California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress Science High School

1.A plant in sunlight makes sugar that can later be used as food. What happens to energy during photosynthesis?

2.Some beetles in a population already have thicker shells than others. Birds eat more of the thin-shelled beetles, and more thick-shelled beetles survive to reproduce. What is natural selection acting on?

3.A cell copies its DNA before it divides, and the copy guides how the new cell is built. What is the DNA providing?

4.In a DNA molecule, adenine pairs with thymine. Which other base pairing is the usual match?

5.A gene is a section of DNA with a particular sequence of bases. What does the cell use that sequence to specify?

6.A root cell divides to make more root tissue. The two new cells are body cells, not gametes. How should their chromosome sets compare with the original cell?

7.A flowering plant forms pollen for sexual reproduction. How does the chromosome number of a pollen cell compare with that of a leaf cell from the same plant?

8.A muscle cell breaks down sugar during cellular respiration. What is the main energy result?

9.Cells use ATP when they move materials, contract, or build molecules. Why is ATP described as an energy carrier?

10.A leaf cell has both chloroplasts and mitochondria. Which pairing of jobs is accurate?

11.Grass captures energy, a grasshopper eats the grass, and a bird eats the grasshopper. Why is only a small share of the grass's energy available to the bird?

12.A tree takes in carbon dioxide while it makes food. Months later, decomposers break down a fallen leaf from that tree. What happens to the carbon?

13.On a hot afternoon, a runner sweats and blood flow to the skin increases. Body temperature stays near 37 degrees Celsius. What is this an example of?

14.A raisin left in pure water swells. The raisin contains dissolved sugars. Why does water enter?

15.In a pea species, tall (T) is dominant to short (t). A Tt plant is crossed with another Tt plant. About what fraction of the offspring is expected to be short?

16.A copying error changes one base in a gene, and the cell passes that change to its daughter cells. What has changed?

17.A river splits a lizard population. After many generations apart, the two groups meet again and do not interbreed. What is the best description of the groups?

18.A human arm, a bat wing, and a whale flipper contain a similar set of bones arranged in the same order. What is the usual explanation?

19.In an undisturbed cliff, deeper layers hold fossils unlike organisms alive today, and upper layers hold fossils more like living species. What does that pattern support?

20.A meadow's rabbit population grows and then levels off near 200 animals. Food and nesting space are limited. What is that leveling-off number called?

21.Fungi grow through a fallen log and break the wood down. Which role do the fungi play in the ecosystem?

22.A cell uses a protein to speed a reaction. After the reaction, that protein is unchanged and can act again. What is the protein acting as?

23.A cell membrane lets water cross more readily than it lets a large protein cross. Which property is that?

24.In a eukaryotic leaf cell, where is most of the genetic information kept?

25.Each year, growers plant seeds only from the wheat plants that produced the largest grains. After many years, the crop's grains are larger. What process is this?

26.A coach says that lifting weights will give a child larger muscles because the parent used those muscles. Why does that claim miss how natural selection works?

27.Bees drink nectar from flowers, and pollen that sticks to the bees reaches other flowers of the same species. How is this relationship classified?

28.Algae in a pond multiply until dissolved nutrients are scarce, and then population growth slows. What are those nutrients in this case?

29.A dry year kills one tree species in a forest that has dozens of tree species, and the forest still shades the ground. A nearby planting of only that species dies back. What does the contrast illustrate?

30.A bacterium divides, and the two resulting cells carry the same genetic information except for rare mutations. What kind of reproduction is this?

31.Heating changes a protein's shape so it no longer fits the molecule it used to act on. What is the likely result?

32.Before a eukaryotic cell divides, long DNA molecules are packed into compact structures that can be sorted into the two new cells. What are those structures?

33.A deer eats leaves but cannot capture light the way the plant can. How does the deer obtain energy?

34.Two bird species have nearly the same DNA sequence for a gene that does the same job in their cells. What is a standard interpretation?

35.A hockey puck glides in a straight line at constant speed on ice treated as frictionless. Which statement matches Newton's first law?

36.Which choice is written in scientific notation and equals 30000?

