Please could you please correct me if I'm wrong in this reading?

How do you work out the pressure of a gas on the side of a container? First, imagine single particle of gas flying around a container and calculate how hard it hits the surface. Use that information to work out the combined force of trillions and trillions of particles. It might sound like something for a scientist, but in fact even a 15-year-old could do it.

Don't believe me? Well, I was that 15-year-old. On a winter morning thirteen years ago, I finally grasped what science was. Until then, science had been secret box containing complex laws of nature that had been dug out of the ground by grey-haired scientists like mud-covered bits of stone (I never worked out how. Did they go out digging like archaeologists? If so, where?). And they had all been found anyway. There was no more work to do, just a list of things to learn.

It wasn't that I had no interest in the world around me I read books about how stars the were formed, made newspapers burn using reflected light from the sun, collected insects and tried mixing household chemicals, as any child might. But in my mind, none of that interest related to what was going on at school. Every physics, biology and chemistry lesson was simply a case of learning another equation, law or definition by heart. Where it all came from and how much more there was, had no idea.

And it's not that I loathed school. Where science lessons were inflexible or didn't really involve me, other subjects, like english, meant having a go -writing a story or a poem, or acting out plays, for examples. In understanding where these came from and how we could have a role in them, the subject came alive. With physics, I wasn't allowed to query anything at all and a friend once received a low mark because he answered a question using something from the next year's syllabus.

And things might not have changed, had I not had a new physics teacher, called Dr Barnes. 'Digger', as he was more affectionately known, did as much writing on blackboards as anyone else and also went through the detailed parts of the syllabus, but he also taughtus what science actually is. Often, he would hust set a question and then walk out of the classroom, asking one of us to find him when someone had worked it out. He knew we were inquisitive andd he encouraged it - a classmate was convinced, for example, that crushing a mint sweet gave out a faint blue light, so he gathered us in the photography club's darkroom to see if it was true. We didn't prove it that day but it fuelled our interest in the sort of strange questions that science is all about - questions which Digger would patiently answer.

In the two years that we had Dr barnes we tried out some of the work of famous scientists such as Robert Boyle and Jacques Charles. And the thing was, we could do it. These giants of science had spent decades arriving at their answers. But we could follow the logic. Even better, working out those equations and finding the solutions to real conundrums gave a sense of achievement. The mystery was begginning to unfold and the decisive move had been made by own imagination.

I carried on becaused I felt there had to be more to the numbers and rules. But who knows how many children leave what they think is a dull and difficult subject, carrying and impression that it is reserved for the boring people? They need to feel that the stuff they are learing is not a closed book. They need to get their hands dirty, as I did, so that they can understand what science really is. There are some basics to learn, of course, but they are tools that can help unlock some of the most profound mysteries of the universe. And the best part is that we certainly don't know everything. Science is a storybook of human immagination, for which we can help write the next chapter.

1 What point is the writer making in the first paragraph?

A Scientists often make exaggerated claims.

B scientific theories are very hard to put into practise

C the scietific facts taught at school are not useful.

D science is not as complicated as it appears.

2 The writer suggests that as a schoolboy he had a particularly simple view of

A how scientific progress was measured.

B how scientific facts were explained to people.

C how scientific discoveries were made.

D how scientific experiments were carried out.

3 What does 'they' in line 17 refer to?

A complex laws of nature.

B grey-haired scientists.

C mud.covered bits of stone.

D archeologists.

4 In the third paragraph, the writer suggests that as a boy he

A was naturally curious.

B was sometimes cruel.

C preferred to be on his own.

D saw a link between school and life.

5 The writer enjoyed English classes because

A they weren't taught in the usual way.

B they didn't involve a lot of studying.

C he was good at the subject.

D he was able to take an active part in lessons.

6 Dr Barnes differed from ther teachers in his

A knowledge of science.

B use of the school facilities.

C acceptance of the science syllabus. .

D approach to ploblem solving.

7 What does 'conundrums' in line 68 mean?

A typical concerns.

B difficult questions.

C popular theories.

D original research.

8 In the last paragraph, the writer is concerned that

A not enough is written about science.

B too little science is done at school.

C children are being put off science.

D the basics of science have become too hard.