SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The durability of commercial refrigeration units depends significantly on installers properly ___________ refrigerant lines during setup. If non-condensable gases, moisture, and microscopic debris aren't purged from the lines, vital components can be damaged during use, leading to total system failure.

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

Sazami (Ripples) is an important work of Nihonga, or classical Japanese painting. Unlike Assi Chia, who adopted traditional European methods such as painting with oil on canvas, Fukuda Heihachiro __________ traditional Japanese approaches. For instance, Fukuda produced Sazami by applying color and platinum to a silk surface.

 

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

Though research indicating that plants may preferentially absorb copper and other essential elements (i. e., those necessary for plant growth) from soil over nonessential ones seems to suggest that copper-contaminated soil may be especially__________to decontamination by plants, Milena Mohri and team found that plants tended to accumulate the nonessential element cadmium at higher rates than copper; the presence of cadmium in such soils should thus be assessed before pursuing plant-based copper decontamination.

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

Al Black's Sunset Backwater Scene with Egrets, a wetland landscape with silhouettes of moss-covered trees contrasted by a vibrant orange sky, is typical of paintings by the Florida Highwaymen, loosely affiliated landscape artists mainly active in Fort Pierce, Florida, during the 1950s and '60s. Some art historians suggest that Highwaymen paintings played a role in shaping popular perceptions of the state that persist today: the natural iconography that Black and colleagues constantly revisited—lush tropical forests, vivid sunsets—is now seen as classically Floridian.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

Mushrooms, including Coprinellus micaceus and species from the genus Cantharellus, are known to use the process of evapotranspiration to maintain internal temperatures below ambient temperatures. This hypothermic behavior is enhanced by the many thin gills (lamellae) on the fungi's caps, with substantial surface area contributing to capacity for evaporation. Examining fungal thermoregulation mechanisms, Radames Cordero et al. determined that molds and yeasts also engage in evaporative cooling to facilitate hypothermia and suggest that, lacking features analogous to lamellae, these unicellular fungi aggregate into colonies to derive the benefit of greater surface area.

Which choice best states the main idea of the text?

Probabilistic models generate predictions based on outcomes of analogous past events, but even as these models project likely outcomes, they implicitly acknowledge that lower-frequency events may occur instead. Because they accommodate multiple potential outcomes, such models may seem incompatible with causal determinism—the view that particular outcomes are inevitable given certain preconditions. But complete foreknowledge of relevant conditions is generally unavailable, suggesting that a state of uncertainty ultimately prevails in which outcomes can be predicted but not definitively foretold.

What does the text most strongly imply about the relationship between probabilistic models and causal determinism?

In evolutionary developmental biology, the concept of genetic assimilation describes a process by which an environmentally induced phenotype becomes fixed as an inherited trait through natural selection. Biologist Conrad Waddington demonstrated this mechanism by subjecting fruit fly embryos to heat shock, which caused them to develop crossveinless wings. By selectively breeding the individuals that exhibited this response over several generations, Waddington produced a line of flies that consistently developed crossveinless wings even in the complete absence of temperature stress. This empirical demonstration showed that phenotypic plasticity can precede and channel subsequent evolutionary changes in the genome.

 

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

Text 1

To discern the ecological role that blackberry plants, or Rubus fruticosus L. aggregate, serve for species of foraging insects, many of which are in decline, Annabel Squire and team recorded about two thousand insect visits to R. fruticosus (between 11 a. m. and 4 p. m.) during the plant's flowering period. They observed visits from a diverse range of species, including Chloromyia formosa and Apis mellifera.

 

 

Text 2

Researchers' focus on diurnal invertebrate pollinators has resulted in a decided lack of data on moth pollination, but using infrared detection equipment, Max Anderson et al. assessed how diurnal and nocturnal insects separately contribute to R. fruticosus pollination. They found that although 83% of all insect visits occurred during the day, pollen deposition rates were much higher during moths nocturnal foraging.

 

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the information about Squire and team's study as presented in Text 1?

