Act/SAT Questions Of The Day Test 9

Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole. 

How many solutions are there to the equation x² – 15 = 0 ?

Part of the following sentence is underlined; beneath the sentence are five ways of phrasing the underlined material. Select the option that produces the best sentence. If you think the original phrasing produces a better sentence than any of the alternatives, select choice A.  The well-preserved, 121-million-year-old fossilized bird embryo on display at the museum has several features that suggest that its young could move about and feed themselves very soon after they hatched.

PROSE FICTION: This passage is adapted from Elizabeth Bishop’s short story "The Housekeeper" (©1984 by Alice Methfessel). Outside, the rain continued to run down the screened windows of Mrs. Sennett's little Cape Cod cottage. The long weeds and grass that composed the front yard dripped against the blurred background of 5  the bay, where the water was almost the color of the grass. Mrs. Sennett's five charges were vigorously playing house in the dining room. (In the wintertime, Mrs. Sennett was housekeeper for a Mr. Curley, in Boston, and during the summers the Curley children 10  boarded with her on the Cape.) My expression must have changed. "Are those children making too much noise?" Mrs. Sennett demanded, a sort of wave going over her that might mark the beginning of her getting up out of her chair. I 15  shook my head no, and gave her a little push on the shoulder to keep her seated. Mrs. Sennett was almost stone-deaf and had been for a long time, but she could read lips. You could talk to her without making any sound yourself, if you wanted to, and she more than 20  kept up her side of the conversation in a loud, rusty voice that dropped weirdly every now and then into a whisper. She adored talking. To look at Mrs. Sennett made me think of eigh- teenth-century England and its literary figures. Her hair 25  must have been sadly thin, because she always wore, indoors and out, either a hat or a sort of turban, and sometimes she wore both. The rims of her eyes were dark; she looked very ill. Mrs. Sennett and I continued talking. She said she 30  really didn't think she'd stay with the children another winter. Their father wanted her to, but it was too much for her. She wanted to stay right here in the cottage. The afternoon was getting along, and I finally left because I knew that at four o'clock Mrs. Sennett's "sit 35  down" was over and she started to get supper. At six o'clock, from my nearby cottage, I saw Theresa coming through the rain with a shawl over her head. She was bringing me a six-inch-square piece of spicecake, still hot from the oven and kept warm between two soup 40  plates. A few days later I learned from the twins, who brought over gifts of firewood and blackberries, that their father was coming the next morning, bringing their aunt and her husband and their cousin. Mrs. 45  Sennett had promised to take them all on a picnic at the pond some pleasant day. On the fourth day of their visit, Xavier arrived with a note. It was from Mrs. Sennett, written in blue ink, in a large, serene, ornamented hand, on linen-finish 50  paper: . . . Tomorrow is the last day Mr. Curley has and the Children all wanted the Picnic so much. The Men can walk to the Pond but it is too far for the Children. I see your Friend has a car and I hate to ask this but 55  could you possibly drive us to the Pond tomorrow morning? . . . Very sincerely yours, Carmen Sennett After the picnic, Mrs. Sennett's presents to me 60  were numberless. It was almost time for the children to go back to school in South Boston. Mrs. Sennett insisted that she was not going; their father was coming down again to get them and she was just going to stay. He would have to get another housekeeper. She said 65  this over and over to me, loudly, and her turbans and kerchiefs grew more and more distrait. One evening, Mary came to call on me and we sat on an old table in the back yard to watch the sunset. "Papa came today," she said, "and we've got to go 70  back day after tomorrow." "Is Mrs. Sennett going to stay here?" "She said at supper she was. She said this time she really was, because she'd said that last year and came back, but now she means it." 75  I said, "Oh dear," scarcely knowing which side I was on. "It was awful at supper. I cried and cried." "Did Theresa cry?" "Oh, we all cried. Papa cried, too. We always do." 80  "But don't you think Mrs. Sennett needs a rest?" "Yes, but I think she'll come, though. Papa told her he'd cry every single night at supper if she didn't, and then we all did." The next day I heard that Mrs. Sennett was going 85  back with them just to "help settle." She came over the following morning to say goodbye, supported by all five children. She was wearing her traveling hat of black satin and black straw, with sequins. High and somber, above her ravaged face, it had quite a Spanish- 90  grandee air. "This isn't really goodbye," she said. "I'll be back as soon as I get these bad, noisy children off my hands." But the children hung on to her skirt and tugged at 95  her sleeves, shaking their heads frantically, silently saying, "No! No! No!" to her with their puckered-up mouths. Considering how Mrs. Sennett is portrayed in the passage, it is most reasonable to infer that the word ravaged, as it is used in line 89, most nearly means that her face reveals:

