7-Year-Old Girl Finds Diamond513
10/2/2023 (#19 this year)
Welcome back for the second semester of this school year. Did you have a good autumn
break? Well, perhaps we should say autumn weekend. I like this part of the school year.
I know that it is one of the busiest times and that everybody is really stressed and tired,but I love the thought that we are getting closer to Christmas. I have always really loved
Christmas. And now that I can buy Christmas presents for my daughter, I love it evenmore. She still pretends1 that she believes in Santa Claus so that I don’t get sad. She iswonderful. Or, maybe she has just found a way to get more Christmas presents. Haha.
What about you? Do you like Christmas?
10 differences

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about diamonds:
1. Diamonds are the hardest natural substance2 on Earth.
2. Diamonds are formed about 200 km underneath the surface of the Earth and thencarried up by volcanoes or earthquakes.
3. Diamonds come in many different colors.
4. The word “diamond” comes from the Greek “adamas”. It means “indestructible3”.
5. Diamonds are formed in the Earth where it is very hot and there is a lot of pressure4.
It is about 1,300 ℃ and 50,000 times more pressure than on the surface.
6. The Culinan diamond is the biggest one every found. It weighs 609 g!

Aspen Brown asked her father to take her to Crater of Diamonds State
Park in Arkansas, USA. It was her 7th birthday and she wanted to look for adiamond. Crater of Diamonds State Park has an area where visitors are allowed
to look for diamonds and they are allowed to keep whatever they find. People
sometimes find small diamonds, but Aspen found a 2.95 carat diamond that
was about the size of a pea. She had been searching for a while and she sat
down for a rest. Her father carried on searching and the Aspen ran up to him
holding the diamond she had found. The staff at the park confirmed5 that it isa brown diamond and it is worth6 about $15,000. Aspen hasn’t said what she
wants to do with the diamond, but I expect her father is hoping she will sell it.
A lot of diamonds are found at Crater of Diamonds State Park because it is partof an old volcano. When the volcano was active7, it carried a lot of diamonds
to the surface. Most of the diamonds are in the top layer of soil. The firstdiamonds were found in 1907 and there was a diamond rush. Thousands ofpeople came to the area to try to make their fortune. A few people have foundsome very large diamonds, but the majority8 of the diamonds are very small.
There are not enough diamonds there for any commercial diamond mining9,
so it has been left for tourists. I would like to go one day.

1.pretend～のふりをする 2.substance 物質 3.indestructible 破壊できない 4.pressure
圧力 5.confirm 確認する 6.worth 価値がある 7.active volcano 活火山 8.majority 大多
数 9.commercial diamond mining 商業ダイヤモンド採掘

One thing we can do to help the environment

World record
I’ve started running again in the mornings recently. Every day I manage to run makes
me a little bit healthier. So, I thought I would look at some running records today. I amvery slow, but here are some records from some people who can run really fast and far.
The world record for the 50 km distance is held by CJ Albertson. He ran it in 2:38:44.
The world record for running 100 km is held by Aleksandr Sorokin and is 6:05:35. The
world record for 100 miles is also held by Aleksandr Sorokin and is 10:51:39. (100 milesis 160.9 km.) Then we get the really crazy records. Yiannis Kouros has the world records
for running 1000 km (5d 16:17:00) and 1000 miles (10d 10:30:36). He also has the world
record for running over 48 hours non-stop1. He managed to run 473.495 km! To put that
into perspective, it is 328 km from Sapporo to Wakkanai! These people have amazing
endurance2 and will power3.

Speak your mind , even if yourvoice shakes . – Maggie Kuhn

#5 Change our lightbulbs
This week’s thing we can do is extremely easy, but something we neverreally think about. In your house, do you have LED light bulbs, or do you
have the old-style6 light bulbs? In my house, we have a lot of the old ones,
but when one dies, I try to replace7 it with an LED light bulb. Last week, I
wrote about fast-fashion and the reason why I and many other peoplechoose fast-fashion is because it is cheap. This is the same with light bulbs.
The old-style light bulbs are called incandescent8 light bulbs and they workby heating up a metal filament until it gives off light. The problem withincandescent light bulbs is that they also give off heat. If you have ever tried
to touch an old-style light bulb, you will know what I mean. All of the heatthat the light bulb is making, is wasted energy. 90% of the energy used foran old-style light bulb becomes heat. LED lightbulbs produce light without
making much heat as well. They are 75% more efficient9 than old-style lightbulbs. LEDs also last 25 times longer than old-style light bulbs, which means
they don’t produce as much trash. They are more expensive, but if you think
about the money you save in lost energy, the length of time you can use
them, and that you are helping the environment, it is money worth
spending10.

45

1. 1.non-stop 止まらず 2.endurance 我慢力 3.will power 意志力 4.speak your mind 意見を言う 5.shake 触れる 6.old-style 旧式 7.replace 入れ替える 8.incandescent 白熱する 9.efficient 効率の良い 10.worth spending お金を使う価値がある