Reading Comprehension · Science
PrepTest 143 · Section 2 · Passage 4
Questions 21–27
Before you start
Open PrepTest 143, Section 2 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 21–27, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: introduces a widespread belief that experts find odd, guesses at its origin in a misunderstood fact, and explains that fact
- P2: reports a new study that rejects the belief using a calculation
- P3: adds supporting detail, handles a possible objection, and notes that the study confirms what experts had already reasoned
- P4: offers the more likely explanation and traces how methods changed over time
Step 2 · The kid passage
The Myth of the Squishy Pawns
Woodworkers find it odd that many kids believe old pine chess pawns slowly squish downward, like cold pudding. Kids use it to explain why Grandpa's old pawns are fat at the bottom. It probably grew from a mix-up about the 'soft' in softwood. Inside, pine is long fibers held by a natural glue that never locks into a hard grid. Pine has no single bending temperature, just a bending range about a hundred degrees wide. Steamed into that range, the glue softens and the fibers slide and droop from their own heaviness. Below it, the wood acts stiff as a ruler.
Now Priya's new study knocks that idea down. Stiff pine can droop a hair. But Priya worked out that a pawn would need longer than dinosaurs have been gone, times a million, to droop enough to see.
The kind of wood decides the speed. Even balsa, the floppiest, would take ages. Grandpa's wax polish might speed things a bit, but that would not matter, since the set is only seventy years old. Priya's math shows sharply what woodworkers had long figured: pine must be steamed to at least 180 degrees to bend more than a hair.
The fat bottoms probably come from how pawns were made. Long ago, carvers whittled them by hand on a spinning stick, leaving one heavy end, which went down so pawns would not tip. Later, pawns were pressed in molds, making them more alike. Today, computer saws make them perfectly smooth.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Leaning Statue
The town museum stood accused of letting its bronze rabbit statue 'melt sideways.' A visitor's lawyer pointed. "Look at that tilt! Metal creeps over time!" Mr. Whitfield rose and adjusted his suspenders. "Your Honor, our engineer did the math. For bronze to creep that far at room temperature would take longer than this courthouse will stand, times a thousand." The engineer added, "And the old casting method poured one side thicker. The installers set it heavy side down so it would not fall over." The judge peered at the rabbit. "So it was born leaning." "Exactly," said Mr. Whitfield. "It never moved. People just told the wrong story about it." Case dismissed.