Read the following SAT test question and then click on a button to select your answer.  If x/y = 3 and x = 12, then x - y =

Passage II     The Sun's path from sunrise to sunset varies with the time of year. A student performed the following experiments on three clear, sunny days at three- or four-month intervals throughout the course of a year to study the path of the Sun through the sky. Experiment 1     At a chosen Northern Hemisphere location, the student placed a stick vertically into the ground so that 1 meter of its length was left above ground. The student knew that the length of the shadow was related to the height of the Sun above the horizon and that the shadow would point away from the direction of the Sun. The length in meters (m) and direction of the shadow cast by the stick were measured one hour after sunrise (Shadow A), at mid-morning (B), at noon (C), at mid-afternoon (D), and one hour before sunset (E) on each of the three days. The direction of each shadow was determined by placing a magnetic compass at the base of the stick and aligning the north arrow with the north mark on the compass. The direction of each shadow was then determined by a comparison with the compass face markings. The results are recorded in Table 1.   Table 1 Shadow Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Length (m) Shadow direction Length (m) Shadow direction Length (m) Shadow direction A 5.0 SW 8.6 NW 6.8 W B 1.2 W 2.9 NNW 1.7 NW C 0.3 N 2.3 N 0.9 N D 1.2 E 3.0 NNE 1.8 NE E 5.0 SE 8.6 NE 6.9 E   Experiment 2     The following year, the student repeated Experiment 1 at a chosen location in the Southern Hemisphere. The results are in Table 2.   Table 2 Shadow Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Length (m) Shadow direction Length (m) Shadow direction Length (m) Shadow direction A 9.0 SW 5.0 NW 6.9 W B 3.2 SSW 1.1 W 1.8 SW C 2.5 S 0.3 S 1.0 S D 3.2 SSE 1.1 E 1.8 SE E 9.1 SE 5.0 NE 6.9 E     Which of the following statements is best supported by the direction of Shadow A on each of the three days in Experiment 1 ?

Choose the word or set of words that, when inserted in the sentence, best fits the meaning of the sentence as a whole.  With the 1969 film The Learning Tree, Gordon Parks proved what a truly ------- artist he was: he not only directed the film and composed its musical score, but also adapted its screenplay from his own novel.

Bessie Coleman: In Flight [1]     After the final performance of one last practice landing, the French instructor nodded to the young African-American woman at the controls and jumped down to the ground. Bessie Coleman was on her own now. She lined up the nose of the open cockpit biplane on the runway's center mark, she gave the engine full throttle, and took off into history. [2]     It was a long journey from the American Southwest she'd been born in 1893, to these French skies. The year in which she was born was about a century ago. There hadn't been much of a future for her in Oklahoma then. After both semesters of the two-semester year at Langston Industrial College, Coleman headed for Chicago to see what could be done to realize a dream. Ever since she saw her first airplane when she was a little girl, Coleman had known that someday, somehow, she would fly. [3]     Try as she might, however, Coleman could not obtain flying lessons anywhere in the city. Then she sought aid from Robert S. Abbott of the Chicago Weekly Defender. The newspaperman got in touch with a flight school in France that was willing to teach this determined young woman to fly. [4]     [1] While they're, she had as one of her instructors Anthony Fokker, the famous aircraft designer. [2] Bessie Coleman took a quick course in French, should she settle her affairs, and sailed for Europe. [3] Coping with a daily foreign language and flying in capricious, unstable machines held together with baling wire was daunting, but Coleman persevered. [5]     On June 15, 1921, Bessie Coleman, earned an international pilot's license, issued by the International Aeronautical Federation. Not only was she the first black woman to win her pilot's wings, she was the first American woman to hold this coveted license. [6]     She was ready for a triumphant return to the United States to barnstorm and lecture proof that if the will is strong enough for one's dream can be attained.   Choose the best alternative for the underlined part.