All practice questions

Passage A

For centuries, the boundary between fine art and scientific cartography was fluid and poorly defined. In the seventeenth century, during the golden age of Dutch mapmaking, cartographers like Willem Blaeu produced maps that were celebrated as much for their aesthetic mastery as for their geographic utility. These maps were designed not only for navigation but also for display in the homes of wealthy merchants and aristocrats, who valued them as symbols of status and intellectual curiosity. Consequently, these works were heavily adorned with elaborate cartouches containing historical narratives, detailed illustrations of mythological figures ruling the oceans, and speculative drawings of sea monsters in unexplored waters. Modern critics, evaluating these historic documents through the contemporary lens of scientific objectivity, have often dismissed these embellishments as mere decorative excess, or worse, as convenient filler to conceal a lack of empirical geographic data. However, this dismissive view overlooks the complex rhetorical and political power of map ornamentation. The decorative elements were rarely arbitrary; instead, they communicated dominant cultural values, asserted national territorial claims, and signaled the exact boundaries of contemporary European knowledge. The depiction of native flora, fauna, and indigenous peoples in the margins served as a visual catalog of imperial ambition, while the allegorical figures of wind and sea validated the perilous journeys of global exploration. By the mid-eighteenth century, the rise of the French school of cartography, led by figures like César-François Cassini, sought to strip the map of these artistic flourishes. They championed geodetic surveying, precise triangulation, and astronomical observations, seeking a pure, mathematical representation of geographical space. Yet, in doing so, they also dismantled a rich visual vocabulary that had previously bridged the gap between empirical measurement and human experience. This transition was not merely a simple linear shift in measurement accuracy, but a fundamental change in how humanity represented its relationship to the known world.

Passage B

The historical narrative of cartography is often framed as a linear march from artistic subjective fantasy to mathematical objective truth. The pivotal moment in this narrative occurs in the eighteenth century, when cartographers began prioritizing triangulation and systematic measurement over hand-drawn illustrations. Mapmakers proudly declared that they were purging their charts of speculative landmasses and decorative cartouches, replacing them with clean grids and precise topographic symbols. This transition is frequently celebrated as the birth of scientific cartography. However, the notion that maps became entirely objective is an illusion. The clean, unadorned aesthetic of the new scientific maps was itself a highly constructed visual rhetoric. By eliminating the artistic embellishments of the Dutch era, French cartographers were not removing subjectivity; rather, they were cultivating a new visual style designed to project authority, objectivity, and state power. Furthermore, the clean line of the grid and the accuracy of the cartographic survey did not represent a neutral depiction of the land. Instead, they served the practical needs of the centralized state, facilitating taxation, military planning, and administrative control. The French crown sponsored these mapping initiatives precisely because a standardized, legible map was a powerful tool of governance. The mathematical grid and the standardized symbol key were just as much human conventions as the sea monster or the allegorical wind god. Both the seventeenth-century Dutch decorative map and the eighteenth-century French scientific map relied on specific visual strategies to convince the viewer of their authority. The difference lay not in the presence of art, but in the style of art employed: one open and illustrative, the other disciplined and geometric.

Based on the passages, match each cartographic claim to the passage or passages that support it.

When Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell sought admission to medical school in the 1840s, she faced near-universal rejection from institutions that feared her presence would compromise their academic standing. Most administrators believed that medical education was an exclusively male domain and that admitting a woman would undermine the prestige of their diplomas. Rather than yielding to these prejudices, Blackwell persisted, eventually securing a place at Geneva Medical College. Throughout her studies, she demonstrated an academic excellence that challenged the prevailing assumptions of her peers, proving that inclusion did not weaken, but rather enriched, the profession.

As it is used in the first sentence, the word *compromise* most nearly means which of the following?

The mallet struck the chisel with a dull, wooden thud, a sound that Richard had lived by for forty years. Around him, the air in the limestone shed was thick with a fine white dust that clung to his eyelashes and coated the wool of his collar. He was carving a replacement lintel for the south transept of the old stone chapel at Highwood, a structure built by Scottish masons in the mid-1800s. The original lintel had finally succumbed to a century of frost and thaw, its face spalling away in sheets.

