Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System Biology and Introductory Physics

1.A curling stone on a perfectly smooth rink has no friction on it, and it already moves at a constant velocity. What forward force is needed to keep that velocity constant?

2.A cart on a level track in Worcester has a mass of 3 kilograms. The forward and backward forces on it do not cancel, and the net force is 12 newtons forward. What is the cart's acceleration?

3.A cobble picked from the Merrimack riverbed has a mass of 36 grams. Lowered into a full cup, it pushes aside 12 cubic centimeters of water. What is the cobble's density?

4.A biologist counts birds in randomly selected equal-area plots rather than only beside a feeding station. What problem does this address?

5.In a food-web model, producers store 12,000 energy units and primary consumers store 1,200. What fraction transfers to that consumer level in the model?

6.A quadrat study finds 24 plants in 4 square meters. At the same estimated density, about how many plants would an 8-square-meter plot contain?

7.A lamp is brought closer to aquatic plants while temperature and dissolved carbon dioxide are held steady. Oxygen production rises. What does this support?

8.Along Cape Ann, some herring gulls already have slightly longer wings than others. Which statement describes natural selection?

9.Cranberry vines on a Cape Cod bog make sugar while they stand in sunlight. What does photosynthesis do with that light?

10.A rower on the Charles River builds stronger arm muscles over a season. A child of that rower is born the next year. Which claim is accurate?

11.Walden Pond freezes across the top, and liquid water where fish can survive stays underneath. A steel bolt dropped through a hole in that ice sinks. Which comparison is correct?

12.A sled in the Berkshires moves in a straight line at constant velocity while friction pulls backward. What must the forward pull do?

13.A bus in Springfield stops suddenly. A standing rider who is not holding a rail keeps moving forward. Why?

14.A squid near Stellwagen Bank forces a jet of water backward, and the squid moves forward. The squid pushes on the water, and the water pushes on the squid. Which statement about that pair is correct?

15.In Lowell, a balance matches a student with pieces labeled 50 kilograms, and a spring scale shows the student's weight. The same balance, pieces, and scale are used on the Moon, where gravity is weaker. Which result is right?

16.In a recording made on the airless Moon, a hammer and a feather dropped together from the same height land together. In a Springfield classroom the feather lags behind the hammer. Why can they land together on the Moon?

17.At the Blue Hills, a student tosses an apple straight upward. It slows, stops for an instant, and falls back down. Air resistance is small. Which description fits the top of the path?

18.A lobster trap is at rest on a dock in New Bedford, with the forces on it balanced. A deckhand then pushes it harder than the friction that had been holding it still. What happens?

19.A wagon rolls from pavement onto a gravel path in Franklin County and slows down. What is friction doing?

20.A movie shows a hammer striking a satellite and a loud clang crossing the empty space from the satellite to the Moon, where there is no air. What is wrong with that sound?

21.Looking into a calm tide pool on the North Shore, a person sees the rocky bottom and also a reflection of the sky. What is the water surface doing to the light?

22.A navigation buoy in Boston Harbor rises and falls 10 times in 20 seconds as a set of waves passes. What is the frequency of that motion?

23.Weather radar on Cape Cod sends out radio waves. A dental office uses X-rays. What is true of both?

24.A practice chart shows a 6-kilometer ferry leg near Martha's Vineyard that takes 0.5 hour at a steady speed. What is that speed?

25.On a track in Cambridge, a 4-kilogram cart rolls right at 3 meters per second and meets a 2-kilogram cart at rest. The carts then lock together. Friction is ignored. What is their total momentum before they meet?

26.A steel toasting fork is held in a campfire on Cape Cod. The handle warms even though the hand is not in the flame. What carries heat along the metal?

27.In a house in Amherst, air warmed by a heater rises and cooler air sinks. What is that heat transfer called?

28.Energy leaves the Sun, crosses space, and warms the sand at Crane Beach in Ipswich. Which process carries that energy across space?

