ACT Past Papers with Answers

The passage establishes all of the following about Mr. Hosokawa EXCEPT that he: appreciated Eugene Onegin. rarely went out into the world. saw the opera perfornied.

In the passage. lines 3-12 primarily serve to: suggest that the opera was overshadowed. by unpleasant weather and bad seats. Tokyo in the mid-1950s. offer sensory details that help set tbe stage for the irnportant experience to be related. imply that for Mr. Hosokawa, the train trip was more memorable than the opera. S. Mr. Hosokawa's reaction to the Rigoletto perforjnance is most clearly reflected in the way Mr. Hosokawa: "climbed the long set of stairs to their row" (Iine 14). "bowed and begged to be excused by every person w.ho stood to let them pass into their seats" (lines 1@17). "waited . without speaking" (lines 19-20) "reached out for his father's hand" (lines ￿41).

Source question 5. Refer to the source image.

The passage indicates that Kiyorni ultimately decided on the CD by Coss because Kiyomi: was drawn to an unknown name. couldn't find a Callas recording.

The phrase dizzying void (line 15) is most likely . included in the passage to suggest that Mr. Hosokawa alld his father: sat high up in tbe theater. sat above a section of empty seats.

The statement in lines 34-37 most nearly means that Mr. Hosokawa: wanted everyone to love opera as much as he did. the way he had. wanted everyone to experience the kind of joy that opera had brought him. refiTrsed to realize that opera wasn't for everyone.

The statement "Such love breeds loyalty, and Mr. Hosokawa was a loyal man" (lines 47-48) most directly refers to the fact that Mr. Hosokawa: his life. retained his appreciati.on for his favorite opera composers and Singers. was unhesitatingly loyal to the people at his workplace. several years.

Accordillg to the passage. the time Mr. Hosokawa rernembered "as happily.. as any vacation" (line 60) was: one of the few Sundays he was able to"listen to an entire opera. ously to Alcina. the sick days he took off from work when he wasn't really ill. Passage11 SOCIAL SCIENCE: Thls passage is adapted from the article "A Native Splrlt, Inside th8 Beltwaf by Patrlcia Lelgh Brown cl￿004 by The New York Tlmes Company). Ethnobotany is the study ot how plants are used in partlcular cultures. boulders, shipped fiom as far away as the Northwest Territories, echo the curvaceous form of the museum building, its rough-hewn limestone surface meant to 55 recall a cliff face sculptured by the wind. To acquaint herself with the Middle Atlantic region, House consulted fellow botanists, but also set out on the Potomac River in a canoe. In a sense, she has served both as a botanist and the conscience of the 60 landscape, guiding the planting to ieflect both the museum's collection-which includes artrfacts like a

The main purpose of the passage is to: and work on behalf of the environment. recount in chronological order several key events in House's career. Indian and House's work for it. botanist, usillg House as an example.

The passage indicates that House intentionally added all of the following to the grounds outside the National Museum of the American Indian EXCEPT: corn. squash. To the Mall's polite formality-its 'Yulips all in a line,, ill House's words-has come a contrastiiig pres- ence: a wetland visible from the Capitol sprouting cat- tails, wild rice and about 1.440 waterlilies.. Visitors meallder past a meadow of buttercups. panic grass and 50 Other Potomac Valley plants and a somewhat surreal field of corn, tobacco, squash and other crops. Massive

The phrase in quotation marks in lines 37-38 most nearly means that the fields: owned them. are all important resource for the Navajo who use them. were permitted by House to revert to their natural condition. them.

The main purpose of the seventb paragraph (lines 64-81) is to: blue star. illustrate the knowledge of ecosystems that tribal elders possess. O'odham lands.

Based on tbe passage, the federal botanists, claim in the late 1980s about the Kearney's blue star is best described as.. correct; only recent efforts by House and Francisco have saved the plant from extinction. cottect: experts estin]ate that as few as eight speci- mens of the plant exist today. inc,orrect; for centuries, the Tobono O'odlwll have raised the plant. incorrect. numerous specimens of the plant still grow wild, as House and Fiancisco discovered.

