Cotton gin

High school (ages 12+)
Science & Technology

Name:

Date:

Step 1 · Read the article

Open the article and read it at the level above. Then answer the questions below in your own words.

https://smallwhale.org/articles/cotton-gin

Write what each word means, using the article.

Do not copy the article. Write two things you learned, the way you would explain them to a friend.

Answers below are taken from the article’s stored facts, so they match what the student read.

1. What is the inventor?Eli Whitney
2. What is the year of patent?1794
3. How does a cotton gin separate the seeds from the cotton?The gin has a wooden cylinder with wire teeth that catch the cotton and pull it through a small screen that lets the seeds stay behind. A second cylinder with brushes clears the cotton so it keeps moving.
4. Why did the cotton gin make cotton a big crop in the South?Because it could clean up to fifty pounds of cotton a day, far more than a person could do, cotton became very profitable and farmers planted more of it.

Chattel Slavery: A system where enslaved people are treated as personal property, bought, sold, and inherited, which was intensified by the cotton gin's economic impact.
Industrial Revolution: A period of major industrialization and innovation that began in Great Britain, heavily reliant on raw materials like cotton.
Sectionalism: Loyalty to one's own region or section of the country, rather than to the country as a whole, a division deepened by the economic differences related to cotton and slavery.