SAT Pastpaper with Solutions

The plaice is an ectothermic (cold-blooded) fish, whereas the Pacific bluefin tuna is a regional endotherm; unlike that of ectotherms, its body temperature remains above the ambient water temperature. The basking shark had been classified as a full ectotherm, but researchers Haley R. Dolton et al. found that its body temperature remains 1.0 to 1.5°C above ambient, which is _________ that classification.

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

Accounts known as popular microhistories tell sweeping, century-spanning stories of ordinary objects like cotton and fish.__________this approach with that of traditional microhistories, which undertake painstaking historical reconstructions of singular incidents, may seem unlikely, but both are guided by the idea that seemingly inconsequential subjects can reveal larger historical processes in surprising ways.

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

Many plants can produce and release jasmonic acid (JA), which repulses attacking insects, but there is a reason plants only do so __________: JA suppresses genes involved in leaf expansion and other developmental processes, so deploying it outside the context of an immediate threat is unlikely to yield a net advantage.

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

Sandy River in Oregon hosts one of a growing number of restoration projects that target the hyporheic zone (HZ), a subsurface region where groundwater and surface water mix, creating a richly biodiverse habitat. While rebuilding an HZ's physical structure (e. g.,with gravel) might be feasible, is it possible to restore its biological community? To explore this question, scientists seeded restored HZs in Oregon's Johnson Creek with stoneflies and other locally extirpated species. Although the restored areas were colonized quickly, it was mostly by species from the unrestored sections of the creek rather than by the reintroduced species.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

The following text is adapted from Lady Gregory's 1904 play Spreading the News. Tom Reed and Martin Doyle have encountered each other at the village market.

 

 

TOM: It isn't to the market I came myself, but up to the Long Field I'm going, where I have a contract for the hay. We'll get a share of it into tramps [drying stacks] to-day.

MARTIN: You will not get it into tramps to-day. The rain will be down on it by evening, and on myself too. It's seldom I ever started on a journey but the rain would come down on me before I'd find any place of shelter.

TOM: If it didn't itself, Martin, it is my belief you would carry a leaky pail on your head in place of a hat, that way you'd not be without some cause of complaining.

 

 

Based on the text, what does Tom most likely believe about Martin?

In Rhythm Lineage, Maya Johnson, René Baptiste, and other dancers seamlessly interweave recent dance styles, including house and waacking, with elements of the Lindy Hop, a popular swing dance of the 1930s with roots in the Black American community of Harlem,New York. Inspired by Johnson's curiosity about the similarities between the Lindy Hop and these seemingly unrelated dance styles, the show's choreography makes visible how intertwined their histories actually are. The show is therefore a testament to the Lindy Hop's enduring influence on American culture.

 

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

Text 1

It's clear that international cooperation is needed to tackle worldwide issues such as biodiversity loss. However, it hasn't been clear how to foster strong group cohesion to motivate prosocial behavior at a global level given that humans tend to align more locally, from family to nationality. Evidence now shows that being prompted to consider the shared biology of all humans can cause individuals to identify more strongly with humanity overall, suggesting that emphasis on the "human family tree" may promote collective action.

 

 

Text 2

Perhaps counterintuitively, a focus on group distinctions can help ensure that responsibility for issues with global effects (e. g., freshwater shortages and biodiversity loss) is shared globally. For example, though young adults don't always view themselves as essential parties in such matters, reminders of their collective role as future inheritors of problems left unsolved can spark their engagement.

 

 

Which choice best describes a notable difference in focus between Text 1 and Text 2?

 

Many plants have leaves that are larger on one side of their long central axis than the other, a phenomenon known as asymmetrical orientation. University of California, Berkeley biologist Ciera Martinez and colleagues examined several species of grapevines and closely related plants, which have leaves that grow in pairs, to see if both leaves in a pair tend to be oriented toward the same side (that is, have more tissue on the same side) or not. They found that opposite-side orientations are more common than same-side orientations by ratios as high as __________.

 

Which choice most effectively uses data from the table to complete the assertion?

 

While Greece, Turkey, and Spain are established leaders in the global goat dairy industry, countries like Portugal and Chile have smaller but growing goat dairy sectors. Seeking the feeding system that will give her the greatest profit, a Portuguese farmer consults research published in 2019 by the Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria comparing the economic indicators of different feeding systems on Spanish goat farms.

 

Which consideration, if true, should make the farmer most hesitant to rely on what the table suggests is the most profitable feeding system?

The Clouds is a 423 BCE play by Aristophanes, originally written in ancient Greek. At the time, professional intellectuals called sophists taught customers rhetorical techniques to use in public speaking, along with providing instruction in other subjects. In the play, Aristophanes satirizes sophists as having an exaggerated sense of their own wisdom, as seen when the character __________.

Which choice most effectively uses a quotation from a translation of The clouds to illustrate the claim?

Accounts of American revolutionary history often imply that the US Declaration of Independence (published in 1776) was a document that specifically resulted from the presumably exceptional nature of the soon-to-be United States—in this interpretation, the Declaration is a singular instrument born from a response to injustice that was intended to announce the birth of a new kind of nation and win foreign allies to that nation's cause. But this interpretation neglects to place the Declaration in the larger context of eighteenth-century Western political philosophy—the Declaration was only one of several significant works published during 1776, a remarkable year for political thought.

 

Which statement, if true, would most strongly support the claim in the underlined portion?

Asia's Gobi Desert and California's Central Valley are the main sources of dust in western North America's Sierra Nevada mountains. To investigate their relative contributions, Elena Navarro et al. recorded the isotopic signatures of dust collected at a low elevation site (the Pine Creek Experimental Range) and two higher elevation sites (Bear Meadow and Alder Ridge) in the Sierra Nevada, as well as the isotopic signatures of Gobi and Central Valley dust. Navarro et al. concluded that while the contribution of Central Valley dust, which has a lower ratio of strontium-87 to strontium-86 (87Sr/86Sr) than Asian dust does, remained mostly unchanged at the lowest elevation site for the duration of the study, the contribution of Central Valley dust increased at higher elevations.