37.A cone and a cylinder have the same radius and the same height. The cylinder's volume is 30 cubic centimeters. What is the cone's volume?

38.An ice cube floats in a glass of liquid water. Why does it stay at the surface?

39.A square patio has a side length of s. A second square patio has a side length of 2s. How does the area of the second patio compare with the area of the first?

40.Inside a chamber where air resistance is ignored, a 1-kilogram rock and an 8-kilogram rock are released from rest at the same height. What happens?

41.A cart has a mass of 2 kilograms. The net force on the cart is 8 newtons forward. What is the cart's acceleration?

42.A swimmer pushes backward on the pool water. Which paired force moves the swimmer forward?

43.A cart starts from rest and rolls down a hill. Friction is ignored. Which description of the energy is correct?

44.A pendulum bob is pulled aside and released from rest. Friction is ignored. Which description fits the lowest point of the swing?

45.A metal block has a mass of 24 grams and a volume of 8 cubic centimeters. What is its density?

46.A sealed tank holds oxygen gas. How do the particles in that gas compare with the particles in solid oxygen?

47.One sheet of paper is torn into bits. A different scrap of the same paper is burned, leaving ash and gases. Which comparison is right?

48.In a sealed flask, 4 grams of substance A react completely with 6 grams of substance B. What is the mass of the products?

49.Every atom in sample A has 11 protons. Every atom in sample B has 11 protons and two more neutrons than a typical atom in A. What is true of the samples?

50.Oxygen-16 has 8 protons and 8 neutrons. Oxygen-18 has 8 protons and 10 neutrons. What are these two atoms?

51.Sodium atoms transfer electrons to chlorine atoms, and the resulting charged particles attract each other. What kind of bond holds sodium chloride together?

52.Solution L has a pH of 2. Solution M has a pH of 8. Which description is correct?

53.A water wave has a frequency of 4 hertz and a wavelength of 2 meters. What is the wave speed?

54.Radio waves, visible light, and X-rays differ in wavelength. What else is true of all three?

55.A bus travels 120 kilometers in 2 hours at a steady speed. What is that speed?

56.A 3-kilogram ball moves in a straight line at 4 meters per second. What is the magnitude of its momentum?

57.An astronaut has a mass of 60 kilograms on Earth. Gravity at the Moon's surface is weaker. How do mass and weight compare there?

58.A metal spoon left in hot soup warms at the handle. Warm soup also rises while cooler soup sinks. Which heat-transfer pairing fits?

59.Ice at 0 degrees Celsius melts into liquid water that is still at 0 degrees Celsius. What does the added energy do while the ice is melting?

60.A person pushes a crate with a force of 50 newtons, and the crate moves 3 meters in the direction of the push. How much work is done on the crate?

61.A car speeds up in a straight line from 10 meters per second to 25 meters per second in 5 seconds. What is the average acceleration?

62.A book rests on a table. Gravity pulls the book down, and the table pushes the book up with a force of equal size. What is the book's acceleration?

63.A box slides across a rough floor and slows down. What is friction doing to the box?

64.A film shows two astronauts colliding outside a ship, with empty space between them, and a loud clang heard through that vacuum. What is wrong with the sound?

65.A light ray hits a flat mirror. The angle between the incoming ray and the normal is 30 degrees. What is the angle between the reflected ray and the normal?

66.A rock sample contains 80 grams of a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 5 years. How much of that isotope is left after 15 years?

67.A rigid sealed tank holds a fixed amount of gas. The gas is heated, and the volume of the tank cannot change. What happens to the pressure?

68.A motor does 600 joules of work in 10 seconds. What is its power output?

69.The same downward force is applied once through a narrow heel and once through a wide board. Where is the pressure on the floor greater?

70.A full shopping cart is harder to start moving than the same cart when it is empty. Which idea explains that difference?

71.The current through a resistor is 2 amperes, and the resistance is 10 ohms. What is the voltage across the resistor?

72.A wave keeps a constant speed while its frequency doubles. What happens to its wavelength?

73.Which statement about Earth's distance from the Sun and northern winter is correct?

