All practice questions

Experiment 1
Students performed a gravimetric analysis to determine the concentration of sulfate ions ($\text{SO}_4^{2-}$) in a water sample using a precipitation and vacuum filtration apparatus.

Arrange the following experimental steps in the correct procedural order from first to last to ensure complete precipitation, crystal growth, isolation, and mass determination of the resulting barium sulfate ($\text{BaSO}_4$).

A sports analyst tracks four basketball players' shooting efficiencies over a season, expressed in different numerical formats:

- Player P: $\frac{9}{16}$
- Player Q: $0.58$
- Player R: $54.5\%$
- Player S: $\frac{11}{20}$

Place the players in order of their shooting efficiency from least to greatest.

A chemistry lab technician measures the concentration of sugar by weight in four distinct liquid samples:

• Sample P: $\frac{7}{16}$
• Sample Q: $0.425$
• Sample R: $44\%$
• Sample S: $\frac{4}{9}$

Which of the following lists the four samples in order from least sugar concentration to greatest sugar concentration?

The following paragraphs are from an essay about the history of the Sahara Desert. To make the passage most logical and cohesive, in what order should the paragraphs be arranged?

The following paragraphs are taken from an essay about the development of the Cherokee syllabary. In what order should the paragraphs be arranged to create the most logical and coherent essay?

The following paragraphs are from an essay about the preservation of natural soundscapes. In what order should the paragraphs be arranged to establish the most logical transitions and create a coherent essay?

The writer wants to organize the sentences of a draft paragraph to logically trace how a persistent experimental anomaly led to a major cosmological discovery. To achieve this goal, what is the most logical sequence for the following sentences?

The paragraphs below are from a draft of an essay about the invention of the dishwasher. Arrange the paragraphs in the most logical order to create a coherent essay.

The following passage is about the historic discovery of a rare fish species.

Discovery of the Living Fossil

On December 22, 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, the young curator of the East London Museum in South Africa, walked down to the harbor docks. She had received a call from Captain Hendrik Goosen of the trawler *Nerine*, who had returned from a fishing trip near the mouth of the Chalumna River and wanted to know if she wished to examine the catch for any specimens of interest. Amidst a pile of sharks and common marine life, Courtenay-Latimer noticed a peculiar protrusion: a five-foot-long, heavy-scaled fish of an intense iridescent blue, with limb-like lobed fins and a strange, puppy-like second tail. Intrigued, she carted the heavy creature back to her museum in a taxi.

Recognizing that the specimen was unlike anything described in South African reference books, Courtenay-Latimer immediately attempted to find a way to preserve it. She contacted the local municipal offices in hopes of using their cold storage facilities, but her request was rejected by officials who deemed the rotting carcass a health hazard. Desperate, she wrote a letter containing a brief description and a hand-drawn sketch of the fish to James Leonard Brierley Smith, a chemistry lecturer at Rhodes University in Grahamstown who was also a passionate self-taught ichthyologist.

Because the South African summer heat was intense and the museum lacked formal preservation equipment, Courtenay-Latimer realized she could not wait indefinitely for a response. By the third day, the fish had begun to decompose rapidly. She made the difficult decision to take the specimen to a local taxidermist, Robert Center, instructing him to skin the fish and mount it. Unfortunately, because the mounting process required removing the soft tissues, Center discarded the internal organs and skeleton, preserving only the skin and a few skeletal elements in the head.

Meanwhile, J.L.B. Smith was away on vacation and did not receive Courtenay-Latimer's letter until January 3, 1939. Upon opening the envelope and viewing the sketch, Smith was struck by a shock of recognition. The drawing bore an uncanny resemblance to fossilized coelacanths, a prehistoric lineage of lobe-finned fish thought to have gone extinct at the end of the Cretaceous period, roughly 66 million years ago. Smith sent an urgent telegram advising Courtenay-Latimer to preserve the remains at all costs, but the message arrived long after the internal structures had already been discarded.

Smith finally arrived at the East London Museum on February 16, 1939. The moment he laid eyes on the mounted specimen, his suspicions were confirmed. Despite the tragic loss of the internal organs, the external features—most notably the heavy cosmoid scales and the jointed, limb-like fins—clearly identified it as a living coelacanth. He named the species *Latimeria chalumnae* in honor of the curator and the river near which it was caught. The discovery sent shockwaves through the global scientific community, challenging long-held assumptions about the fossil record and the evolution of tetrapods.

