Reading Comprehension · Science
PrepTest 113 · Section 1 · Passage 2
Questions 8–13
Before you start
Open PrepTest 113, Section 1 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 8–13, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: narrates one investigator's early work step by step: tests, a surprise, a hypothesis, discoveries, a measured pattern, a conclusion, and a question left unexplained
- P2: states what is known today, introduces recent critics, and the author answers that the needed evidence was out of reach, then explains why
- P3: adds historical background: two camps of the era held different views of a basic idea
- P4: shows the investigator's own guess differed from the later answer, says only later advances revealed it, and closes by crediting the investigator's work as the path to those advances
Step 2 · The kid passage
Grandpa and the Great Rumor Study
Back when Grandpa was in fourth grade, a note claiming that rumors started somewhere in the cafeteria got him curious, so he began a rumor study. First he checked the library table and the chess club: no rumors at all. Then he checked the lunch table, already known to hold Big Bertie the chatterbox, and found more rumors there than Bertie alone could make. Guessing that the table must hide at least one more rumor-starter, he tracked down two nobody had noticed: the Pruitt twins. Next he timed Bertie and found she spread rumors at the same steady pace, even when kept in at recess or moved to a new seat. So Grandpa concluded that every talker's pace never changes. Since the talkers looked just like quiet kids, he could not name the engine behind rumors at all.
Today we know rumors come from secret notes passed between kids, and that a talker's pace slowly drops over the years. Some fifth graders now scold Grandpa for missing this. That is unfair: he could not have seen it. The youngest talkers usually outgrow the habit before anyone studies them, while the big talkers keep going steadily for years.
Also, back then grown-ups argued about what a rumor even was. Hall monitors believed every rumor boiled down to one sentence that could not be split. Librarians talked as if rumors were made of such sentences because it made tracking easy, but never cared whether those sentences were real.
Grandpa, a hall monitor's helper, guessed talkers might lose whole sentences as they spoke, very different from the final answer. Only years later did a new note-tracking survey show the sentences themselves wear down. Grandpa could not have imagined that. And his study is what led to that survey.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Old Creek Map
Judge Abigail Stone peered over her glasses. "A boating club says an old mapmaker should lose her town award because her map missed a side channel." Mr. Whitfield rose. "Your Honor, that channel was underwater when she drew the map. The water only dropped decades later. And in her day, surveyors and painters argued about whether a river even had fixed edges. She guessed what she could with the tools she had." He held up a modern chart. "Every map since then was traced from hers." The club's lawyer shrugged. "She still missed it." Judge Stone shook her head. "You cannot blame someone for not seeing what was hidden. The award stays."