Lucky mistakes: The microwave oven

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (Lucky mistakes mini-series, episode 96) is a short documentary about the invention of the microwave oven. In 1945, the engineer Percy Spencer noticed that the chocolate bar in his pocket was melting while he stood next to a radar machine. Spencer came from a poor family, left school at twelve to work in a factory and taught himself science from books; in the Second World War he worked for the company Raytheon and helped to make radar machines, which use invisible waves called microwaves. He put some corn next to the machine and it became popcorn: microwaves make the water in food move very fast, and this makes the food hot. In 1947 his company sold the first microwave oven: it was almost as tall as a man, weighed about 340 kilograms and cost thousands of dollars, so only restaurants, hotels and big kitchens bought them; in 1967 a small oven for homes arrived, and today about nine homes in ten in many countries have one. The narration is in the past simple, with the present simple for today; no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: 9 on facts and 1 on vocabulary (microwaves). The study topic is inventions and discoveries that began with a mistake or an accident.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (a drawing of Percy Spencer with the melted chocolate bar next to the radar machines, a photo of an early microwave oven on a ship, a photo of a bowl of popcorn), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Think about it: Do you use a microwave oven at home? What do you cook in it?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read dates and large numbers. The pack's key words explain the new words (engineer, radar, pocket, melt, factory, company, wave, corn, popcorn, oven, weigh, kilogram).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-school-and-society ("École et société"), Cycle 4 (4e). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.