Hello everybody, and welcome to a new episode of News Bites!

I'm Ryan Drillsma…

And I'm Trevor Tortomasi…

In today's news:

Kids from Taiwan smash a science competition, the history of a common Christmas decoration, and the White House gets a new puppy.

All that and more, coming up next.

________________________________

台灣團隊拿到國際國中科學奧賽冠軍

Taiwan Wins Junior Science Olympiad

Are you a science buff?

Does the thought of doing experiments in chemistry, physics and biology get you excited?

你熱愛科學嗎？

想到做化學 、物理和生物的實驗會讓你興奮嗎？

Then you could be a future contestant in the International Junior Science Olympiad!

The International Junior Science Olympiad (國際國中科學奧賽) is a competition where students from all over the world use science to tackle challenges (對付挑戰) and overcome problems (解決問題).

Taiwan's team this year had six members.

And the team was very successful (成功的).

In fact, each member won a gold medal!

And Taiwan came first out of all countries. Hooray!

The Olympiad consists of several exams, which ask students about questions on topics like the periodic table, electromagnetism, and chemical bonding.

奧賽包含了很多考試，可能會有關於週期表、電磁學、化學鍵之類的問題。

Of course, the students have to answer questions on many more topics - so many that we can't talk about all of them…

And although for many of the questions you can use calculations (計算) to answer, some of the questions are conceptual (概念性的).

That means you have to truly understand what you are learning to answer correctly.

This year's event was held in the United Arab Emirates.

But teams joined in online because of the pandemic.

Would you like to represent Taiwan in the International Science Olympiad?

今年的活動是阿拉伯聯合大公國主辦的，因為疫情，大家都用線上方式參與 ，你未來想在國際國中科學奧賽代表台灣嗎？

________________________________

聖誕彩條的故事

The History of Tinsel

Ho ho ho!

It's Christmas!

Are you hanging up your stockings (聖誕襪) on the wall?

Do you think Santa is going to come and visit your house?

Celebrating Christmas is becoming more and more popular in Taiwan.

It's a European holiday, but it's still exciting to see trees, lights and decorations (裝飾) go up around the country at winter time.

Maybe you have a Christmas tree at home.

And maybe you know about one of the most popular Christmas tree decorations… it's called tinsel!

Tinsel (彩條) is like a long, shiny rope, covered with thin strips of shiny, metallic material.

「彩條」就像是繩子，上面有很多條金屬般的閃亮細絲。

But I bet you don't know where it originally comes from (原產地)!

The idea of tinsel goes back to 1610, in a place called Nuremberg in Germany (德國).

People used to put candles (蠟燭) in trees, and they used thin strips of real silver to reflect the candles, making the tree look brighter.

之前的人會用蠟燭裝飾聖誕樹，再放一根一根的銀絲，讓樹看起來更亮。

But silver was very expensive, and it quickly stopped being shiny.

People switched it for things like copper (銅) and tin (錫).

But when World War One started in 1914 (世界大戰), the army needed these metals.

So some people switched to lead (鉛), but that was poisonous (有毒), and some switched to aluminium (鋁)… but this easily catches fire.

Eventually, people started making tinsel out of PVC.

It's a kind of plastic… but it is shiny!

And that is what we still use today!

I hope you enjoyed this history lesson…

Merry Christmas to you all!

________________________________

美國總統領養新小狗

U.S. President Joe Biden Gets a New Puppy

U.S. President Joe Biden loves dogs.

It seems he especially loves German Shepherds (德國牧羊犬).

So it's no surprise that six months after his dog Champ died, his family got a new puppy.

美國拜登總統領養了一隻新狗。

The new puppy is named Challenger.

Biden shared photos and videos of his new dog on social media (社群媒體).

Challenger will be spending his first Christmas with the Bidens.

Challenger會跟拜登家過聖誕節。

And he will join his big brother, Major!

Everyone is hoping Challenger will have an easy time adapting to life at the White House.

________________________________

So, in today's News Bites:

Taiwan came first out of all countries in this year's Junior Science Olympiad.

Each of Taiwan's six team members won a gold medal.

The students had to answer questions on many topics.

________________________________

And,

The idea of tinsel goes back to 1610, in a place called Nuremberg in Germany.

People put thin strips of real silver in Christmas trees to reflect candles.

Now we use PVC… it's a kind of plastic.

________________________________

And,

U.S. President Joe Biden has adopted a new dog.

His name is Challenger.

Everyone is hoping Challenger will have an easy time adapting to life at the White House.

________________________________

And that's today's episode of News Bites!