ACT Reading Practice

For what purposes have lenses been used?

(1) My choice for the greatest invention of the past two thousand years is the lens. I’m going to start, however, with plain old eyeglasses. We don’t really know when they first began to be used. By 1600 there were specialized artisans who carefully ground lenses. One of them, a Dutch (3) eyeglasses maker named Lippershey, noticed that a combination of two lenses made distant objects appear bigger. He tried to use this discovery to get rich. He didn’t succeed, but several of his two-lens devices were made. By 1609 one of them had reached a transplanted (5)Florentine named Galileo Galilei. He pointed his device—or telescope, as it was later called—at the night sky and looked out. What he saw changed our view of the world. The sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved around the sun, the moon had mountains and valleys, and the Milky Way was made up of vast numbers of stars. (8) It was crystal clear that the old Ptolemaic version of the universe was wrong. The earth was not the center of the universe, and there was no going back. We were launched on our exploration of outer space.

(10) It is a short journey from the telescope to the microscope. Not surprisingly, they were discovered at around the same time. After all, they are both just the simple piecing together of the right two lenses in correct positions. The microscope, however, was a tool in search of a problem. The problem eventually did develop, and it was nothing less than understanding the origins of life. In 1678 Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a lens good enough to get a magnifying power close to 500. At that point, a whole rich substructure was revealed. A drop of pond water turned out to be filled with little “animalcules” swimming in it. Van Leeuwenhoek had discovered bacteria.

(Adapted from Gino Segre, “Lenses.” from The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years. © 2000 by John Brockman, Ed.)

quesion 1: In lines 4-6, what can we assume by the word TRANSPLANTED?

• The lenses were transplanted into a telescope

• Galileo was not originally from Florentine but moved there

• the lenses helped Galileo see Venus

For what purposes have lenses been used?

(1) My choice for the greatest invention of the past two thousand years is the lens. I’m going to start, however, with plain old eyeglasses. We don’t really know when they first began to be used. By 1600 there were specialized artisans who carefully ground lenses. One of them, a Dutch (3) eyeglasses maker named Lippershey, noticed that a combination of two lenses made distant objects appear bigger. He tried to use this discovery to get rich. He didn’t succeed, but several of his two-lens devices were made. By 1609 one of them had reached a transplanted (5)Florentine named Galileo Galilei. He pointed his device—or telescope, as it was later called—at the night sky and looked out. What he saw changed our view of the world. The sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved around the sun, the moon had mountains and valleys, and the Milky Way was made up of vast numbers of stars. (8) It was crystal clear that the old Ptolemaic version of the universe was wrong. The earth was not the center of the universe, and there was no going back. We were launched on our exploration of outer space.

(10) It is a short journey from the telescope to the microscope. Not surprisingly, they were discovered at around the same time. After all, they are both just the simple piecing together of the right two lenses in correct positions. The microscope, however, was a tool in search of a problem. The problem eventually did develop, and it was nothing less than understanding the origins of life. In 1678 Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a lens good enough to get a magnifying power close to 500. At that point, a whole rich substructure was revealed. A drop of pond water turned out to be filled with little “animalcules” swimming in it. Van Leeuwenhoek had discovered bacteria.

(Adapted from Gino Segre, “Lenses.” from The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years. © 2000 by John Brockman, Ed.)

The passage implies that at the time the microscope was invented:

• it needed improvements in order to be useful

• no one had, as yet, found a scientific use for it

• people feared that it would be used for the wrong reasons

• the telescope was considered a more important invention

For what purposes have lenses been used?

(1) My choice for the greatest invention of the past two thousand years is the lens. I’m going to start, however, with plain old eyeglasses. We don’t really know when they first began to be used. By 1600 there were specialized artisans who carefully ground lenses. One of them, a Dutch (3) eyeglasses maker named Lippershey, noticed that a combination of two lenses made distant objects appear bigger. He tried to use this discovery to get rich. He didn’t succeed, but several of his two-lens devices were made. By 1609 one of them had reached a transplanted (5)Florentine named Galileo Galilei. He pointed his device—or telescope, as it was later called—at the night sky and looked out. What he saw changed our view of the world. The sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved around the sun, the moon had mountains and valleys, and the Milky Way was made up of vast numbers of stars. (8) It was crystal clear that the old Ptolemaic version of the universe was wrong. The earth was not the center of the universe, and there was no going back. We were launched on our exploration of outer space.