In the passage. House says that iecognizing the diver- sity of plants and of people is: occasionally possible. rarely desirable. a Colltinual challenge.

The neighbors mentioned in the passage are said to have reacted to House's decisions about what should grow in her backyard with.. curiosity. indifference.

The passage implies that the design of the National Museum of the American Indian building was intended to: suggest that the building was a natural form affected by the elements. minimize the damage to the cliff from which the building was carved. use a wide variety of materials imported from tbe Northwest Territories. match the style and form of other buildings on the National Mall. Passage111 sewing machine. I knew that the part of their lives they liked most was here, with each other. Not at the supper 55 table or at work. My father used to be jealous of these tète-a-tétes. and he had cause. HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the essay °South- ern Women" by Shlrley Abbott ( 1993 by Franklln Square Press). The South where I was born and raised was Arkansas, in a peaceable little resort town called Hot Springs. My mother and the other women l knew as a child, 5 . just before World War II began, were farm women, one or two generations removed from the real pioneer days, gentled and domesticated by the time I came among them. But the marks were there. Their skin was leathery from working outdoors. Some of these women were 10 serene and some hot-tetupcred, and in either case they brooked no transgressions of their notions of morality. < nd woe to anyone who spoke to these women with dis- respect. They were not innocent or submissive or deli- cately constituted, not afraid of balky cows or chicken 15 hawks. It took them approximately two hours to trans- form a live rooster into Sunday dinner. They could reason with a mule and shoot a gun. But they also knew just how to take hold of a baby and what to say to a weeping two-year-old. Urban spirit that I was, I had no more aptitude as a farmer's daughter than my father had as a farmer. I hated digging potatoes, and I hated gathering eggs. I hated the smell of chicken houses-vinegary. sweet, rotten-despised the Chickens. shrank from the finger- 25 skinning work that went on seven days a week, indoors and out. I comforted myself with the thought that I had, after all, not beell born for such indignities. I was in love with my Jllother too. I hated her doing housework, could not bear the sight of her in an old dress and a pair of unlaced oxfords, feeding soapy 60 bedsheets into the wringer, scrapiDg carrots and parsnips at the sink. But one thing she had acquired in town was the abiIity to be glamorous, to divorce ber- self, by means of paints and polishes, from that other world. I loved her glamorous aspect. 65 On those rare afternoons when she did abandon her housework and go out.. having brought her face to its state of daytime perfection. she would take up ber Car keys and shut the door on her immaculate house. She and I would sct out foi town together. We'd go find 70 a parking place and go into Woolworth's for a spool of thread and a nickel's worth of candy. Sometimes. to my despair. she'd bump into one of ber thousands of COUSIDS on the street and talk for half an hour. The exoticism of the afternoon would vanish sooner than 75 the bag of candy. Many years later. I stopped to wonder why a woman of ber thoroughly practical inclinations would spend upward of all hour prettying up to go to the dime store. She certainly was not trying to attract a man. She 80 was not doing it for Daddy, foi by the time he got home from work she'd be in a housedress again, perspiring over the kitchen range. Nor was she competing witb other women. She was doing it for fun. and for a mark of her separateness, and for a way of showing herself- 85 and me-that even so responsible a person as herself could do something that had no purpose to it. It was her one real break with her past. Maybe she wanted to let me know, in the most subtle way. that femininity was not tnerely the massive, serious, strenuous thing she 90 usually made it seem to be, but occasionally a matter of pleasing yourself. Sometime in the late 1960s feminists brought forth the notion of sisterhood-of women "bonded" to 30 women. Sisterhood was going to be "powerful., But sisterhood was nothing new to me. It bas been a Z¢￿- ously guarded secret among Southern women for year8. Next to motherhood, sisterhood is what they value most, taking an endless pleasure in the daily, common- 85 place society of one another. The most vivid Lnemories of my childhood are long afternoons when my Aunt Vera would come to.:'our house with her daughter June. Sometimes the four of us would dress and get in the car and drive around Hot 40 Springs. buying thread and snaps at the dry-good5 store, "rattling up and down,, as my aunt called it. on Central Avenue. Hearing what they said on thése after- noons, I gradually realized that my mother and heI sister were not awed by Jnen in the least. that they pre- 45 fe￿ed each other's company.

