SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

Scholars long thought that the initial spread of silk beyond China occurred in the second century CE, but this view has been _______ by new archaeological evidence from South Asia that reveals that the people of the Indus Civilization made use of silk at least 1,000 years earlier.

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

Despite stated claims of the _______ of the research, much analysis of income inequality performed in the 2010s suffered from a myopic focus on a few countries in North America and Western Europe, partly due to limited data availability. Researchers would later remedy this shortcoming after gaining new access to administrative records located in nations in Africa, such as Ivory Coast, and Eastern Europe, such as Poland.

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

A team of microbiologists measured surface temperatures of various wild mushrooms, including Amanita muscaria and a species from the genus Thelephora. The temperatures ranged from 1.4 to 5.9℃ lower than the temperature of the surrounding air, a difference the team ______ to water evaporating from the mushrooms and thus cooling them.

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

The following text is from Jerome K. Jerome's 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). The narrator and two friends are taking a boat down the River Thames in England.

In a boat, I have always noticed that it is the fixed idea of each member of the crew that he is doing everything. Harris's notion was, that it was he alone who had been working, and that both George and I had been imposing upon him. George, on the other hand, ridiculed the idea of Harris's having done anything more than eat and sleep, and had a cast-iron opinion that it was he---George himself-who had done all the labour worth speaking of.

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

Driven to sell as many paintings as possible, Alfred Hair, an influential figure among the landscape artists known as the Florida Highwaymen, pioneered "fast painting," a technique (which in part involved swift applications of paint) that many Highwaymen, including Livingston Roberts, adopted. To conclude that this approach accounts for the ethereal qualities now synonymous with the Highwaymen aesthetic is tempting but inaccurate, as Hair's methods weren't universally practiced by his affiliates: George Buckner, for example, painted with greater deliberateness but achieved the same effects.

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

The following text is from Yung Wing's 1909 memoir My Life in China and America. Yung Wing was the first person from China to graduate from a US university.

Little did I realize when in 1845 I wrote, while in the Morrison School, a composition on "An Imaginary Voyage to New York and up the Hudson," that I was to see New York in reality. This incident leads me to the reflection that sometimes our imagination foreshadows what lies uppermost in our minds and brings possibilities within the sphere of realities.

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

Optimal foraging theory (OFT) holds that animals' foraging behaviors reflect cost-benefit trade-offs that vary by species and with dynamic ecological circumstances. One such circumstance is lunar intensity, which Joel Brown and colleagues found to be negatively associated with foraging by Arizona pocket mice but Patricia C. Wright found to be positively associated with foraging by three-striped night monkeys. This discrepancy is explicable in terms of OFT: the monkeys' greater reliance on vision means that higher lunar intensity benefits them more than it benefits the mice.

Which choice best describes the finding made by Wright, as presented in the text?

Nautilids are marine mollusks that begin growing their shells before emerging from their eggs and continue to add shell segments throughout their lifetimes. The walls between their shells' chambers are called septa, and the deeper the water in which a septum forms, the greater the concentration of the isotope oxygen-18 the septum will contain. Since temperature falls as depth increases, if the area of ocean a nautilid inhabits is known, this isotopic signature can reveal the temperature at which its septa formed. Paleontologist Amane Tajika and colleagues examined each of the septa in two nautilid shells and concluded that septum sample M23 formed at a temperature of 14.0℃ whereas sample F02 formed at 20.8℃.

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

Studies of ocean wave breaking have predominantly focused on traveling waves (those propagating along the horizontal plane), so Mark McAllister et al. utilized a circular wave tank to produce and study spike waves, axisymmetric standing waves that can erupt vertically when traveling waves propagating in opposing directions intersect. Traveling waves break when wave steepness (height-to-length ratio) passes a critical threshold; breaking thus constrains wave height. McAllister et al. found that spike waves can exceed that constraint, as other factors than just steepness (e.g., jet stability and cavity shape) mediate spike-wave breaking.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

In Diné (Navajo) culture, ikaah (sandpaintings) are created and then erased as part of sacred healing ceremonies lasting no more than a few days, but Diné hataałii (chanter, healer, cultural guide) Fred Stevens developed fixatives to preserve desacralized sandpaintings. While on a US-sponsored cultural ambassadorial trip in Europe and the Americas in the 1960s, Stevens produced several such sandpaintings and gave them to cultural institutions. This may seem in tension with the role of cultural ambassador---how could static objects authentically represent an inherently ephemeral and dynamic practice?---but such a view is itself overly object-focused and neglects how Stevens strove to convey exactly those characteristics of ikaah as a cultural practice.

Which quotation from an art historian would most directly support the claim made in the text?

Some animals evade predation with the help of contrasting markings that signal toxicity. Lisa Taylor and team studied how jumping spiders behave toward termites (their regular prey) to which solid black, solid white, or black-and-white striped (i.e., contrasting) capes were affixed. Each spider was placed in a clear container in the center of a circular dish in which six termites, two with each of the three cape types, could be seen. Noting which termites the spiders first looked at and which termites they ultimately targeted, the researchers concluded that contrasting markings were a deterrent.

Which choice best describes data from the table that support Taylor and team's conclusion?