(10) It is a short journey from the telescope to the microscope. Not surprisingly, they were discovered at around the same time. After all, they are both just the simple piecing together of the right two lenses in correct positions. The microscope, however, was a tool in search of a problem. The problem eventually did develop, and it was nothing less than understanding the origins of life. In 1678 Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a lens good enough to get a magnifying power close to 500. At that point, a whole rich substructure was revealed. A drop of pond water turned out to be filled with little “animalcules” swimming in it. Van Leeuwenhoek had discovered bacteria.

(Adapted from Gino Segre, “Lenses.” from The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years. © 2000 by John Brockman, Ed.)

What can we infer by the author's line, "It was crystal clear that the old Ptolemaic version of the universe was wrong,"?

• there was now enough evidence to show that the planets and sun did not revolve around the earth as people had always believed

• the invention of the telescope allowed us to see the heavens

• Galileo was wrong

• the invention of the lens proved the science to be correct

For what purposes have lenses been used?

(1) My choice for the greatest invention of the past two thousand years is the lens. I’m going to start, however, with plain old eyeglasses. We don’t really know when they first began to be used. By 1600 there were specialized artisans who carefully ground lenses. One of them, a Dutch (3) eyeglasses maker named Lippershey, noticed that a combination of two lenses made distant objects appear bigger. He tried to use this discovery to get rich. He didn’t succeed, but several of his two-lens devices were made. By 1609 one of them had reached a transplanted (5)Florentine named Galileo Galilei. He pointed his device—or telescope, as it was later called—at the night sky and looked out. What he saw changed our view of the world. The sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved around the sun, the moon had mountains and valleys, and the Milky Way was made up of vast numbers of stars. (8) It was crystal clear that the old Ptolemaic version of the universe was wrong. The earth was not the center of the universe, and there was no going back. We were launched on our exploration of outer space.

(10) It is a short journey from the telescope to the microscope. Not surprisingly, they were discovered at around the same time. After all, they are both just the simple piecing together of the right two lenses in correct positions. The microscope, however, was a tool in search of a problem. The problem eventually did develop, and it was nothing less than understanding the origins of life. In 1678 Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a lens good enough to get a magnifying power close to 500. At that point, a whole rich substructure was revealed. A drop of pond water turned out to be filled with little “animalcules” swimming in it. Van Leeuwenhoek had discovered bacteria.

(Adapted from Gino Segre, “Lenses.” from The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years. © 2000 by John Brockman, Ed.)

What does the author mean by "short journey" in line 10?

• The telescope and microscope were invented in nearby towns

• The telescope and the microscope were invented relatively around the same time

• Galileo traveled a short distance to see the microscope invention

• we cannot tell by the information given

For what purposes have lenses been used?

(1) My choice for the greatest invention of the past two thousand years is the lens. I’m going to start, however, with plain old eyeglasses. We don’t really know when they first began to be used. By 1600 there were specialized artisans who carefully ground lenses. One of them, a Dutch (3) eyeglasses maker named Lippershey, noticed that a combination of two lenses made distant objects appear bigger. He tried to use this discovery to get rich. He didn’t succeed, but several of his two-lens devices were made. By 1609 one of them had reached a transplanted (5)Florentine named Galileo Galilei. He pointed his device—or telescope, as it was later called—at the night sky and looked out. What he saw changed our view of the world. The sun rotated around its axis, Venus revolved around the sun, the moon had mountains and valleys, and the Milky Way was made up of vast numbers of stars. (8) It was crystal clear that the old Ptolemaic version of the universe was wrong. The earth was not the center of the universe, and there was no going back. We were launched on our exploration of outer space.

(10) It is a short journey from the telescope to the microscope. Not surprisingly, they were discovered at around the same time. After all, they are both just the simple piecing together of the right two lenses in correct positions. The microscope, however, was a tool in search of a problem. The problem eventually did develop, and it was nothing less than understanding the origins of life. In 1678 Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a lens good enough to get a magnifying power close to 500. At that point, a whole rich substructure was revealed. A drop of pond water turned out to be filled with little “animalcules” swimming in it. Van Leeuwenhoek had discovered bacteria.

(Adapted from Gino Segre, “Lenses.” from The Greatest Inventions of the Past 2,000 Years. © 2000 by John Brockman, Ed.)

Why does the author argue that the lens is the greatest invention over the last 2000 years?

• It led to the inventions of not only eye glasses, but the telescope and the microscope, which led to incredible discovery of the universe and disease

• It led to the invention of the microscope

• It led to the invention of the telescope

• we can now study space