29.Pasta water in a Salem kitchen keeps forming bubbles, but a thermometer in the liquid stays at 100 degrees Celsius. The bubbles are water vapor. Where is the heat going?

30.A librarian carries a 30-newton stack of books 4 meters across a room at constant height, then lifts that same stack 1 meter onto a shelf. Which part does work against gravity?

31.Leaving South Station, a train covers 200 meters in 20 seconds and the next 200 meters in 10 seconds, still going the same way. What does that pattern show?

32.Two winches at a Gloucester dock lift the same crate through the same height. Winch A finishes in 10 seconds. Winch B finishes in 40 seconds. Which comparison is correct?

33.Two equal-weight blocks rest on soft foam. One touches 10 square centimeters; the other touches 20. Which applies the greater average pressure?

34.A circuit in a Framingham classroom uses a 12-volt battery and a resistor of 6 ohms. What is the current?

35.Three porch bulbs in Provincetown are wired in one single path. One bulb burns out and opens that path. What happens to the other two bulbs?

36.Three lamps in a barn sit on separate branches of a parallel circuit. One lamp is removed from its branch. What happens to the other two?

37.Two balloons are rubbed with wool, gain electrons from the wool, and then push away from each other. Which statement fits?

38.The north end of a bar magnet is brought near the north end of a second bar magnet. What do the two ends do?

39.Near Earth, use 10 newtons for each kilogram. What is the weight of a 4-kilogram bag of apples?

40.A 3-kilogram textbook rests on a shelf 2 meters above the floor. Using 10 newtons per kilogram, what is its gravitational potential energy relative to the floor?

41.Two samples of the same gas have equal numbers of particles and equal volumes. The warmer sample has greater pressure. Which particle model explains this?

42.An enzyme catalyzes a cell reaction. The enzyme is unchanged after one cycle and can act again. What does this show?

43.A log burns in an open fireplace in Lenox. A small pile of ash remains, and a student says most of the log's mass was destroyed. What is wrong with that claim?

44.DNA from two related species has many matching sequences. What inference is supported by extensive sequence similarities?

45.A cell copies its DNA before mitosis. Why is this copying important?

46.A mutation changes one DNA base in a protein-coding region. Why might protein function remain unchanged?

47.A cell makes RNA from a DNA template, then uses the RNA to build a protein. Which sequence names these processes?

48.A student claims that an organism’s cells use completely different DNA because their jobs differ. Which explanation is better for typical body cells?

49.A sample from Cape Ann contains a radioactive isotope whose half-life is 10 years. Which statement matches that half-life?

50.A cell in a concentrated salt solution loses water and shrinks. Which explanation fits?

51.A cell-reaction diagram shows an energy input larger than the useful energy stored in products. Where can the remainder go?

52.An enzyme reaction is tested at 20, 30, and 60 degrees Celsius. Rates are 4, 8, and 1 units per minute. Which conclusion is supported?

53.A solution containing iodine is placed outside a membrane bag containing starch. Iodine enters, but starch stays inside. What does this support?

54.A plant is sealed in a transparent chamber in light. Carbon dioxide decreases while oxygen increases. Which process best explains these changes?

55.In a closed dark chamber, a plant uses oxygen and releases carbon dioxide. Which conclusion is supported?

56.A maple tree in the Pioneer Valley makes sugar in its leaves. Which pairing matches photosynthesis?

57.A runner on the Boston Marathon course uses sugar in muscle cells. What is the energy outcome of cellular respiration?

58.A cranberry vine is kept in a dark room. Its leaf cells still contain mitochondria, but no light reaches the leaves. What is the energy outcome while the room stays dark?

59.Algae in the Merrimack River capture light. Small animals eat the algae, alewives eat those animals, and a heron eats an alewife. Why does the heron receive only a small share of the energy the algae captured?

60.Carbon from carbon dioxide became part of an oak near the Quabbin Reservoir. A fire later burns the fallen wood. What is the outcome for that carbon?

