Question of the Day: SAT & ACT May 16

If you are reading this in an email you received from me, do not click the link to sat.collegeboard.org below. Use the link to my website that is farther down on the email. If you are seeing this in my blog, do the SAT Question of the Day by clicking on this link:

http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/sat-question-of-the-day?src=R&questionId=20130516 (This link takes you to today’s question. If you use my archive, you will see the question related to my SAT explanation for that date.)

The answer is B.  Use the “Wizard’s Theorem!”  That’s the name I use in my website course and DVD set for an important geometry rule.  (There’s not a formal name like “Pythagorean Theorem;” so, I gave it one!”)  The rule you should memorize for both tests is that the sum of the two short sides of a triangle must exceed the length of the third/long side.  If you know that, then this is a very easy question.  If you don’t know that rule, then you are in trouble like the 58% of 33,425 students who have missed it so far today!

To review the rule: the sum of any two sides of a triangle must be longer than the third side and the difference of two sides must be smaller than the third side.  I write it in summary as:

sum>third side>difference.

Let’s see what we can do with the ACT question.

http://www.act.org/qotd/ (The ACT staff does not put a date on their questions so if you click on an archived blog, you’ll get today’s question and the old explanation. Sorry. The SAT staff has dated their questions; so, the archive is helpful. The ACT folks simply don’t do that.)

The answer is H.  Again, the ACT folks are repeating themselves.  They must be real proud of some of their questions that keep showing up time after time or they are too lazy to put some new ones on their website.  You decide.

You can see from the graph that as you go deeper the concentration increases until you get to 15 then it drops.  The only one that doesn’t go consistently in one direction (more concentrated or less concentrated) is carbon dioxide.

This is another example of how to prepare for the ACT Science Reasoning test.  Practice reading graphs.  Don’t worry about reviewing science facts because you’ll never be able to figure out what to study.  However, because the test is all about reading charts and graphs, you can work on that skill and especially spend time working on your speed.

Have a great day.

Wizard

About Bob Alexander

Bob has been a professional educator starting with teaching biology, becoming a school administrator, and then working as an education lobbyist in Washington, DC. He got his start in national testing by becoming a consulting test writer, later joining Kaplan as a director, and finally starting his own business in 1995. He has written numerous books, consulted for school districts and colleges, developed his website and been featured on a DVD set. He offers SAT and ACT prep classes and tutors individuals and small groups of students in central Florida.
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