SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Despite the generalizations about human behavior they have produced, many studies of behavioral psychology have used highly unrepresentative subject pools: students at the colleges and universities where the researchers are employed. To _______ this situation, it is necessary to actively recruit subjects from diverse backgrounds and locations.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

The following text is from the 1913 story "The King's Coin" by Emily Pauline Johnson, a Kanienkahagen (Mohawk) writer also known as Tekahionwake. Fox-Foot, a young Ojibwe man, is guiding a group of fur traders who are traveling by canoe and suspects that they are being followed. At supper time, Fox-Foot would allow no fire to be built, no landing to be made, no trace of their passing to be left. They ate canned meat and marmalade, drank again of the stream and pushed on, until just at dusk they reached the edge of a long, still lake, with shores of granite and dense fir forest.

As used in the text, what does the word "trace" most nearly mean?

In 1776, the United States sent Benjamin Franklin toFrance to try to win the country's support in the United States' fight for independence from Great Britain. Franklin was very popular in France. This _______ surely helped him to convince France to assist the United States.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

The recently observed gamma ray burst GRB 230307A lasted for 200 seconds, _______ for a burst generated by the merger of neutron stars. Bursts caused by neutron mergers typically last fewer than 2 seconds.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

In the 1950s, scientists didn't know much about the ocean floor. Many scientists at the time believed that the ocean floor was mostly flat. But geologist Marie Tharp and her research partner, Bruce Heezen, proved that this idea was wrong. Using sonar data collected from the Atlantic Ocean, Tharp and Heezen showed that the floor was filled with canyons, mountains, and valleys.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

The Bayeux Tapestry, from eleventh-century France. depicts 75 scenes over 250 feet of fabric. It was likely produced by workers embroidering in sections and then joining the resulting panels together. It's plausible that the workshop that produced the tapestry had never produced one so large, and some researchers claim that a close examination of the joins—the places where the panels are stitched together—suggests that the workers developed and refined their joining process over the course of production. For example, the first join the workers completed exhibits a clear misalignment of the Dorders of the two panels, whereas the later joins are virtually invisible.

Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?

Emulsification is a process that creates a uniform mixture that includes two ingredients that do not combine on their own, such as oil and water. For this process to happen, a third ingredient, an emulsifier, must be combined with the other two. Carrageenan, a substance extracted from red seaweed, is a common emulsifier: it helps to create a smooth texture in yogurt that makes it more pleasant to eat.

According to the text, what result is associated with carrageenan?

Conservationists worldwide are working to protect ecosystems from habitat destruction and biodiversity loss, and in many cases, initiatives that rely on natural features or processes can help address such challenges. In response to a rapidly dwindling population of blueback salmon, the Quinault Indian Nation (a tribe in Washington State) partnered with the conservation organization Wild Salmon Center to restore naturally occurring logjams in the Quinault River. The logjams create shady pools where the blueback salmon can rest and spawn, thus promoting blueback population recovery.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Text 1

Little is known about how plate tectonics—wherein slabs of Earth's crust move over, under, away from, and against one another—began. Some researchers contend that tectonic movements began around 3 billion years ago, often noting that computer models of Earth's mantle temperature at the time indicate that the mantle would have been sufficiently molten to enable the plates to move.

Text 2

Ultimately, any plausible claim about the inception of tectonic movement must rest on empirical evidence from the geological record. Researcher Wriju Chowdhury and his team analyzed the geochemistry of zircon crystals to gain insight into the chemical composition of the magma from which the crystals formed and, based on the data, compellingly argue that plate tectonics may have been occurring as early as 4.2 billion years ago.

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to what "some researchers contend" as described in Text 1?

A student is researching a bus system in a large county where surface temperatures vary by area and are hot in the summer. The student claims that all areas of the county should have more bus stops with shaded shelter, noting that the highest percentage of bus stops with shaded shelter for any area is only                

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the student's claim?

The population of the coral Lophelia pertusa declined significantly around 9,000 years ago in the Alboran Sea and around 11,000 years ago near the Mauritanian coast. Using the ratio of manganese to calcium, which inversely correlates with ocean oxygenation levels, marine scientist Rodrigo da Costa Portilho-Ramos and colleagues evaluated whether oxygenation played a role in the declines of L. pertusa. The researchers concluded that oxygenation may have been important in the Alboran Sea but not near the Mauritanian coast, since _______ 

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the statement?

Janet Echelman is a sculptor and fiber artist. She has installed giant sculptures all over the world. Echelman uses bright and flowing materials, which mimic the wind. However, while her sculptures appear as delicate as a breeze, they are actually very durable.

Which quotation from an article about Echelman's sculptures, if true, would most effectively illustrate the underlined claim?

Early Earth is thought to have been characterized by a stagnant lid tectonic regime, in which the upper lithosphere (the outer rocky layer) was essentially immobile and there was no interaction between the lithosphere and the underlying mantle. Researchers investigated the timing of the transition from a stagnant lid regime to a tectonic plate regime, in which the lithosphere is fractured into dynamic plates that in turn allow lithospheric and mantle material to mix. Examining chemical data from lithospheric and mantle-derived rocks ranging from 285 million to 3.8 billion years old, the researchers dated the transition to 3.2 billion years ago.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the researchers' conclusion?

