Digital PSAT Reading and Writing Practie Test 12

1

This cycle was broken by the unification of five Iroquois tribes in The Confederacy of Peace and Power. The confederacy was born from a Huron woman who had a dream that her son would be a prophet. She named him Deganawidah, or "the prophet." He preached to his people, but his words fell on deaf ears. Consequently, he left the Huron and traveled through the Iroquois spreading his message of peace. Within the Iroquois he collected many followers, including Hiawatha.

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

2

To begin to understand the possibilities of time, we first need a brief introduction of spacetime. We're all familiar with our three-dimensional world, but we need to consider a fourth dimension as well-time. Time passes. Therefore, you can sit still in a chair not traveling in three dimensions, but traveling in spacetime. We think of time as passing forward.

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

3

In science class, the two friends frantically mixed their chemical solutions together. They had failed to meet over the weekend and their assignment was nowhere close to being finished. When they received a failing grade, the teacher remarked that the __________ to their problem would come from adequate preparation.

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

4

Electricity in the kitchen, of course, ushered in a new age of powered cooking appliances, but perhaps none is more curious, clever, and common than the microwave oven. The epitome of speed cooking, the microwave uses a wholly different approach to heating food than any of its predecessors-however, its remarkable swiftness comes at the expense of precision, particularly when dealing with physically dense foodstuffs. In consequence, the microwave is a fantastic device for thawing stored vegetables, but should hardly be relied upon to properly prepare, say, a Thanksgiving turkey, or perhaps a mammoth steak.

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

5

By painting the idle vacationers from behind, and obscuring any visible faces in the impressionist-landscape style, Boudin's patrons could purchase premade a work articulating the mood, activity, colors and locale of their holiday without the monetary and temporal obstacles of a traditional, commissioned painting. For comparison, Renoir's painting of models from the rear-far from making the work more commercially viable-was executed as a stylistic affront to classical notions of portraiture. Suffice to say that Boudin's mercantile techniques were, at least among the impressionists, rather unique.

The selection serves to demonstrate that the primary aspect of Boudin's work that made it distinct from those of his contemporaries was its

6

Text 1

Since coming to a head in 2004, the high fructose corn syrup crisis and its role in the emergent obesity epidemic has faced unwavering denial from the food industry; yet the efforts to defend the additive on scientific grounds have been dubious at best. We are all familiar with the pitiful syllogism: corn syrup comes from corn, and corn is natural; corn syrup, therefore, is natural. However true this may be, it provides no proof whatsoever as to corn syrup's safety for human consumption.

Text 2

Despite ongoing proof that genetically modified crops not only are perfectly safe for consumption but also have in fact saved an estimated 600 million people from starvation over the past two decades, fears and skepticism toward them persist simply because they are popularly perceived as unnatural, and thus, somehow, unhealthy.

It can most reasonably be inferred that the two authors would disagree with those who declared a food to be healthy simply because it is

7

Text 1

We teach in schools that a presidential candidate must receive an absolute majority of the electoral college votes to win the presidential election, but we don't teach the mechanics of how a candidate actually receives these votes. A party's electors are chosen in a variety of ways, but they're typically reputable members of the party. When citizens cast a vote during the presidential election, they are actually voting for a particular party's electors to cast their votes for the presidential candidate to whom they have pledged.

Text 2

More than 200 years of complacency have left us with something resembling less a federal government than a yard sale of antiquated institutions, with none more dusty than the electoral college. Consider that it's theoretically possible to receive just eleven votes, have your opponent receive 200 million, and still win the election under the electoral college.

The relationship between the passages can best be described as which of the following statements?

8

Social media in the workplace has gotten a bad rap; in many ways, it deserves it. But the role it can play-when embraced appropriately-in networking, collaboration, and retention proves that it isn't as simple as that. Like any new and rapidly changing technology, it will take time and adaptability for its advantages and pitfalls to be clear. The smart company will find it necessary to consider the implications social media presents for its future-is it really something that can just be ignored or banned altogether?

Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the text?

9

Though humans have likely marveled at the spectacle of Halley's Comet for thousands of years (the Talmudic astronomers of the first century describe a star that appears once every seventy years to wreak havoc on nautical navigation), it was little more than 300 years ago that Edmond Halley-a friend of Sir Isaac Newton's-used Newton's newly conceived laws of gravity to explain the motion and predict the periodicity of comets. Using these equations in tandem with historical records, Halley surmised that the comets observed in 1531 by German humanist Petrus Apianus, in 1607 by Johannes Kepler, and by himself and Newton in 1683 were one and the same. Moreover, he predicted its return for 1758.

The scientist Halley's relationship to the ideas of Newton most resembles the relationship between

10

Source: 2012 U.S. Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/prod/2014pubs/p20-573.pdf.

According to the information in the graph, during what year were the voter turnout rates of Americans ages 65 and older and Americans ages 18-24 closest to one another?