Richard’s task was not simply to create a block of the correct dimensions, but to replicate the relief carving of wild roses that had once adorned it. Beside his workbench lay a series of charcoal rubbings he had made of the surviving fragments before they crumbled. They were incomplete, blurred guides at best, leaving the depth of the petals and the curve of the stems to his own judgment.

In the corner of the shed sat a modern CNC router, a machine purchased by the restoration committee to speed up the project. With a digital scan, it could carve a block to within a millimeter of the digital model in a fraction of the time. The committee had gently suggested Richard use it for the rough shaping, but he had declined.

"The machine doesn't know the stone," Richard had told the committee director. "It doesn't feel the hard spots."

Now, as he worked, he felt the truth of those words in his wrists. The limestone from the local quarry was unpredictable; a vein of hard chert could run through an otherwise soft block. When the chisel met chert, the resistance changed instantly. A hand carver felt that shift through the hickory handle of the mallet and adjusted the angle of the strike, sparing the stone from fracturing. The machine, blind and relentless, would have driven straight through, risking a deep, irreparable split.

Midway through the afternoon, Fiona, the apprentice assigned to assist him, entered the shed carrying a tray of tea. She was young, fresh from a technical institute where she had learned stone restoration through chemical analysis and digital modeling. She watched him work in silence for a time, her eyes tracing the rhythmic rise and fall of his mallet.

"It seems almost futile," she said quietly, gesturing toward the chapel outside. "The limestone we're using will only last another century at best before the acid rain takes it too. We're spending months on something that is destined to dissolve."

Richard stopped, resting the mallet head on the workbench. He looked at Fiona, then at the half-finished rose petal beneath his fingers. "Everything dissolves, Fiona," he said. "The Scotsmen who built Highwood knew that. But they carved the stone anyway. They didn't do it because they thought limestone was eternal. They did it because they wanted to say something to the people who would walk under those arches a hundred years later."

He pointed to a small, irregular notch in the border of the original lintel fragment. "You see that? That’s a slip of the chisel. The carver corrected it by turning the leaf slightly to the left. It’s an error, but it’s also a signature. It tells us someone was standing exactly where I am standing, making a choice. The CNC machine doesn't make choices. It doesn't leave a signature. It just leaves a program."

Fiona walked over, touching the rough surface of the new lintel. The stone was cold, but where Richard's hands had been working, it felt slightly warm. She looked at the charcoal rubbings, then at the emerging rose. "So the restoration isn't about saving the building," she mused. "It's about keeping the conversation going."

Richard smiled, picking up his chisel again. "Exactly. We are just the middle-men, Fiona. The stone is the medium, but the human touch is the message."

Which of the following best describes the central theme of the passage?

Based on the passage below, match each of the claims regarding the function of zebra stripes with its corresponding evidence or status of support.

Passage

For decades, biologists hypothesized that the zebra’s bold black-and-white stripes functioned primarily as a cooling mechanism, generating micro-currents of air across the animal's skin. However, recent empirical studies have challenged this thermoregulation claim. Researchers led by Dr. Alison Cobb measured the skin temperatures of wild zebras and found no significant difference in cooling efficiency compared to uniform-colored herbivores in the same environment. Instead, experimental evidence increasingly supports the hypothesis that stripes serve to deter biting flies. In controlled field tests, scientists covered horse models with various patterned rugs. They observed that tabanid flies (horseflies) attempted to land on striped surfaces far less frequently than on solid-colored ones. High-speed video analysis revealed that the flies failed to decelerate properly when approaching stripes, suggesting that the pattern disrupts their visual processing during landing. While some researchers still argue that stripes may also disrupt predator tracking by creating a motion dazzle effect, the physical deterrence of disease-carrying insects stands as the claim with the most robust experimental backing to date.