Whistler waves are low-frequency plasma waves that on Earth are typically generated by lightning. Numerous recordings of whistler waves on Venus have led many scientists to suggest that the planet's atmosphere is host to extensive amounts of lightning, and, in fact, Venusian whistler waves have similar energy signatures to those of whistler waves generated by lightning on Earth. The majority of Venusian whistler wave data come from two spacecraft missions---the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) and the Venus Express (VEX)---which have included few observations of other phenomena consistent with lightning occurrences (such as flashes of light), leading other scientists to suggest that _______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Rafael Núñez and colleagues studied how members of the Yupno, an Indigenous group in Papua New Guinea, conceptualize time in both spoken language and gestures. The researchers recorded Yupno speakers explaining certain temporal words and phrases, such as omo-ropmo bilak, a past-oriented expression that translates to "a couple of years ago," and coded each speaker's manual gestures. Previous research has found a tendency in many cultures to make temporal distinctions along imagined linear axes: for instance, English speakers often refer to the front/back axis to describe events in time. Some researchers believe this tendency is universal, but Núñez and colleagues claim this is not the case.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Núñez and colleagues' claim?

In the world's democracies, proportionally few elected representatives are young adults. While some philosophers argue that certain types of underrepresentation (of women, for example) are unfair in principle and should be remediated via quotas, there is broad agreement that youth underrepresentation is not inherently unfair since it is universal (all people are underrepresented when young), temporary (underrepresented young people become overrepresented older people), and reflective of a legitimate concern (lack of relevant experience). Accordingly, when philosopher Juliana Uhuru Bidadanure advocates for youth quotas for elected representatives, she does so on the basis of their instrumental value for promoting youth interests, arguing that _______

Which choice most logically completes the text?

All member nations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO---including Iceland, which joined in 1949; Hungary, which joined in 1999; and Bulgaria, which joined in _______ are committed to NATO's principle of collective defense, each member pledging to defend all others.

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

"Paper Dragons" by James P. Blaylock, The Ape's Wife and Other Stories by Caitlin R. Kiernan, and "Confess the Seasons" by Charles L. Grant are all pieces of literature that have won the prestigious World Fantasy _________ the works received the honor in the categories of short story, collection, and novella, respectively.

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

At the Chicxulub asteroid impact crater in Mexico, the presence of many fossilized microbacteria, which seem to have thrived there despite the extreme heat that persisted after the Chicxulub impact, ______ claims that bacteria are among the planet's most resilient organisms.

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

Multidisciplinary at its core, ________

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

A loose confederation of cities from eleven modern-day countries, the Hanseatic League was a powerful mercantile alliance that dominated northern European trade between the 13th and 17th centuries. Hanseatic League member _______ was serendipitously located on the Warnow River in Germany, giving Rostock's merchants access to key maritime trade routes.

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

In Xu Bing's art installation Book from the Sky, each one of the thousands of faux Chinese characters---printed in precise columns on the trio of long scrolls that swoop across the ceiling, on the rows of open books that undulate along the floor, and on the paper walls that stand to the sides--- _______ no meaning. Invented by Bing, the characters present plausibly and grandiosely, inviting yet punishing those who yearn to decode them.

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

In quantum physics, Karen Barad's theory of agential realism---which emphasizes the entanglement, or "intra-action," of human and nonhuman actors---is a foundational rebuke to the dualistic subject-object divide that has undergirded scientific epistemology for centuries. _______ Barad's theory presents a paradigmatic shift in the scientific understanding of reality and the quantum world.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

A staunch supporter of women's voting rights, Wilhelmina Kekelaokalaninui Widemann Dowsett sought to coordinate the efforts of suffragists in her native Hawai'i. _______ in 1912, she founded the National Women's Equal Suffrage Association of Hawai'i, an organization that lobbied for women's voting rights in the US territory.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Upper-atmospheric jets---phenomena whereby electrical discharges cause narrow cones of blue light to briefly burst upward from the tops of thunderclouds---have been observed reaching the ionosphere. The extreme altitudes involved (the ionosphere begins about 80 km above Earth) mark these gigantic jets as outliers; _______ the majority of jets reach heights of only 20 to 50 km .

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

●The Paralympic Games are a series of international sporting events involving athletes with an impairment.

●A gold medal indicates that an athlete finished in first place.

●Swimming has been an event at the Paralympics since 1960.

●Béatrice Hess competed as a Paralympic swimmer from 1984 to 2004.

●She won twenty-five medals.

●Of these medals, twenty were gold.

Which choice most effectively uses information from the given sentences to emphasize how long Hess's sport has been a Paralympic event?

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

●A 2022 study analyzed geotagged social media posts to assess the effect of parks on happiness in 25 US cities.

●The happiness benefit of a city's parks was the numeric difference between the calculated happiness scores of posts made in parks and posts made elsewhere.

●A benefit above 0 indicates a positive effect.

●The park happiness benefit in San Francisco, California, was greater than 0.10.

●The park happiness benefit in Washington, DC, was greater than 0 but less than 0.10.

●The average happiness benefit of parks across all cities was 0.10.

The student wants to make a generalization based on the study's findings. 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 music theory, the term "key" refers to the set of musical notes that forms the foundation of a piece of music.

●In Ideas Toward an Aesthetic of Music (1806), German poet and composer Christian Schubart describes the moods of various musical keys.

●He describes the key of C minor as expressing "longing."

●In Règles de Composition (1682), French composer Marc-Antoine Charpentier undertakes the same task.

●He describes the key of C minor as "obscure and sad."

●"Don't Speak" by No Doubt (1996) is a song written in C minor.

The student wants to compare how Schubart and Charpentier describe the mood of C minor. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?