science to Ebright. At the end of the book, readers were invited to help study butterfly migrations. They were asked to tag butterflies for research by Dr. Frederick A Urquhart of the University of Toronto, Canada. Ebright attached light adhesive tags to the wings of monarchs as per the instructions are given in the book. Anyone who found a tagged butterfly was asked to send the tag to Dr Urquhart. Ebright's mother helped him in informing Dr. Urquhart. From the time the book, The Travels of Monarch X, opened the world of science to him, Richard Ebright has never lost his scientific curiosity.