Passage

In 1912, German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed a radical hypothesis that challenged the geological orthodoxy of his day: continental drift. Wegener argued that Earth's continents were not static, anchored fixtures, but had once been joined in a single supercontinent he named Pangaea. Over millions of years, he suggested, this massive landmass broke apart, and the fragments drifted to their present positions. To support his claim, Wegener compiled an impressive array of empirical evidence, noting the jigsaw-like fit of the coastlines of South America and Africa, matching fossil remains of the ancient reptile *Mesosaurus* across now-distant oceans, and identical geological strata on separate continents. Despite this evidence, the scientific community largely rejected Wegener's ideas. The fatal flaw of continental drift was its lack of a plausible mechanism. Wegener proposed that the continents plowed through the solid ocean floor, driven by tidal forces and Earth's rotation—forces that physicists quickly demonstrated were mathematically insufficient to move landmasses.

For decades, geology remained anchored to the belief in a rigid, unchanging Earth. However, the mid-twentieth century brought technological innovations that would reopen Wegener's cold case. During World War II and the postwar years, military sonar technology allowed researchers to systematically map the ocean floor for the first time. Far from being a flat, featureless abyss, the deep ocean was revealed to contain massive, winding mountain ranges, the most prominent being the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Scientists also discovered deep rift valleys running down the center of these ridges, alongside unexpectedly thin sediment layers near the ridges and much thicker layers further away. These bathymetric discoveries suggested that the ocean basin was far more geologically active than previously assumed, sparking intense debate about the processes shaping the seabed.

In the early 1960s, geologist Harry Hess synthesized these new observations into a groundbreaking concept: seafloor spreading. Hess hypothesized that the mid-ocean ridges were zones where Earth’s mantle was upwelling. As magma rose to the surface at these ridges, it cooled and hardened to form new oceanic crust. This newly created crust was then continually pushed outward, away from the ridge, as fresh magma emerged behind it. Crucially, Hess proposed that the ocean floor acted as a conveyor belt, carrying the continents along with it, rather than the continents plowing through the sea floor as Wegener had imagined. This elegant hypothesis solved Wegener’s mechanism problem: continents moved not because they were drifting independently, but because they were riding on top of a dynamic ocean floor that was constantly renewing itself.

While Hess’s concept was theoretically appealing, it required concrete empirical proof. This came in 1963 through the work of geophysicists Fred Vine and Drummond Matthews, who analyzed magnetic surveys of the seafloor. They knew that Earth's magnetic field periodically reverses its polarity. As basaltic magma cools at mid-ocean ridges, iron-bearing minerals align themselves with the prevailing magnetic field, locking in a record of the polarity at that moment. Vine and Matthews discovered a symmetrical pattern of alternating magnetic stripes on either side of the mid-ocean ridges. These stripes mirrored each other precisely, recording periods of normal and reversed polarity. This paleomagnetic evidence provided the definitive tape recording of seafloor spreading, proving that new crust was indeed being created at the ridges and moving outward over time.

By the late 1960s, these disparate discoveries were synthesized into the unified theory of plate tectonics. This modern paradigm views Earth’s lithosphere not as a single solid shell, but as a mosaic of rigid plates that float on the semi-fluid asthenosphere beneath. The interactions at plate boundaries—divergent, convergent, and transform—explain not only the drifting of continents and seafloor spreading, but also the distribution of earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain belts. Through a progression from Wegener’s initial observations to technological exploration and magnetic validation, geology underwent a profound revolution, shifting from a view of a static planet to one of a highly dynamic and interconnected system.

Which of the following options best describes the overall organizational pattern of the passage?

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.

NATURAL SCIENCE: The following passage explores the historical journey of endosymbiotic theory in evolutionary biology.

