--- title: Pencils, paper and school things — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Pencils, paper and school things», a lesson of the technology course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Almost everything in your pencil case was made by machines: a pencil is a rod of baked graphite and clay sandwiched between two slats --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/) / Pencils, paper and school things # Pencils, paper and school things Lesson 6 of the technology course of Mova's primary school: 18 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/0/) — Almost everything in your pencil case was made by machines: a pencil is a rod of baked graphite and clay sandwiched between two slats of cedar wood, glued, cut and painted. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/1/) — The pencil "lead" is not the poisonous metal lead at all, but graphite, a soft grey kind of carbon that leaves tiny flakes on the paper as you write. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/2/) — Paper starts as trees: wood is chipped and cooked into a mushy pulp, spread on a fast wire mesh to drain, then squeezed and dried between hot rollers into huge rolls. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/3/) — Look at a magazine picture through a magnifying glass and you will see it is made of tiny dots of just four inks: cyan (a bright sky blue), magenta (a pinky purple), yellow and black. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/4/) — Cardboard looks weak, but its wavy middle layer makes it strong, like the arches under a bridge. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/5/) — A pencil is a rod of graphite mixed with clay, baked, laid in grooves between two thin slats of cedar wood, glued, cut and painted. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/6/) — Pencil "lead" is graphite, a soft form of carbon, not the poisonous metal lead; by a famous estimate one pencil can draw a line about 56 kilometres long. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/7/) — Paper is made from wood chipped and cooked into pulp, drained on a fast wire mesh, pressed and dried between hot rollers into huge rolls; it can be recycled several times before its fibres get too short. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/8/) — Wax crayons are made of melted coloured wax poured into moulds, cooled, checked and wrapped in paper labels by machine; the wax melts only when it is hotter than your hand. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/9/) — A ballpoint pen has a tiny metal ball at its tip, often less than a millimetre wide, that rolls ink from the tube onto the paper; the ink needs to flow down to the ball, so most ballpoints stop working upside down. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/10/) — Many pen caps have a small hole so air can pass if a child swallows one by accident. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/11/) — Exercise books are made from big rolls of paper printed with lines, cut, folded, stapled or glued along the spine and trimmed, sometimes all in one machine. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/12/) — An eraser is rubber or plastic mixed with a gritty powder; rubbing picks up the graphite and the eraser crumbles away with it; before erasers, people rubbed out pencil with bread. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/13/) — Felt-tip pens have a spongy core soaked in ink that feeds the tip, and they dry out without a cap because the liquid in the ink evaporates, which means it slowly goes off into the air. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/14/) — Cardboard is made by running paper through hot ridged rollers to make a wavy layer, which is glued between flat sheets, then cut and creased into boxes. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/15/) — Printed pictures in books and magazines are made of tiny dots of four inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, printed one after another by fast rollers. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/16/) — A glue stick is a soft solid glue in a twist-up tube that dries as its water goes into the air; the first glue stick was invented in 1969. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/6-pencils-paper-and-school-things/17/) — Rules: never run holding a pencil or pen, and tell an adult at once if a small child swallows a cap or anything else small. - ← previous: [Clothes: T-shirts, jeans and trainers](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/5-clothes-t-shirts-jeans-and-trainers/) - next →: [Toys and Lego](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/7-toys-and-lego/) - ↑ back to [Technology](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/technology/)