Reading Comprehension · Science
PrepTest 116 · Section 1 · Passage 3
Questions 15–20
Before you start
Open PrepTest 116, Section 1 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 15–20, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: introduces a class of things and calls one discovery about them a major moment, noting the honor it earned
- P2: tells the story of the research step by step: a first hunch and its confirmation, a surprising observation, a new hypothesis, a test with a new technique, and the naming of the cause
- P3: reports later findings that back up and refine the discovery, describing where the thing is found and the two jobs it seems to do
Step 2 · The kid passage
Why Clubs Live or Fold
At Maple Street School, whether a new club survives, and whether it can handle certain special jobs, depends on things called club helpers. Priya's discovery of the first helper, the Buddy Slip, was a big moment in school history, and it won her the Golden Juice Box Award.
Priya started with a hunch: most new clubs are meant to fold. She counted every club for a year. Kids start far more clubs than ever last, and the number that survive matches the number of free rooms. Then, whenever Kevin taped his dinosaur poster near a club table, that club boomed. She guessed that something stuck on the poster, not the dinosaur, caused the boom. To test this guess, she used a brand new trick, the hallway pop-up table, which lets a club run outside its classroom. Within a day, crowds packed the tables where she had hung the poster. More checking found the cause: a small card taped to the poster's corner. She named it the Buddy Slip.
The Buddy Slip was the earliest of many club helpers. Later checking found slips in lots of rooms, with big piles in the gym and library. A new club usually gets its slips from the room where it will meet. Slips seem to do two jobs: first they point a club toward its right room, and later they keep it going. Clubs outside the main building fold if they have no slips, or if someone tears their slips up.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Humming Lampposts
Judge Okafor tapped her pen. "Mr. Whitfield, why should this town honor the inventor?" Mr. Whitfield snapped his suspenders. "Your Honor, she first guessed that most lampposts hum for no reason at all, and her count proved it. Then she noticed the humming jumped whenever a certain kite got stuck nearby. She guessed something on the kite, not the kite itself, was the cause. She tested it with a brand new pocket meter and found a tiny metal clip. Since then, others have found dozens of clips like it, all over town." The judge nodded. "So the clip is not the whole story?" "Exactly. The clip opened the door. Her find is the reason we now understand so much more."