Reading Comprehension · Science
PrepTest 154 · Section 3 · Passage 3
Questions 14–20
Before you start
Open PrepTest 154, Section 3 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 14–20, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: lays out a long-held view and ends with a puzzle that view cannot solve
- P2: introduces one researcher's doubted claim, her hunch, and a test with numbers that back the hunch, including a comparison of an old and a new way of checking
- P3: gives her later findings that explain the puzzle, admits what is still unknown, and offers a careful guess based on a pattern
Step 2 · The kid passage
Where Does the Giggle Joke Go?
For years, everyone at Sunnyside Elementary believed the famous Giggle Joke arrived only when a new kid carried it in from another town, and that outbreaks happened when it got passed along at lunch. But where did the joke hide between outbreaks?
Then Priya announced she had spotted traces of the joke in old library notebooks. Few believed her. Everybody knew a joke could not last without a kid telling it, and no outbreak was happening near the library. Still, Priya had noticed that most outbreaks started right next to the library. She suspected the joke could survive on paper, and that the usual check (asking kids to tell every joke they know) would sometimes miss it.
When a small outbreak hit the cafeteria, she tried a new trick: rubbing soft crayon over blank pages so faint pressed-in pencil writing shows up. The joke appeared in notebooks the giggling kids had borrowed. At another school, crayon rubbing found the joke in 30 of 31 notebooks, while asking kids found it in only 4.
Later Priya learned the joke goes "to sleep": it shrinks into a tiny faded doodle, and while it sleeps nobody retells it, so asking cannot find it. Sleeping lets it last far from any kid. Nobody knows what wakes it, but the rainiest weeks of indoor recess line up closely with the biggest outbreaks. If the joke waits in notebooks all along, perhaps rainy-day page flipping lets it spread again.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The Case of the Invisible Ink
In a made-up town, a bakery was sued for stealing a secret frosting recipe. The defense lawyer smirked. "Your Honor, we searched the bakery and found no recipe. No paper, no recipe." Mr. Whitfield snapped his suspenders. "Your search only counted words you could read with plain eyes. My expert used a lamp that makes faded ink glow." The expert nodded. "On twenty pages from the bakery, the lamp found the recipe on nineteen. Reading by eye found it on two." The judge leaned forward. "So the old way of looking misses things that are really there." Mr. Whitfield smiled. "Exactly. Not seeing it is not the same as it being gone." Case closed, frosting returned.