For decades, the evolutionary origin of the eukaryotic cell—the complex, organelle-rich unit that forms all protists, fungi, plants, and animals—remained one of the most perplexing and fiercely debated enigmas in evolutionary biology. While the transition from simple prokaryotes to complex eukaryotes was acknowledged by researchers as a pivotal event in the history of life on Earth, the mechanism behind this leap was fiercely debated. The prevailing view in the mid-twentieth century was autogenous: eukaryotic structures had gradually evolved through the compartmentalization and specialization of a single ancestral cell's own membranes. However, a competing, once-marginalized hypothesis known as endosymbiosis proposed a radically different pathway: that complex cells arose not through gradual self-assembly, but through the merging of distinct, free-living organisms.

The conceptual roots of endosymbiosis stretch back to the early twentieth century. In 1905, Russian botanist Konstantin Mereschkowski suggested that chloroplasts—the photosynthetic organelles in plants—were originally cyanobacteria that had been engulfed by a larger host cell. In the 1920s, American anatomist Ivan Wallin proposed a similarly controversial bacterial origin for mitochondria, the energy-producing powerhouses of eukaryotic cells. Wallin went so far as to argue that mitochondria could be cultured outside their host cells. Because these early theorists lacked the tools to provide empirical genetic proof, their ideas were largely dismissed as speculative fantasy. Mainstream biology remained firmly committed to the neo-Darwinian consensus, which emphasized mutation and natural selection within a single lineage as the sole drivers of evolutionary change.

The theory languished in obscurity until 1967, when Lynn Margulis, then a young scientist at Boston University, published a seminal paper under the name Lynn Sagan. Margulis revived and synthesized the work of her predecessors, presenting a comprehensive model of eukaryotic evolution. She argued that eukaryotic cells developed not from sudden internal mutations, but through a sequence of symbiotic mergers: an anaerobic host cell first engulfed an aerobic bacterium (which gradually became the modern mitochondrion), and later, some of these eukaryotic descendants engulfed photosynthetic cyanobacteria (which evolved into the chloroplast). Margulis’s manuscript was rejected by over a dozen scientific journals before finally being accepted by the Journal of Theoretical Biology. Even after publication, her ideas were met with intense skepticism and outright hostility from prominent evolutionary biologists who viewed symbiosis as a rare, ecological curiosity rather than a primary evolutionary mechanism.

The decisive shift in the debate occurred in the late 1970s and 1980s, propelled by the revolution in molecular genetics. If mitochondria and chloroplasts had indeed originated as independent, free-living bacteria in the distant evolutionary past, they would possess their own DNA, distinct from the DNA found in the host cell's nucleus. More importantly, this organellar DNA should bear a closer resemblance to modern bacterial genomes than to eukaryotic genomes. Researchers, including Margulis and molecular biologist W. Ford Doolittle, began sequencing organellar genes. The results were unequivocal. The ribosomal RNA of chloroplasts was found to be closely related to that of free-living cyanobacteria, while mitochondrial DNA shared a common ancestry with alpha-proteobacteria. The autogenous model could not explain why these internal structures maintained their own separate, bacterial-like genetic machinery.

Today, endosymbiotic theory is no longer a radical heresy; it is a foundational pillar of modern biology. The focus of research has shifted from proving the theory to exploring its broader implications. Scientists now study how the ancient genetic integration of host and endosymbiont created the metabolic efficiencies that allowed multicellular life to flourish. Furthermore, understanding endosymbiosis has shed light on human health, particularly how mitochondrial dysfunction contributes to aging and metabolic diseases, and how certain antibiotics targeting bacterial ribosomes can inadvertently damage human mitochondria. By trace-mapping this history, we see how a once-ridiculed concept redefined our understanding of life's interconnectedness, demonstrating that evolutionary progress is driven not only by competition, but also by cooperation.

Which of the following best describes the overall organizational pattern of the passage?

Read the following passage:

We had been digging in the dry heat of the valley for six weeks, our brushes clearing away centuries of sand from what we hoped was the outer wall of the library. My fingers were raw, and my colleagues' silent frustration was palpable as we found nothing but shattered pottery. I wondered if the critics in London had been correct to call our expedition a fool's errand.

Then, the sand shifted.