 

In Arctic ecosystems, microbial methanogenesis accelerates as permafrost thaws, releasing stored organic carbon into the atmosphere as methane (CH₄). Biogeochemist Dr. Ksenia Romanova investigated the temperature sensitivity of methanogenic archaea by incubating two soil types—saturated thermokarst bog soil (representing degraded, collapsed permafrost) and intact upland mineral permafrost soil—across a thermal gradient ranging from 0°C to 20°C. Romanova hypothesized that anoxic thermokarst soils possess active microbial consortia capable of exhibiting exponential increases in CH₄ production as temperatures rise, whereas intact mineral soils display muted temperature responses.

 

Which choice best describes data from the graph that support Dr. Romanova's hypothesis?

 

P50—the pressure in the xylem (water-conducting tissue) at which a plant loses 50% of its hydraulic conductivity due to embolisms (air bubbles in the water flow)—is a key index of xylem embolism resistance and, by extension, tolerance of water stress; lower P50 values indicate lower vulnerability to xylem embolisms. Studies have found that variation in this functional trait corresponds with the distribution of plant species along moisture and elevation gradients. A student hypothesizes that this pattern would persist in woody species in New Caledonia, which is home to moist tropical rainforests, dry forests, and a range of elevations. To test the hypothesis, the student analyzes P50 values as well as mean elevation and rainforest occupancy rates for New Caledonian woody species.

 

Which choice best describes the extent to which the student's hypothesis is supported by data from the table?

A student in a political science course is writing a paper on Aristotle's The Politics, in which Aristotle offers his opinion on political instability and gives advice on how constitutions can be preserved. Aristotle observes that different forms of government can fall in different ways—for example, oligarchies might grant power to military leaders during wartime who refuse to relinquish that power during peacetime—but some methods of preserving order apply across all forms of government. The student claims that in particular Aristotle asserts that in a healthy state obedience to law must be as close to absolute as possible and that even minor infractions should not be ignored.

Which quotation from a philosopher's analysis of The Politics would best support the student's claim?

Milena Mohri and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis of 330 studies to investigate the effect of soil characteristics, including pH, on the capacity of Festuca rubra and 47 other plant species to absorb chromium and other heavy metals from soil through their roots. Given that in soil, metal solubility (a key determinant of plants' metal uptake) negatively correlates with soil pH in the rhizosphere (soil immediately proximate to roots), the researchers hypothesized that plants' total metal content would negatively correlate with soil pH, but instead they found no correlation between the two variables overall. To explain the finding, they noted that many of the included studies didn't specify whether the reported soil profiles were those of the rhizosphere.

Which statement, if true, would best account for Mohri and colleagues' explanation?

Research such as the 2012 study of mammals by Soledad Lucia Uran and colleagues has shown that noise from human activity, like traffic on a busy highway, has significant effects on animals, and many governments require studies of the potential noise effects on wildlife before approving highway construction projects. Advocates for one such project in an area home to both mammals and birds argue that since previous research has shown that birds are, on average, less affected by such noise than mammals are, the effect of the proposed project on birds does not need to be studied. Conservationists counter that basing such a decision on average effects is problematic because________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

The Lex Orchia sumptuaria of 182-181 BCE was one in a succession of ancient Roman sumptuary laws governing expenditures on luxury, primarily regulating large banquets and other lavish events. Such laws, enacted against a backdrop of anxiety about social dynamism, were intended to limit aspirational overreaching for status but were infrequently enforced. Moreover, enforcement was generally limited to fines, which, when levied against high-profile offenders, were widely announced. The affluent accepted fines as merely a tax on privilege, even as the amounts increased with frequent revisions to the laws. Historians have therefore argued that enforcing sumptuary laws only minimally may have been a way to avoid undermining the laws' aims, given that __________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

In cave systems in the Umm Er Radhuma Formation of modern Saudi Arabia, Monika Markowska and colleagues found that from 60,000 to 530,000 years ago, both calcite and gypsum minerals formed in speleothems (stalactites, stalagmites, flowstones, and other cave formations); after this period, though, only gypsum deposits formed. The process of calcite formation requires sufficient vegetation and soil to produce carbonic acid that dissolves limestone, while gypsum deposits primarily form through evaporation processes and are typical in arid environments. Interestingly, there is some evidence of local groundwater reservoir increases after 60,000 years ago. The concurrent shift in speleothem mineral deposition, however, suggests that__________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

A single specimen of the marine protist B. digitata collected in the South Atlantic in 1879 served the vital role of reference organism for all _________ specific organisms as representative of an entire species for the purposes of taxonomical identification is critical, according to biologists, to resolving uncertainties that arise when classifying new specimens.

