Self Check Quiz
Standard
FCAT MA.A.4.4.1
Practice Test
1.
Which of the following is the northernmost city on the maps?
a.
Baltimore
b.
Memphis
c.
St. Louis
d.
Lexington
2.
Based on the facts given, which of the following is the best estimate for foreign aid spending in the future:
a.
The United States will cut off all foreign aid.
b.
While most foreign aid will decline, aid to certain regions will continue to grow.
c.
The United States will only provide aid to those countries that can pay it back.
d.
Foreign aid will decrease for all regions in order to spend more money in the United States.
3.
Which region had the greatest decline in immigration over a five-year period?
a.
Canada
b.
Northern and Western Europe
c.
Southern Europe
d.
Central and Eastern Europe
4.
Estimate how many miles the Panama Canal stretches, measuring from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean?
a.
about 38 miles
b.
around 50 miles
c.
approximately 57 miles
d.
nearly 72 miles
5.
Natural Science
This passage is adapted from Stephen Hawking's The Illustrated Brief History of Time.
Our present ideas about the motion of bodies date back to Galileo and Newton. Before them people believed Aristotle, who said that the natural state of body was to be at rest and that it moved only if driven by a force or impulse. It followed that a heavy body should fall faster than a light one, because it would have a greater pull toward the earth.
The Aristotelian tradition also held that one could work out all the laws that govern the universe by pure thought: it was not necessary to check by observation. So no one until Galileo bothered to see whether bodies of different weight did in fact fall at different speeds. It is said that Galileo demonstrated that Aristotle's belief was false by dropping weights from the leaning tower of Pisa. The story is almost certainly untrue, but Galileo did do something equivalent: he rolled balls of different weights down a smooth slope. The situation is similar to that of heavy bodies falling vertically, but it is easier to observe because the speeds are lesser. Galileo's measurements indicated that each body increased its speed at the same rate, no matter what its weight. For example, if a ball is released on a slope that drops by one meter for every ten meters of length, the ball will travel down the slope at a speed of about one meter per second after one second, two meters per second after two seconds, and so on, however heavy the ball. Of course a lead weight would fall faster than a feather, but that is only because a feather is slowed by air resistance. If one drops two bodies that don't have much air resistance, such as two different lead weights, they fall at the same rate. On the moon, where there is no air to slow things down, the astronaut David R. Scott performed the feather and lead weight experiment and found that indeed they did hit the ground at the same time.
Galileo's measurements were used by Newton as the basis of his laws of motion. In Galileo's experiments, as a body rolled down the slope it was always acted on by the same force (its weight), and the effect was to make it constantly increase its speed. This showed that the real effect of a force is always to change the speed of a body, rather than just to set it moving, as was previously thought. It also meant that whenever a body is not acted on by any force, it will keep on moving in a straight line at the same speed. This idea was first stated explicitly in Newton's Principia Mathematica, published in 1687, and is known as Newton's first law. What happens to a body when a force does act on it is given by Newton's second law. This states that the body will accelerate, or change its speed, at a rate that is proportional to the force. (For example, the acceleration is twice as great if the force is twice as great.) The acceleration is also smaller the greater the mass (or quantity of matter) of the body. (The same force acting on a body of twice the mass will produce half the acceleration.) A familiar example is provided by a car: the more powerful the engine, the greater the acceleration, but the heavier the car, the smaller the acceleration for the same engine. In addition to his laws of motion, Newton discovered a law to describe the force of gravity, which states that every body attracts every other body with a force that is proportional to the mass of each body. Thus the force between two bodies would be twice as strong if one of the bodies (say, body A) had its mass doubled. This is what you might expect because one could think of the new body A as being made of two bodies with the original mass. Each would attract body B with the original force. Thus the total force between A and B would be twice the original force. And if, say, one of the bodies had twice the mass, and the other had three times the mass, then the force would be six times as strong. One can now see why all bodies fall at the same rate: a body of twice the weight will have twice the force of gravity pulling it down, but it will also have twice the mass. According to Newton's second law, these two effects will exactly cancel each other, so the acceleration will be the same in all cases.
Based on this essay, which of the following is true?
a.
A 1-pound ball will roll down a slope at 1/10 the rate of a 10-pound ball.
b.
A 1-pound ball will roll down a slope at the same rate as a 10-pound ball.
c.
A 1-pound ball will roll down a slope at 10 times the speed of a 10-pound ball.
d.
A 1-pound ball will roll down a slope just slightly slower than a 10-pound ball.
6.
Based on the prison population growth patterns for 1997 and 1998, which conclusion is the most likely?
a.
Direct expenditures on criminal justice rose in 1997 and 1998.
b.
Massachusetts spent less per prisoner in 1997 and 1998 than in previous years.
c.
Direct expenditures on criminal justice decreased in 1997 and 1998.
d.
Alaska spent more per prisoner than Rhode Island.
7.
Examine the data for China and the United States shown on the graph. Estimate which country has a higher Gross National Product per capita and select the correct answer choice below.
a.
The United States has a higher GNP per capita, because its GNP is higher than China's and the U.S. population is lower than China's population.
b.
China has a higher GNP per capita even though its GNP is lower than the United States' because China's population is higher than the United States'.
c.
The United States has a lower GNP per capita than China because the U.S. population is lower than China's population.
d.
China has a lower GNP per capita than the United States because China's population is less than the U.S. population.