Realizing that a single taxidermied specimen was insufficient to fully study the fish's biology, Smith embarked on a quest to locate another living coelacanth. He printed thousands of bilingual leaflets offering a reward and distributed them along the southeastern coast of Africa. The search took fourteen years of patient waiting and false alarms. Finally, in December 1952, a second coelacanth was caught by fishers in the Comoros Islands, hundreds of miles north of the original site. This specimen was successfully preserved intact, allowing Smith and other scientists to study the internal anatomy of this living fossil for the first time.

Based on the passage, in what chronological order did the events below occur, from earliest to latest?

Dr. Sarah Finch carefully extracted the delicate tissue sample from the ghost orchid variant she had just located in the high canopy of the Chocó forest. This moment was the culmination of a quest that had begun five years prior, when she first stumbled across a faded drawing of the flower in the margins of a nineteenth-century journal in Madrid. That discovery in the archives had immediately prompted her to secure funding from the Botanical Society, a grueling process that took nearly two years of rejected proposals. But as she packaged the sample, her mind flashed forward to the upcoming presentation at the Geneva Symposium, where she would finally vindicate her theory of high-altitude orchid evolution. Sitting on the forest floor, she remembered her first expedition to Ecuador three years ago, which had ended in near-disaster when a sudden mudslide swept away all their collection gear, forcing a hasty retreat. Now, looking at the glowing white petals in the twilight, Finch knew the years of setbacks were finally behind her.

Based on the passage, what is the correct chronological order of the following events in Finch's quest, from earliest to latest?

The following paragraphs represent a scrambled passage about the economic and environmental concept of the 'tragedy of the commons.' Read the paragraphs carefully. Which of the following represents the most logical order for these paragraphs to form a coherent passage?

The following passage is adapted from a scientific essay on animal behavior and cognitive evolution.

For decades, animal behaviorists viewed complex tool manufacturing as a uniquely human trait, or at least one restricted to our closest primate relatives. However, observations of New Caledonian crows (Corvus moneduloides) in the late twentieth century challenged this hominid-centric view. Researchers documented these avian subjects not only using tools but actively modifying twigs and leaves to create hooks for extracting larvae from deep tree crevices.

To understand the evolutionary origins of this behavior, scientists first sought to determine whether this tool-making ability was an inherited instinct or a socially learned skill. In a series of controlled laboratory experiments, young crows raised in complete isolation from adult birds were presented with retrieval tasks. Surprisingly, these isolated subjects spontaneously fashioned tools from novel materials, such as wire, without any prior exposure or instruction. This finding strongly suggested a genetic predisposition toward tool manipulation, rather than pure imitation.

Yet, genetics alone could not account for the high degree of variation and refinement observed in wild populations. To address this gap, researchers conducted comparative field studies across different regions of New Caledonia. They discovered that while the basic drive to use tools was universal among the crows, specific tool designs—such as wide versus narrow hooks—varied geographically. This geographic variation correlated with local ecological demands and the complexity of the local forest canopy. Furthermore, juveniles were observed closely watching experienced adults, slowly refining their crude initial attempts over several months of trial and error.

Consequently, the current scientific consensus suggests that the cognitive architecture of New Caledonian crows is shaped by a dual-system model. An innate, genetically encoded template provides the neurological foundation for tool use, while social transmission and individual learning refine these behaviors to suit specific environmental niches. This synthesized view has forced biologists to revise their models of cognitive evolution, demonstrating that complex problem-solving capabilities can emerge independently in highly divergent evolutionary lineages.

Based on the passage, arrange the following steps in the sequence the author uses to develop the argument regarding the cognitive and evolutionary origins of the crows' tool-making abilities.

The following paragraphs represent a scrambled passage about the history and development of the Garden City urban planning movement. Read the paragraphs carefully. To present the passage's overall development in a logical sequence, in what order should the paragraphs be arranged?

A quality control laboratory tested four battery models to measure the proportion of initial charge retained after 24 hours of continuous operation. The recorded results for each model are listed below:

- Model Alpha: $\frac{13}{20}$
- Model Beta: $64.5\%$
- Model Gamma: $\frac{5}{8}$
- Model Delta: $0.638$

Which of the following represents the battery models arranged in order from least to greatest proportion of remaining charge?