In 'the passage, how does the author relate Southern women to the feminists of the Iate 1960s? the late 1960s had long been practiced and valued among Southern women. Southern women valued motherbood wbile ferni- nists of the late 1960s valued sisterhood, creating tension between the two groups. directly challenged by the feminists of the late 1960s. among Southern women primarily because of its emphasis on sisterhood.

The author concludes that her mother's occasional efforts at "prettying up to go to the dime store" Oines 78-79) were intellded in part to: uphold an honored practice from the past. attract the attention of men. compete for the full of it with the glamorous wornen in town. apparent purpose. Passage IV versity of Hawaii at Manoa. The routine up-and-down movements of the waves act as a giant loudspeaker, Pushing the air at infrasonic frequencies. Low-frequency sounds are also generated by one 55 of the most colorful displays in the sky, the northern lights. which are caused by charged particles in the air. This electricity heats atmospheric gases, and the warnied gas molecules spread out and increase air pressure. NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the artlcle °Infra8onlc Symphonf by Kale Ramsayer (Q2004 by Science Service). "Let me start off with a riddle." says NASA scien- tist Allan J. Zuckerwar. In his office in Hampton, Va., he rattles off items as dissimilar as rhinoceroses, super- sonic aircraft, and hurricanes. "Now, what do they have 5 in Common?" The answer, Zuckerwar explains, is that each one . generates silent infrasound-long sound waves at a frequency below 20 hertz. People can't hear anything below that frequency, probably for good reason. Otherwise. they'd be bombarded by the con- 10 Stant din of wind, the intermittent groaning of Earth, and the occasional distant explosion. But scientists are eavesdropping on volcanoes, avalanches, earthquakes, and meteorites to discern these phenomena's infrasound signatures and see what new infonnation infrasound 15 might reveal. Just as seismic waves travel through Earth. infra- sonic waves travel t1￿Ollgh th¢ air. And the lower the frequency of the waves. the fartber they can travel without losing strength. Scientists first detected infra- 20 sound in 1883, when the eruption of the Krakatoa vol- cano in Indonesia sent inaudible sound waves careening around the world, affecting barornetric readings. 60 "It pusbes the neutral air forward, almost like the bow wave off a sl]ip," says Olson. This air movement creates an inftasonic signal. The readings are visible during the beginnings of these magnetic storms. as the bright, greenish ligbts sweep across the sky like a flut- 65 tering curtain. While specialized microphones can pick up infra- sonic signals generated high in the atmosphere, they detect more earthly rumbles, as well. For instance. Jeffrey B. Johnson of the University of Hawaii at 70 Manoa has placed microphones within a kilometer of a vent of the active Erebus volcano in Antarctica. The sensors have recorded low-frequency signals so power- ful tha¢, were they audible, they'd have a volume in excess of 130 decibels-"somewhere between a jet air- 75 plane and tlje threshold of pain,, says Johnson. Erebus does produce some audible sound, but it's not very loud, he says. The infrasound radiating from the volcano's lava lake is generated by tbe rupture of 10-meter-wide, gas- 80 filled bubbles, which pushes huge infrasound waves into the atmosphere. Johnson can use 'infrasound read- ings to estimate the size of the lava bubbles within Erebus and the amount of gas they contain. "Infrasound is a powerful tool to understand more 85 about explosions and eruption sources," says Johnson. "It allows us to directly quantify what's going oll at a volcanic vent." Infrasonic research gained significant attention and funding in the 1950s, when the United States and 25 the Soviet Union used infrasound to detect each other's atmospheric nuclear testing. Interest declined when aboveground bomb testing was bonned in 1963 as part of the Limited Test Ban Treaty. But lately, scientists have turned back to 80 infrasound. IEJfrasound interpretation is a young science. Acousticians and geophysicists are still learning what phenornena generate infrasound signatures and how to match signatures with phenomena. For example, John V. Olson of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks recalls one morning last April when a colleague rushed into his office arid asked whether he had heard an ¢Aplosion the night before. Th¢ two scientists found a large pulse on the infrasound 40 record from the nuclear-test monitorillg station that the University operates and traced it to a nearby firing range. The next day, the local paper Teported that a citi- zen had found a.bundle of dynamite. which police exploded at the range. "So, we take [the signal] out of the 'little green men, file and say, 'This is what dynamite looks like from 5 Miles away." says Olson. "Slowly. daily. we sift and soIt through these signals." Whether infrasound is used for commercial purposes, to learn more about natural phenomena. or 90 .simply to listen for something that nobody wants to bear, it is entering what those in the field call a renaissance. Geopbysicists and acousticians are sorting through, categorizing, and studying a wide range of inaudible noise. 35 Ocean stornis and waves are two of tbe big genera- 50 tors of infrasoulld, says Milton A. Garcés of the Uni-