74.Over about a month, the Moon looks dark, then like a crescent, then half lit, then full. What are those changing shapes?

75.The Moon is full, then it darkens for a short time and brightens again the same night. What is that event, and what causes the darkening?

76.For a few minutes, the Moon blocks the Sun and the Moon's shadow falls on a town. At which Moon position does a solar eclipse occur?

77.A city has a thunderstorm on Tuesday and a clear sky on Wednesday. Over many years, its summers are usually dry and its winters are usually wet. Which wording fits?

78.Coal formed from ancient plant material. Burning that coal sends carbon dioxide into the air. Where was that carbon stored just before the coal was burned?

79.The coastlines of South America and Africa fit together, and some ancient rock belts match across the ocean. What is the modern explanation?

80.At a mid-ocean ridge, melted rock rises and hardens while two plates move apart. What type of plate boundary is this?

81.Two continental plates collide, and the crust crumples into a high mountain range. What type of boundary is this?

82.Along a coast, two plates grind sideways past each other. Earthquakes are common, and crust is neither created nor destroyed there. What type of boundary is this?

83.Sandstone is buried, squeezed, and heated until the mineral grains recrystallize. The rock does not melt. What change is this?

84.A shell fossil is found in sandstone. Why are fossils like this more common in sandstone than in rock that cooled from magma?

85.Around June 21, the Northern Hemisphere has its longest period of daylight. What causes those long days?

86.A puddle shrinks on a sunny day. Clouds form, and rain falls later. Which order names those three steps?

87.Sunlight warms the ground. Carbon dioxide in the air absorbs some of the infrared energy the ground gives off. What is this warming effect called?

88.Earth has a thin crust, a thick mantle, a liquid outer core, and a solid inner core. Which layer is made of liquid iron and nickel?

89.Most clouds and storms occur in the atmospheric layer closest to the ground. What is that layer called?

90.A warm ocean current flows along a coast. Winters there are milder than winters farther inland at the same latitude. What is the current doing?

91.An undisturbed stack of sedimentary layers has a shell fossil in the bottom layer and a leaf fossil in the top layer. Which fossil is in the older rock?

92.In the Sun's core, hydrogen nuclei combine into helium and energy is released. What stage of a star's life is this?

93.Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars are mostly rock and metal. Jupiter and Saturn are much larger and are mostly hydrogen and helium. Which grouping is right?

94.Water in a harbor rises and falls in a regular daily pattern. What is the main cause of those ocean tides?

95.Ice wedges a rock apart on a cliff. A stream later carries the pieces down the valley. Which sentence uses the two terms correctly?

96.Rain on the west side of a ridge flows to the Cedar River. Rain on the east side flows to a different river. What is the land that drains to the Cedar River called?

97.A town generates electricity with wind turbines. The wind is still available after the turbines have been running. Why is wind called a renewable resource?

98.A free compass needle points roughly north. What is the needle aligning with?

99.An earthquake begins 20 kilometers underground. A map marks the spot on the surface directly above that start. What are the two locations called?

100.A shovel of garden soil holds small rock grains and dark bits of decayed leaves. Which description matches that mixture?

101.A well draws water from a sand layer below the surface. The sand stores water and allows the well to pump it. What is that sand layer called?

102.The solar system sits inside a huge system of stars, gas, and dust. From a dark place, part of that system looks like a pale band across the sky. What is the system?

103.Light from a distant galaxy is shifted toward longer, redder wavelengths. In the expanding-universe explanation, what does that shift indicate?

104.Earth turns once on its axis about every 24 hours. What does that rotation cause?

105.Earth completes one orbit around the Sun in about 365 days. What is that motion, and what does one complete orbit mark?

106.Ozone in the stratosphere absorbs much of the Sun's ultraviolet radiation. Why does that matter for living things at the surface?

107.A snowfield reflects most of the sunlight that hits it. A dark asphalt lot absorbs most of the sunlight that hits it. Which comparison is correct?

108.Mineral A scratches a glass plate. That same glass plate scratches mineral B. What do the tests show about hardness?