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

In 1967, archaeologist James Mellaart claimed that at its peak, Çatalhöyük—a 33-acre Neolithic village in present-day Turkey that dates from approximately 7100 to 5950 BCE—housed between 8,000 to 10,000 residents, an estimate based on the excavation of dense clusters of mud brick buildings that were thought to have been dwellings. Arguing that such estimates should be reevaluated, lan Kuijt and Arkadiusz Marciniak (2024) cite radiocarbon data and ethnographic modeling that suggest the heterogeneity of building use in Çatalhöyük, with many individual buildings being inhabited for relatively brief periods—20 to 30 years or less—before being abandoned or repurposed for nonresidential functions (e. g., storage). Accordingly, these recent findings challenge the assumption that__________.

Which choice mo logically completes the text?

Chondrite meteorites recovered on Earth tend to show negligible concentrations of sodium-rich evaporites. Following collection in space and return to Earth in controlled nitrogen environments with extremely low (1%) humidity, material from the asteroid Bennu—which shares compositional features with a chondrite subclass—was found to have significant sodium evaporite concentrations. After five months in Earth air at 30%-40% humidity (lower-than-average humidity for most nondesert Earth locations), a small sample of Bennu material showed significant evaporite deterioration and new compound formation; after eight months in similar conditions, another sample experienced complete loss of sodium evaporites. Together, these observations suggest that__________.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

In 1909, children in the US were introduced to Billy Possum, a stuffed toy opossum named after the newly elected president, William Taft, ______ by the entrepreneur Susie Wright Allgood. Billy Possum was promoted as a replacement for the popular teddy bear, which was named for the previous president, Theodore Roosevelt.

 

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

With evidence of long-term use over centuries (a pattern rarely seen in early Caribbean sites) ______ conventional theories about highly mobile foraging groups, the Ortiz site is an example of what archaeologists call persistent placemaking.

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

The Huseby Klev archaeological site in Sweden was exceptionally well-preserved beneath a layer of clay, which sealed artifacts into what scientists describe as a natural geological time capsule. As a result, ________ and his colleagues were able to extract and analyze DNA from chewed tree resin dating back nearly 10,000 years.

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

Mary Elizabeth Banning was a self-taught mycologist, or fungi specialist, who researched mushrooms in the late 1800s. Banning documented her findings in The Fungi of Maryland, an unpublished manuscript consisting of 175 watercolor _________ a detailed portrait of a particular species, such as Polyporus betulae, a fungi species of the order Hymenomycetes presented on plate 118.

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

Topographical prominence is a measure of a mountain's independence from other mountains. Having 13,199 feet of prominence, ______.

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

Because of its bulky body, the world's first airplane, the 1903 Wright Flyer, was not very aerodynamic. Modern planes, like the Airbus A380 jet, have much sleeker, more streamlined bodies. ______ they are much more aerodynamic.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

In a 1998 study by Smith et al., the researchers used microhistological (fecal) analysis to determine the ratio of three plant subtypes (graminoids, forbs, and browse) within the diets of North American ungulates. The researchers did not perform this analysis on all such ungulates, __________ they focused exclusively on pronghorns and wild horses in New Mexico.

 

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Some former Olympic demonstration events, like speed skating, were used to gauge the sport's popularity for future inclusion in the official Games, while others showcased lesser-known sports popular in that host country. ________ kyudo, a Japanese form of archery, may have lacked global name recognition, but it was an apt demonstration sport at the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo, Japan.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

Massimo Coli and colleagues used ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to map moisture infiltration within the walls of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. The contrast between wet and dry materials produces vivid radar echoes that delineate leak pathways, yet the presence of water-saturated zones also hampers the efficacy of the technique. ____________ even as GPR makes such areas conspicuous, water within masonry absorbs and scatters radar energy, often obscuring defects in layers beyond the saturated region.

 

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

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

·A copyright prevents a book's contents from being reproduced (published) without permission from the copyright holder.

·When a book's copyright expires, the book enters the public domain and can be legally reproduced by anyone.

·Harmonium is a poetry collection by Wallace Stevens.

·It entered the public domain in 2019.

·The Secret of Chimneys is a novel by Agatha Christie.

·It entered the public domain in 2021.

The student wants to emphasize a similarity between Wallace Stevens and Agatha Christie. 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 Shinkansen, commonly known as the bullet train, is a network of highspeed railways in Japan.

·1960s: The trains' high speeds created intense pressure waves that produced sonic booms when the trains exited tunnels.

·1980s: Engineer Eiji Nakatsu noted that the kingfisher bird could dive into water at high speeds while barely creating a splash.

·The kingfisher's beak gradually widens from tip to head, allowing the bird to transition smoothly between air and water.

·Nakatsu and the other engineers redesigned the train nose based on the kingfisher's beak structure to improve the train's transition between tunnel and openair environments.

·The redesign reduced pressure buildup, eliminating sonic booms.

The student wants to explain how the kingfisher's beak structure was used to solve the bullet train's sonic boom problem. 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 Highpointers Club is a hiking club.

·One of the main goals among club members is to reach the highest points in all fifty US states.

·Those who achieve this are called 50 Completes.

·In Suh Han became a 50 Complete on November 15, 2013.

·The highest point in Pennsylvania is Mount Davis, at 3,213 ft.

·The highest point in New Mexico is Wheeler Peak, at 13,167 ft.

Which choice most effectively uses information from the given sentences to explain the 50 Completes hiking challenge to a new audience?