Dr. Evelyn Vance knelt by the trench, her breath catching as the corner of a clay tablet emerged. In that moment, she was no longer thinking of the university board or the dwindling grant money. She saw only the faint, wedge-shaped impressions of cuneiform, surviving in the dark for three millennia. Here was the voice of a temple scribe, recording the grain harvests of a forgotten king. 'We have it,' she whispered, her voice trembling. 'Call the surveyor.'

To the local guides watching from the ridge, the sudden flurry of movement below was just another incomprehensible ritual of the foreign scholars. They observed the scientists huddled over the dirt like beetles, oblivious to the gathering storm clouds on the horizon.

Match each quotation from the passage on the left to the narrative point of view or perspective it represents on the right.

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?

Passage

When I assumed directorship of the Oakridge Archive, my primary goal was to rescue our history from the sentimental myths of the town's amateurs. The previous curator, Ms. Gable, had filled our main hall with colonial spinning wheels and quaint letters that, while charming to school children, lacked any real academic rigor. I immediately replaced these trivialities with the trade ledgers of the Oakridge Logging Company, which prove beyond doubt that our town's prominence was built on modern commerce, not folklore. Admittedly, a few local families complained that their ancestors’ contributions were sidelined, but one cannot let regional sentimentality dictate archival standards. Some have pointed to a letter by one of our early mayors claiming the logging company engaged in predatory land acquisitions, but that letter was written after the mayor lost his re-election campaign—clearly, his judgment was clouded by personal animosity. In contrast, the company's own records, meticulously kept by its founders, offer a completely objective account of the transactions. By centering these business records, I have finally provided Oakridge with a historical narrative that is both professional and objective.

Based on the passage, match each statement from the narrator to the specific bias or source of unreliability it demonstrates.

Students performed an experiment to study the effects of different metal oxide catalysts on the rate of decomposition of hydrogen peroxide ($H_2O_2$) into water ($H_2O$) and oxygen gas ($O_2$). In each of 4 trials, the students added $5\text{ mL}$ of a $3\%$ $H_2O_2$ solution to a test tube at $25^\circ\text{C}$ containing either a specific catalyst or no catalyst. They measured the total volume of $O_2$ gas produced in milliliters ($\text{mL}$) over a period of 5 minutes. The experimental setups are summarized in the table below:

To determine the baseline rate of hydrogen peroxide decomposition in the absence of any catalyst, the students should refer to the results of which trial?

A student group designed four different scientific experiments but realized that each procedure contained a critical confounding variable or source of error that could compromise the validity of the results.

Match each experimental procedure on the left with its primary confounding variable or source of error on the right.

Two students discuss the cause of the Earth's changing seasons.

Student 1
The Earth's distance from the Sun changes throughout the year because of its elliptical orbit. The Earth is closest to the Sun in summer, causing warmer temperatures, and farthest from the Sun in winter, causing colder temperatures. The tilt of the Earth's axis has no effect on these temperature changes.

Student 2
The Earth's distance from the Sun is nearly constant and has a negligible effect on seasons. Instead, the Earth's axial tilt of $23.5^\circ$ is the sole cause of seasons. When a hemisphere is tilted toward the Sun, it receives more direct sunlight and experiences summer. When it is tilted away from the Sun, it receives less direct sunlight and experiences winter.

Match each statement regarding the seasons with the student(s) who would agree with it.

### Origin of the Moon

Three scientific models have been proposed to explain the origin of the Moon:

* Fission Model: The Moon was once part of the Earth but was thrown off early in the solar system's history due to the Earth's rapid rotation. Since it split directly from the young Earth's mantle, the Moon's chemical composition (such as oxygen isotope ratios) should be identical to Earth's mantle, and its orbit should lie along Earth's equatorial plane.
* Capture Model: The Moon formed independently elsewhere in the solar system, with its own unique composition, and was later captured by Earth's gravity during a close pass. This model suggests that the Moon's chemical composition should be distinct from Earth's.
* Giant Impact Model: A Mars-sized protoplanet collided with the young Earth. The impact blasted debris from both the protoplanet and Earth's outer mantle into orbit, which then accreted to form the Moon. Because the Moon formed from mantle debris, it should have a very low iron content compared to Earth, which retained its massive iron core.

