Unit 6: Independent Reading

Nichol Creek Cave winds seven miles beneath a sleepy Kentucky mountain. Lush foliage and a fifty-foot rock cliff camouflage its secret, watery entrance.

"This is my hypothesis, so I'm testing it. Others have come up with alternative ideas as to how it could be working."

"This is my hypothesis, so I'm testing it. Others have come up with alternative ideas as to how it could be working."

For example, they may change the function of a protein so it performs under different temperatures.

"When some of these species grow, we see little drips of liquid that correspond to antibiotics," says Hazel.

One of her goals is to identify and extract these agents so scientists can produce more powerful disease-fighting drugs.

Water's always dripping into the cave, but when it can't come through the clay layer the calcite becomes saturated.

Her goal is to understand how these hardy, resilient microbes can adapt and survive.

Claire scrambled over the smoldering pile of debris and made it to the street.

I had watched the greatest of the world's conflagrations from its beginning...and although the fire was still blazing all over the city with undiminished luster, I could not look at it.

He had long ago decided that her three children had perished in the fire; now, on top of this, he had lost track of his sister-in-law, Mr. Wood, and another nephew in the chaos of the night. He presumed the worst.

We could see across the river at the cross streets that where yesterday was a populous city was now a mass of smoking ruins.

His sister-in-law was still distraught over the loss of her children, and grew even more agitated when they passed a wagon loaded with frightened children.

He had run the gauntlet of flames, risked his life several times in a futile effort to locate his young nieces and nephew, and barely managed to escape.

In this article, Olmsted addresses the problems posed with inferior building materials with some urgency.

In what ways does this article, written soon after the fire, help us understand the event and why certain building materials were crucial to the spread of the flames?