SAT: Command of Evidence

“To You” is an 1856 poem by Walt Whitman. In the poem, Whitman suggests that readers, whom he addresses directly, have not fully understood themselves, writing, ______

Which quotation from “To You” most effectively illustrates the claim?

• “You have not known what you are, you have slumber’d upon yourself / all your life, / Your eyelids have been the same as closed most of the time.”

• “These immense meadows, these interminable rivers, you are immense / and interminable as they.”

• “I should have made my way straight to you long ago, / I should have blabb’d nothing but you, I should have chanted nothing / but you.”

• “I will leave all and come and make the hymns of you, / None has understood you, but I understand you.”

Roasted green chiles are a popular ingredient in Southwestern cuisine, but the traditional roasting method of burning propane is not environmentally friendly. To see if solar power could provide a better alternative, engineer Kenneth Armijo and his team roasted batches of green chiles using between 38 and 42 heliostats, which are devices that concentrate sunlight. The team was successful in reaching the same roasting temperature used in traditional propane roasting, but they found that propane yielded faster results. While the fastest solar-roasted green chiles took six minutes, batches using propane took only four. Armijo hypothesizes that they can reduce the roasting time for solar-roasted green chiles by using more heliostats.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support Armijo’s hypothesis?

• The temperature inside the roasting drum is distributed more evenly when roasting green chiles with solar power than with propane.

• Attempts to roast green chiles using 50 heliostats yields results in fewer than six minutes.

• Green chile connoisseurs prefer the flavor of solar-roasted green chiles over the flavor of propane-roasted green chiles.

• The skins of solar-roasted green chiles are easier to peel than the skins of propane-roasted green chiles.

Plants like potatoes, tomatoes, and soybeans are susceptible to bacterial wilt disease caused by the bacteria Ralstonia solanacearum. A multinational team of scientists led by Zhong Wei studied whether other microbes in the soil might influence the degree to which plants are affected by the disease. The team sampled soil surrounding individual tomato plants over time and compared the results of plants that became diseased with those that remained healthy. They concluded that the presence of certain microbes in the soil might explain the difference between healthy and diseased plants.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the team’s conclusion?

• The soil surrounding healthy plants contained significantly higher concentrations of microbes known to inhibit Ralstonia solanacearum than the soil surrounding diseased plants did.

• The soil surrounding the plants contained high concentrations of Ralstonia solanacearum regardless of whether the plants were affected by wilt disease.

• The soil surrounding healthy plants tended to have significantly higher moisture levels than the soil surrounding diseased plants did.

• By the end of the experiment, over half the plants had been affected by wilt disease regardless of differences in the types and concentrations of microbes in the surrounding soil.

“Mrs. Spring Fragrance” is a 1912 short story by Sui Sin Far. In the story, Mrs. Spring Fragrance, a Chinese immigrant living in Seattle, is traveling in California. In letters to her husband and friend, she demonstrates her concern for what’s happening at her home in Seattle while she is away: ______

Which quotation from Mrs. Spring Fragrance’s letters most effectively illustrates the claim?

• “My honorable cousin is preparing for the Fifth Moon Festival, and wishes me to compound for the occasion some American ‘fudge,’ for which delectable sweet, made by my clumsy hands, you have sometimes shown a slight prejudice.”

• “Next week I accompany Ah Oi to the beauteous town of San José. There will we be met by the son of the Illustrious Teacher.”

• “Forget not to care for the cat, the birds, and the flowers. Do not eat too quickly nor fan too vigorously now that the weather is warming.”

• “I am enjoying a most agreeable visit, and American friends, as also our own, strive benevolently for the accomplishment of my pleasure.”

Electric companies that use wind turbines rely on weather forecasts to predict the maximum amount of power, in megawatt-hours (MWh), they can generate using wind so that they can determine how much they’ll need to generate from other sources. When winds are stronger than they were forecast to be, however, the predicted maximum amount of electricity wind turbines could generate will be too low. For example, the graph shows that for the West region, the winds were ______

Which choice most effectively uses data from the graph to complete the example?

• strong enough to generate about 150 thousand more MWh of electricity from wind turbines.

  
  

• so weak that the electricity from wind turbines was about 175 thousand MWh less than predicted.

  
  

• so weak that the electricity from wind turbines was about 150 thousand MWh less than predicted.

  
  

• strong enough to generate about 175 thousand more MWh of electricity from wind turbines.