PSAT Math Multiple-Choice Practice Test 20

1.

Which symbol correctly completes the inequality whose solution is shown above?

Questions 2-3 refer to the following information.
A student is drawing the human skeleton to scale for a school assignment. The assignment permits the student to omit all bones under a certain size because they would be too small to draw. The longest bone in the human body is the femur, or thighbone, with an average length of 19.9 inches. The tenth longest bone is the sternum, or breastbone, with an average length of 6.7 inches.

2. If the scale factor of the drawing is one-eighth, about how long in inches should the student draw the femur?

3. The student draws the femur, but then realizes she drew it too long, at 3.5 inches. She doesn't want to erase and start over, so she decides she will adjust the scale factor to match her current drawing instead. Based on the new scale factor, about how long in inches should she draw the sternum?

4. If a line that passes through the ordered pairs (4 - c, 2 c) and (- c, -8) has a slope of , what is the value of c ?

5.

Two airplanes departed from different airports at 5:30 a.m., both traveling nonstop to London Heathrow Airport (LHR). The distances the planes traveled are recorded in the table. The Washington, D.C. (DCA) flight flew through moderate cloud cover and as a result only averaged 338 miles per hour. The flight from Miami (MIA) had good weather conditions for the first two-thirds of the trip and averaged 596 miles per hour, but then encountered some turbulence and only averaged 447 miles per hour for the last part of the trip. Which plane arrived first and how long was it at the London airport before the other plane arrived?

6. Which of the following quadratic equations has no real solution?

7.

A student looked at the graph above and determined based on the data that spending more money per student causes the gross domestic product (GDP) to increase. Which of the following statements is true?

8. In chemistry, the combined gas law formula gives the relationship between the volumes, temperatures, and pressures for two fixed amounts of gas. Which of the following gives p₂ in terms of the other variables?

A.

B.

C.

D.

9. An object's weight is dependent upon the gravitational force being exerted upon the object. This is why objects in space are weightless. If 1 pound on Earth is equal to 0.377 pounds on Mars and 2.364 pounds on Jupiter, how many more pounds does an object weighing 1.5 tons on Earth weigh on Jupiter than on Mars? (Note: 1 ton = 2,000 pounds.)

10.

When a drug company wants to introduce a new drug, it must subject the drug to rigorous testing. The final stage of this testing is human clinical trials, in which progressively larger groups of volunteers are given the drug and carefully monitored. One aspect of this monitoring is keeping track of the frequency and severity of side effects. The figure above shows the results for the side effect of headaches for a certain drug. According to the trial guidelines, all moderate and severe headaches are considered to be adverse reactions. Which of the following best describes the data?

11. In the legal field, "reciprocity" means that an attorney can take and pass a bar exam in one state and be allowed to practice law in a different state that permits such reciprocity. Each state bar association decides with which other states it will allow reciprocity. For example, Pennsylvania allows reciprocity with the District of Columbia. It costs $25 less than 3 times as much to take the bar in Pennsylvania than in D.C. If both bar exams together cost $775, how much less expensive is it to take the bar exam in D.C. than in Pennsylvania?