理工类C级辅导资料:阅读判断Inventor of LED
When Nick Holonyak set out to create a new kind of visible lighting using semiconductor alloys， his colleagues thought he was unrealistic. Today， his discovery of light-emitting diodes， or LEDs， are used in everything from DVDs to alarm clocks to airports. Dozens of his students have continued his work， developing lighting used in traffic lights and other everyday technology.
“Anytime you get an award.big or little.its always a surprise.”Holonyrak said.
Holonyak， 75，was a student of John Bardeen，an inventor of the transistor， in the early 1950s.After graduate school， Holonyak worked at Ben Labs.He later went to General Electric，where he invented a switch now widely used in house dimmer switches.
Later， Holonyak started 1ooking into how semiconductors could be used to generate 1ight.But while his colleagues were 1ooking at how to generate invisible light，he wanted to generate visible light.The LEDS he invented in 1962 now last about 10 times longer than incandescent bulbs， and are more environmentally friendly and cost effective.
Holonyak，now a professor of electrical and computer engineering and physics at the University of Illinois，said he suspected that LEDs would become as commonplace as they are today，but didnt realize how many uses they would have.
“You dont know in the beginning.YOU think you’re doing something important.you think its worth doing，but you really can’t tell what the big payoff is going to be，and when，and how.You just dont know，”he said.
The Lemelson.MIT Program also recognized Edith Flanigen，75，with the$1 00，000 Lemelson-MIT Lifetime Achievement Award for her work on a new generation of“molecular sieves，”that can separate molecules by size.
词汇：
semiconductor n.半导体
alloy n.合金
diode n.二极管
incandescent adj.白炽的
bulb n.灯泡
commonplace adj.普通的
molecular adj.分子的
sieve n.筛
练习：
1.Holonyaks colleagues thought he would fail in his research on LEDs at the time when he started it.
A.Right
B.Wrong
C.Not mentioned