 

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

 

In Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse (1927), the central action around which the novel ostensibly revolves—the Ramsay family's long-promised trip to visit a lighthouse—is deferred for nearly a decade and proves anticlimactic when, in the novel's final section, it finally ________ Woolf deliberately eschews plot-driven development, thus diverging from her Victorian predecessors, reflects her oft-stated conviction that the most significant events in human life occur not in the external world but within consciousness itself.

 

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

 

Marine biologist Rachel Carson (1907-1964) transformed public understanding of the effects of pesticides on the environment. Rather than dismissing concerns about chemical pollution, many policymakers turned to Carson's research when considering new environmental regulations. Instead of relying solely on industry reports, ________ to better understand the potential ecological consequences of pesticide use.

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

In Argentina, the Chamber of Deputies is elected via a proportional representation (PR) system. In PR elections, votes are cast (not for specific candidates, as they are in single member plurality systems, but for political parties) and then tabulated; _____each qualifying party is awarded a number of seats proportional to the number of votes it received.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, during the height of the Indian Ocean trade network, Ternate emerged as an important port city in the Moluccas. ______ Ternate's strategic location facilitated the exchange of cloves and nutmeg between distant regions, contributing to a prosperous commercial ecosystem that connected ports from Africa to East Asia.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Joseph Goodrich was an outspoken abolitionist whose Wisconsin home was a stop on the underground railroad (the network of people and places that some enslaved people used to escape to freedom). ______supporters of the railroad were secretive about their antislavery views. By and large, they were vocal abolitionists like Goodrich.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

The Sultanate of Brunei, a Malay sea power based on the northern coast of Borneo that reached its height around 1600 CE, is considered a thalassocracy a geopolitical entity whose hegemony resulted from control of the sea rather than of land. Historians classify thalassocracies as distinct from tellurocracies, or land-based powers. __________ the Ottoman Empire (1300s-1900s CE) is known for both land and sea supremacy.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

·Christina Ying is a Filipina American playwright.

·There's the Moon and Then There's You is a play by Ying.

·It premiered in 2015 at the Bindlestiff Studio in San Francisco.

·It tells the story of a NASA astronaut named David.

·In the play, David aspires to be selected for a mission to the Moon.

 

The student wants to provide a brief overview of what happens in There's the Moon and Then There's You. Which choice most effectively uses information from the notes to accomplish this goal?

 

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

·The French Republican calendar replaced the Gregorian calendar in France from 1793 to 1805.

·Both calendars are divided into twelve months.

·The timelines for the months don't match.

·The seventh month of the French Republican calendar, Germinal, begins during March, the third month of the Gregorian calendar.

·The twelfth month of the French Republican calendar, Fructidor, begins during August, the eighth month of the Gregorian calendar.

 

The student wants to emphasize a difference between the French Republican and Gregorian calendars. 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:

·The Clovis First hypothesis proposes that ancient humans known as Clovis were the first to populate North America.

·The Clovis arrived around 13,000 years ago.

·Stone tools found at the Saltville site in Virginia date to approximately 16,000 years ago.

·Butchered mammoth bones found at the Shaffert site in Nebraska date to approximately 22,000 years ago.

·These items support the idea that humans were present in North America before the Clovis population arrived.

 

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between the items found at Saltville and those found at Shaffert. 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:

·1950s: The Institute of African Studies (IAS) is proposed and initially formed at the University College of the Gold Coast (now the University of Ghana).

·Some faculty, including Peter Shinnie and his committee, support a linguistic and cultural focus for the IAS.

·This approach to African Studies is aligned with the British colonial academic models that were imposed prior to Ghana's independence in 1957.

·Other faculty resist this narrow scope, calling instead for an interdisciplinary approach that includes African history, economics, and politics.

·Early 1960s: Ghana's president Kwame Nkrumah reorganizes the IAS under an interdisciplinary, African-centered vision.

·Nkrumah's reforms are part of a broader post-1945 movement to challenge colonial systems in Africa.

 

The student wants to place Kwame Nkrumah's reorganization of the IAS in historical context. Which choice most effectively uses relevant information from the notes to accomplish this goal?