【2017年整理】新英与语教程一册unit9.ppt

Unit Nine ;Pre-reading Activities;Pre-reading Activities;words expressions;Summary filling;Writing exercise;;Background Information;Warm-up Questions;;Back; One of the most famous and spectacular tricks in modern magic—sawing a woman in half—was created in 1920 by the British magician P.T. Selbit. He caused a sensation in London with his dramatic performance—in which his glamorous girl assistant was placed in a wooden box and then apparently sawn in two. A few moments later she was made “whole” again. During the trick, only the girl’s head could be seen protruding from a hole at one end of the box. All she had to do was to draw her knees under her chin while the sawing took place.; An American magician, Horace Goldin, introduced an improved version of the trick in New York in 1921. The girl’s head, hands and feet were clearly visible, poking through holes in the ends and sides of the box. However, he used not one girl but two. To begin with, Goldin told the first girl to lie down inside the box, which rested on a deep wooden table. Once the lid was closed and locked, Goldin spun the box and table on a turntable so that the girl’s feet were briefly out of the audience’s sight. ;Immediately, she pulled up her legs and placed her feet against a footrest inside the lid. In the meantime, the second girl, concealed inside the hollow tabletop, thrust her legs through two trapdoors: one in the tabletop and the other in the box. She then pushed her feet through the holes at the end of the box. When the turntable stopped, the audience was looking at the head and hands of girl No. 1 and the feet of girl No. 2.; Goldin, with the help of an assistant, then cut through the center of the box with a large saw. As soon as the saw was withdrawn, two metal plates were inserted onto either side of the cut. The magician pulled the halves of the box apart—and the metal plates kept the audience from seeing inside. The “victim”, apparently cut in two, smiled and waved her hands