SAT words in context 19 Medium-Hard

Although science fiction was dominated mostly by white male authors when Octavia Butler, a Black woman, began writing, she did not view the genre as ______: Butler broke into the field with the publication of several short stories and her 1976 novel Patternmaster, and she later became the first science fiction writer to win a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• legitimate

• impenetrable

• compelling

• indecipherable

People sometimes dismiss a claim if it comes from a source they regard as self-interested, but from a strictly logical perspective, the source of a claim is ______: it has no direct bearing on whether the claim is true.  

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• indistinct

• irrelevant

• indisputable

• implicit

Recent measurements of the mass of the W boson (a subatomic particle) were notable not only for the mere fact that the particle’s mass differed from expectations but for the ______ of that difference: the measured mass of the W boson was seven standard deviations higher than predicted by the standard model of particle physics.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• cause

• existence

• implication

• scale

Set in a world where science fiction tropes exist as everyday realities, Charles Yu’s 2010 novel How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe traces a time traveler’s quest to find his father. Because the journey at the novel’s center is so ______, with the protagonist ricocheting chaotically across time, the reader often wonders whether the pair will ever be reunited.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• haphazard

• premeditated

• inspirational

• fruitless

Business researcher Melanie Brucks and colleagues found that remote video conference meetings may be less conducive to brainstorming than in-person meetings are. The researchers suspect that video meeting participants are focused on staring at the speaker on the screen and don’t allow their eyes or mind to wander as much, which may ultimately ______ creativity.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• recommend

• criticize

• impede

• construct

Mineralogical differences are detectable in samples collected from two locations on the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, but such differences may not indicate substantial compositional variations in the asteroid. Cosmochemist Kazuhide Nagashima and colleagues note that at the small scale of the samples, the distribution of minerals is unlikely to be ______.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• neglected

• redundant

• ongoing

• uniform

Interruptions in the supply chain for microchips used in personal electronics have challenged an economist’s assertion that retailers can expect robust growth in sales of those devices in the coming months. The delays are unlikely to ______ her projection entirely but will almost certainly extend its time frame.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• dispute

• withdraw

• underscore

• invalidate

In addition to being an accomplished psychologist himself, Francis Cecil Sumner was a ______ increasing the opportunity for Black students to study psychology, helping to found the psychology department at Howard University, a historically Black university, in 1930.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• proponent of

• supplement to

• beneficiary of

• distraction for

Economists often assert that countries looking to increase their reliance on solar energy should expand their capacity for storage; having an ample reserve of stored energy can mitigate the effects of ______ solar energy collection caused by unpredictable shifts in cloud cover and haze.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• developments of

• fluctuations in

• calibrations with

• incentives for

In a 2019 study, Jeremy Gunawardena and colleagues found that the single-celled protozoan Stentor roeseli not only uses strategies to escape irritating stimuli but also switches strategies when one fails. This evidence of protozoans sophisticatedly “changing their minds” demonstrates that single-celled organisms may not be limited to ______ behaviors.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?

• aggressive

• rudimentary

• evolving

• advantageous