Match each new scientific finding and the model evaluated to its correct relationship (whether the finding supports, contradicts, or has no effect on that model).

### Saturn's Moon Enceladus

Enceladus, a small icy moon of Saturn, erupts plumes of water vapor and ice particles from fractures in its south polar crust. Two scientists discuss the primary mechanism and location of the thermal energy that powers these geysers.

Scientist 1
The geysers are powered by tidal heating within Enceladus's porous silicate core. As Enceladus orbits Saturn, Saturn's gravitational forces continually deform the moon's core. Water from the global ocean circulates through the porous rock, where frictional heating raises its temperature to over $360\text{ K}$ ($87^\circ\text{C}$). This heated water rises as hydrothermal plumes, melting the bottom of the ice shell and escaping through fissures. Therefore, the heat source is deep, global, and drives hydrothermal activity on the ocean floor.

Scientist 2
The heat is generated entirely by tidal flexing and frictional sliding within the icy shell itself, not the core. As Enceladus orbits, gravitational stresses cause the walls of the south polar fractures (tiger stripes) to slide back and forth against each other. This friction melts ice near the surface, forming localized reservoirs of liquid water. Vapors from these shallow reservoirs escape directly into space. Frictional heating is concentrated in the top $5\text{ km}$ of the ice crust, and the core remains cold and inactive.

Based on the passage, Scientist 1 and Scientist 2 disagree on which of the following aspects of Enceladus?

Younger Dryas Cooling Mechanisms

The Younger Dryas was a period of abrupt cooling that occurred approximately $12,900$ years ago. Scientists debate the primary trigger of this event.

*Hypothesis 1 (Impact Hypothesis)*
Proposes that a fragmented comet or asteroid collided with the Earth, detonating over the Laurentide Ice Sheet. This event released large amounts of dust and soot, blocking solar radiation, and melted significant portions of the ice sheet. Supporters point to nanodiamonds and helium-3 isotopes in sediment layers as evidence.

*Hypothesis 2 (Meltwater Discharge Hypothesis)*
Proposes that the gradual warming preceding the Younger Dryas caused a natural breach in an ice dam holding back glacial Lake Agassiz. A sudden, massive influx of freshwater entered the North Atlantic Ocean. Because freshwater is less dense than saltwater, it remained on the surface, halting the convective sinking of seawater and shutting down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) that transports heat northward.

*Hypothesis 3 (Volcanic Eruption Hypothesis)*
Proposes that a series of major, high-sulfur volcanic eruptions occurred, injecting sulfur dioxide ($\text{SO}_2$) gas into the stratosphere. The gas reacted with water vapor to form highly reflective sulfate aerosols. These aerosols remained in the stratosphere for several years, reflecting solar radiation back into space and initiating a prolonged global cooling period.

Match each scientific mechanism described on the left to the Younger Dryas hypothesis on the right that proposes it as the primary cause of the cooling.

A researcher is reviewing several experimental setups to ensure that all potential confounding variables are properly controlled. Match each experimental procedure to the specific uncontrolled variable or source of error that threatens the validity of its findings.

In the early 1950s, computer pioneer Grace Hopper worked on the UNIVAC I computer, a machine designed for business and scientific applications. At the time, programming required writing tedious machine code that was highly prone to error. Hopper believed that programming languages should be written in English rather than mathematical symbols. Consequently, she developed the A-0 compiler, a revolutionary program that translates mathematical code into machine-readable instructions. While her colleagues initially dismissed her ideas, asserting that computers could only do arithmetic, Hopper, along with a small team of dedicated programmers, perseveres and eventually transformed the way software is written today.

Which choice best completes the sentence to maintain a consistent verb tense throughout the paragraph?

During the archaeological dig, the site director explained to the assistant and I that if one wants to catalog an artifact properly, you must record it's dimensions immediately.

Which of the following choices is the most grammatically correct replacement for the underlined portion of the sentence?