Where Graphite Comes From: teacher key

How Pencils Are Made, grade 8 edition, written for 8th grade. Rock squeezed deep underground, a first picture from 1565, and how America got its own pencils.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What conditions form natural graphite?
   • Carbon squeezed and heated inside the Earth (answer)
   • Wood burned in a kiln
   • Clay mixed with wax
2. What event led to the first American pencils?
   • A flood
   • The War of 1812 stopping English imports (answer)
   • The invention of paper
3. Who drew the earliest known picture of a wooden pencil?
   • Conrad Gessner (answer)
   • Hymen Lipman
   • William Monroe
4. Why might pencil makers have wanted a machine that cut slats exactly?
   • Pencils need grooves that fit the cores (answer)
   • Wood is expensive
   • Cedar is soft
5. What do miners call graphite that comes from heated coal?
   • Amorphous graphite (answer)
   • Flake graphite
   • Plumbago

Words

• metamorphism: rock change
• graphite: soft carbon form
• plumbago: old name
• sandwich: two slices