Reading Comprehension · Science
PrepTest 120 · Section 2 · Passage 4
Questions 19–26
Before you start
Open PrepTest 120, Section 2 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 19–26, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: introduces a puzzle that clashes with a widely held view, explains that view's reasoning, and presents a newer hypothesis that resolves the puzzle
- P2: draws an implication from the hypothesis and illustrates it with a first example
- P3: gives a second example in which the opposite outcome occurs
- P4: notes that evidence mostly supports the implication, then describes exceptions and why they matter
Step 2 · The kid passage
The Wild Dance Puzzle
The fifth graders long puzzled over this: some recess dance crazes are so wild that they leave dancers flat, too tired to move. That clashes with the usual playground belief that a craze and its dancers end up getting along fine. A gentle dance should last longest, since rested dancers keep dancing it. Recently, though, Priya and Nadia suggested that a dance could wear its dancers out and still win, as long as it reaches more new dancers than it loses to tired ones.
One result of this idea is that how wild a dance gets depends on how it spreads. Take the Wiggle, which spreads only when kids see it in person. If a dancer is too worn out to come outside, nobody new sees the moves that day. So a see-it-in-person dance tends to stay gentle.
The opposite happens when a dance travels by a carrier. Owen's video club films dancers and plays the clips at lunch. Even with the dancer flopped on a bench, the clip spreads the moves. The wilder the dance, the more the club films it, and the more kids learn it.
Ms. Rivera's notes mostly agree: filmed dances are the wildest. Yet a few in-person dances are just as wild. These are chalk-and-wait dances: the steps are drawn on the blacktop, where they last for weeks until a new kid wanders by, while a live show is gone in minutes. That staying power puts them among the wildest dances of all.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Annoying Jingle
In a made-up hearing, a pickle company was accused of wasting money on a jingle that everyone said they hated. Mr. Whitfield called an invented ad expert to the stand. "The old belief," she said, "is that only a pleasant jingle survives, because happy listeners keep humming it. But an annoying jingle can still win if it reaches more new ears than it loses." Mr. Whitfield asked how. "It depends on how it travels. A jingle spread only by people humming dies when they stop. A jingle carried by the radio keeps spreading even after listeners tune out. And one painted on bus posters waits for weeks until someone new reads it." The judge raised an eyebrow. "So annoying is not the same as losing." Case dismissed.