Reading Comprehension · Science

PrepTest 121 · Section 3 · Passage 4

Questions 20–27

Before you start

Open PrepTest 121, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 20–27, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.

Structure guide

P1: states a requirement every case must meet first, then claims the ways of meeting it vary far more than later processes do, with examples
P2: describes one case's method in detail, contrasts a second case's very different method, and links a third group to the second
P3: notes that a further group meets the requirement much later and that how it does so is still unknown
P4: says later processes are strikingly similar across cases and names the resulting surprise

Step 2 · The kid passage

How Clubs Pick a Captain

Before any new club can do anything, it must pick a captain. The ways clubs pick captains are far less alike than the ways they handle later jobs, like planning snacks. The chess club picks its captain in a way nothing like the robot club's, and both differ from the student council's. In the chess club, the captain is written on a list over the summer, before anyone shows up, so when the first member walks in, everything is ready. Making that list takes a week, but once the first meeting starts, the club is playing within an hour. The robot club is different. There, the spot where the first member walks in seems to decide things. Once someone arrives, colored badges, at first spread evenly on every table, gather at one table, and whoever sits there leads. The drama club is thought to pick the same way, though the student council apparently does not. In the council, a captain appears much later, after many meetings where no one seems in charge. How it finally settles on one is a puzzle teachers are itching to solve. Once a club has a captain, it uses nearly the same handbook pages as every other club to set up committees: the snack committee in chess is built like the one in robots. So here is the puzzle: on day one, when all clubs look alike, they choose leaders in wildly different ways; later, when they look nothing alike, they work almost identically.

Step 4 · The courtroom tale

The Case of the Matching Sprinkles

Sweet Crumb Bakery accused Rolling Pin Bakery of copying. "Our decorating steps are identical!" said their lawyer. Mr. Whitfield tugged his suspenders and called a baking teacher to the stand. "How do bakeries in this town start their dough?" he asked. "Every one differently," she said. "One mixes the night before, one waits for the first customer, one kneads by a family secret." "And decorating?" "Everyone learns it from the same town guild handbook, so it all looks alike." Mr. Whitfield turned to Judge Abernathy. "Your Honor, early steps that look the same from outside hide very different methods. Later steps that look different are done the same way. Matching decorating proves a shared handbook, not copying." The judge dismissed the case.