If you’re like most kids, you’ve probably made more than a few paper airplanes in your day. But how many kids can say their paper airplanes have been built life-size and then flown? At least one: 12-year-old Arturo Veldenegro of Tucson, Arizona, who won the Pima Air& Space Museum’s first annual Great Paper Airplane Project Fly-Off in March 2012.
“ The purpose of the competition is to inspire and draw kids’ interest in science and flight,” says Tim Vimmerstedt, director of the museum.
About 150 kids entered the competition. The young designers learned about how airplanes fly and then set to work designing their own planes.
Arturo designed and built his airplane. When hen was finished, he took his plane to the flight area and let it fly, outdistancing the other competitors in all age groups. At last, Arturo’s airplane flew the farthest---more than 75 feet!
As the winner, Arturo got to meet with a team of engineers, which took his design and made a bigger one. The new paper airplane might have been the largest one ever built! Arturo named his large paper airplane Arturo’s Desert Eagle.
Later a helicopter tried to lift the paper airplane over the Arizona desert, but it was unsuccessful. Engineers worked for eight hours to repair it for a second try. This time, the helicopter managed to raise it to 2700 feet and then set the plane free.
Arturo watched as his plane flew through the sky at speeds of up to 98 miles per hour for 10 seconds before falling to pieces.
“I felt happy but sad,” Arturo says, “ It flew really well, but it was sad to see it destroyed.”
But that wasn’t the end of Arturo’s Desert Eagle. The Pima Air & Space Museum collected the pieces of the broken plane and put them on show to inspire other young engineers to reach for the sky.
小题1:According to the text, the Great Paper Airplane Project Fly-Off competition _______
A．has been held many times
B．can only be entered by kids
C．is to choose the largest plane
D．is held by a team of designers小题2:The underlined word ”outdistancing” in Para 4 means ________
A．looking for
B．believing in
C．throwing away
D．leaving behind小题3:What do we know about the paper airplane Arturo built?
A．It flew the highest
B．It flew for 20 minutes
C．It flew more than 75 feet
D．it took him eight hours to build小题4:In the end, Arturo’s Desert Eagle ______
A．was made into a helicopter
B．was produced in many places
C．was sold to a team of engineers
D．was put on show in the museum