The author strongly implies that for her mother, break- ing from the past was something: by. to be avoided, as the past is what defines the present. she longed for but achieved only at the end of her life. she wanted for her daughter but not for herself.

According to the passage, when the author was young, the sight of her mother wearing an old dress and scrap- xng caTrots and parsnips at the sink had what effect on the author? ' It comforted her in that it was a familiar part of everyday life. mother and the person she imagined she herself would become. was caught in a restrieted.life of endless drudgery. help her mother, even though she hated the woi'k.

The rnain idea of the passage is that: understanding the infrasonic frequency of the northern lights call help scientists ttack magneti storms ill space. scientists expect that recently developed methods of measuring infrasound will be useful primarily for commercial purposes. identifying new sources of infrasound has led sci- entists to conclude that earlier definitions of infra- sound were inaccurate. scientists have recently begun focusing more attention and resources on expanding on earlier infrasound research.

The passage's mention of scientists, attempts to "dis- cern these phenomena's infrasound signatures" (lilles 13-14) most nearly refers to their attempts to: understand the cffects of making infrasound audi- ble to humans. categorize different types of infrasound detection devices. sound various phenomella produce. scientists who discovered them.

Allan J, Zuckerwar's riddle (lines 1-5) is based mainly on the unstated assumption that most people: won, t immediately see what rhinoceroses. super- sonic aircraft, and hurricanes have in common. will find it humorous that a rhilloceros could gen- erate more infrasound than a supersonic aircraft. already know tkLat supersonic aircraft alld bU￿1- Canes are sources of infrasound. won't realize that sounds below 20 bertz are inaudkble to humans.

Within the passage, the sixth and seventh paragraphs (lines 35-48) prirnarily serve to.. infrasonic data with particular phenomena. indicate that one practical application of infrasoni identification is preventing explosions. illustrate how infrasound can be used in nllcleaT- test monitoring. explaill the disagreements among scientists in interpreting infrasonic data.

The passage indicates that all of the following con- tribute to creating the northern lights, infrasonic sounds EXCEPT: warnled gas molecules spreading out. air pressure increasing. electricity heating atmospheric gases.

According to the passage, the fact that infrasound is inaudible to the human ear is: interfere with radio frequencies. ity would be oveTwhelrning to humans. unfortunate; hearing infrasound would be useful to humans in their daily lives. unfortunate. the constant din of infrasound would prevent people from eavesdropping.

The passage indicates that the distance infrasonic waves can travel without losing strength Is in inverse proportion to the: size of th¢ waves, source.. depth of water over which the waves travel. electricity in the atmospheric gases.

According to the passage, which of the following w&s the source of the earliest detected infraso.llic waves? .G. .The northern lights END OF TEST 3 STOP! DO NOT TURN THE PAGE UNTIL TOLD TO DO SO. DO NOT RETURN TO A PREVIOUS TEST.