Exclusively inhabiting tropical countries such as Ghana, wild chimpanzees lack adaptations to seasonal variations in ultraviolet B (UVB) irradiance from sunlight. Since UVB exposure enables vertebrates to synthesize vitamin D, Sophie Moitié and colleagues studied zoo chimpanzees in Spain and other mid-latitude countries to see how vitamin D levels are affected by the seasonal variations in UVB irradiance that occur in those locations. They found that chimpanzees' vitamin D levels were significantly lower in autumn than in summer and appeared unaffected by oral supplementation of vitamin D administered by zookeepers. Moitié and colleagues point out, however, that supplementation was rare, highly varied, and poorly tracked, and therefore            

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The Uto-Aztecan language family is divided into a northern branch, which includes the Shoshone language of present-day Idaho and Utah, and a southern one, whose best-known representative is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire in Mexico. Lexical similarities across the family, including of botanical terms, confirm descent from a single language spoken millennia ago, and the family's geographical distribution suggests an origin in what is now the US Southwest. However, vocabulary pertaining to maize isn't shared between northern and southern branches, despite the crop's universal cultivation among Uto-Aztecan tribes. Given archaeological evidence that maize originated in Mexico and diffused northward into what became the US Southwest, some linguists reason that _______ 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Data collected by the Mars rover Curiosity at the Gale Crater's Murray Formation are suggestive of hydrological deposition of sediment in the distant past. To characterize the nature of the depositional environment, Frances Rivera-Hernández et al. analyzed the grain size of Murray Formation sediment, finding that although there are intervals of coarse grains, most of the sediment consists of fine grains that show signs of cracking due to episodic desiccation. Rivera-Hernández et al. concluded that the coarse grains are sandstone, which tends to bedeposited by flowing water, whereas the fine grains are mudstone, which is slowly deposited by settling out of suspension in low-flow water, leading the researchers to posit that _______ 

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The Globe Theatre in London is a reconstruction of the famed venue where many of Shakespeare's plays were first performed. In 1613, a prop cannon _______ during a performance and ignited the Globe's thatched roof. No one was hurt, but in two hours the original Globe was gone.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

When they were first introduced to western Europe from Byzantium in the eleventh century, table forks were met with much resistance. The Bishop of Ostia, St. Peter Damian, condemned the eating utensils because he considered _______ dangerous and unnecessary luxury items.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

On March 23, 2021, a gust of wind wreaked havoc on global trade. Ever Given, an international shipping container vessel, became lodged in Egypt's Suez Canal, a major shipping route between Europe and Asia. The vessel took six days to _______ it's as heavy as two thousand blue whales when fully loaded.

Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?

The mineral mtorolite is most commonly found in Zimbabwe. Mtorolite is cryptocrystalline, meaning that its crystalline structure is so fine that the individual crystals cannot be distinguished by the naked eye or even under a microscope. The crystals in microcrystalline minerals are also not visible to the naked eye;              they can usually be seen under a microscope.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 1949, Frank Zamboni developed an ice rink resurfacing machine. As Zamboni's machine moved along the rink's surface, it first scraped off the top layer of ice. _______ it sprayed water into the deep grooves left behind by customers' skates. Lastly, it smoothed over the newly formed ice.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In 2021, a model developed by astrophysicist Catherine Zucker and her research team revealed that the same supernovas responsible for the creationand ongoing expansion of the Local Bubble—a 14-million-year-old cavity in the Milky Way—are likely responsible for the formation of new stars. _______ this model detailed how the bubble's expansion trapped interstellar clouds of gas and dust that became stars upon their eventual collapse.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

·A lever is a simple machine consisting of a rigid beam and a fulcrum.

·The fulcrum is the point about which the beam pivots.

·The input force (effort) is the force applied to the lever.

·The output force (load)is the force that the lever exerts on another object.

·In first-class levers, the fulcrum is located between the effort and the load.

·In second-class levers, the load is located between the effort and the fulcrum.

The student wants to contrast first-class levers and second-class levers. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

·Earthquakes start at a point called a "focus" and spread out from there as seismic waves.

·The two types of seismic waves that travel beneath Earth's surface are primary waves (P waves)and secondary waves (S waves).

·P waves travel more quickly beneath Earth's surface than do S waves.

·P waves compress and expand the ground, causing it to move backward and forward.

·S waves cause the ground to move from side to side.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between P waves and S waves.which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

·Researchers Gwangsu Kim et al. sought to explore the relationship between the brain's ability to process natural sounds and its ability to process music.

·They used an artificial deep neural network (DNN) that models how the brain processes auditory information.

·The DNN had been trained to detect natural sounds (excluding music).

·Finding: The DNN spontaneously developed neurons that responded to music but not to other auditory stimuli.

·Conclusion: The brain's ability to process music may arise as a by-product of natural sound processing.

The student wants to present the aim of the study, Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

While researching a topic, a student has taken the following notes:

·In a 2004 study, researchers Jorge E. Lopez and C. Vaughan wanted to explore the effects of ingestion by bats on the germination of Piper sancti-felicis seeds in Costa Rica.

·The team of researchers tested 125 Piper sancti-felicis seeds that had been ingested by chestnut short-tailed bats.

·Of these, 82 seeds (66%) germinated.

·As a control, J.E. López and C. Vaughan tested 125 Piper sancti-felicis seeds that had not been ingested by chestnut short-tailed bats.

·Of these, 88 seeds (70%) germinated.

The student wants to describe the study's research methodology. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?