61.Harbor seals resting near Gloucester keep a warm internal temperature even while their skin and the winter seawater are cold. What is that steady internal condition an example of?

62.Sugar sprinkled on a cut strawberry draws liquid out of the fruit. The inside of the fruit has a lower sugar concentration than the sugary surface. Why does the water leave the cells?

63.Purple flower color is completely dominant to white. A gardener crosses a purple-flowered plant with a white-flowered plant. About half the offspring are purple and half are white. Which alleles does the purple parent have?

64.A rabbit's fur-color alleles are Bb. Brown (B) is completely dominant to the other allele. The rabbit's fur is brown. Which statement is correct?

65.A gamete carries a DNA sequence that was not in either parent's body cells. A child who develops from that gamete has the new sequence. What entered the family line?

66.Suppose gulls from Nantucket and gulls from the mainland stay apart for a very long time. When they meet again, they do not interbreed to produce fertile offspring. What is the best description?

67.A horse's front leg, a seal's flipper, and a person's arm contain a similar set of bones in the same order, even though the limbs do different jobs. What are these structures called?

68.A Berkshire woodland can support about 80 deer through a normal winter. After a mild year the herd climbs above 80, and the next winter many deer go hungry as the number falls back. What does that limit illustrate?

69.After a whale dies offshore, organisms break its tissues into materials that other living things can use. What role do those organisms play?

70.Oxygen that a cell needs crosses the cell membrane readily. A large starch molecule already inside the cell does not. What is that difference called?

71.A human skin cell keeps most of its genetic information in one compartment. Its mitochondria hold only a little DNA. Where is most of that genetic information?

72.Growers replant only the cranberry vines that survive an unusually cold spring. After many generations, cold-tolerant vines are more common. The growers chose which vines reproduced. What is this process?

73.Fungi on the roots of a white pine receive sugars from the tree, and the tree takes in more water and minerals with the fungi's help. How is this relationship classified?

74.Ospreys around a reservoir increase until every safe nesting platform is in use. After that, the number of new nests stops rising. What are the platforms in this case?

75.The waters over Stellwagen Bank are home to many kinds of whales, fish, birds, and plankton. Which term names that variety of living things?

76.One bacterium divides into two cells. What kind of reproduction is that?

77.A human body cell has 46 chromosomes. A sperm cell is a gamete produced by meiosis. How many chromosomes should the sperm cell have?

78.A harbor seal near Gloucester eats fish. It has no chloroplasts and does not make food from light. How does it obtain energy?

79.In chickens, one allele for a trait is completely dominant to a second allele. A chick inherits one of each. What is the outcome?

80.A skin cell divides by mitosis while a cut heals. What is the outcome?

81.A brook trout in a Berkshire stream forms egg cells by meiosis. How does an egg cell's chromosome number compare with a body cell's chromosome number?

82.During a swim at Walden Pond, muscle cells spend ATP and later rebuild it using energy that was stored in food. What is ATP's role?

83.A child has a combination of genetic information from two parents and is not a copy of either parent. Which description matches that outcome?

84.A bacterial population includes a few antibiotic-resistant cells before treatment. After treatment, resistant cells become common. What best explains the shift?

85.Two populations have the same initial allele frequencies. A storm randomly kills most members of one small population. What can change its allele frequencies without favoring a trait?

86.A meiosis diagram shows homologous chromosomes separating into different cells. What consequence is expected?

87.In a model, A is completely dominant to a. Two Aa parents are crossed. What is the probability an offspring is aa?

88.A recessive trait appears in a child whose two parents do not show it. In a simple complete-dominance model, what must be true of both parents?

89.A DNA substitution changes a protein’s shape and reduces its activity. Which link best connects the observations?

90.A membrane bag gains mass in water, but its dissolved sugar remains inside. What movement best explains the mass gain?

91.An ecosystem study removes a predator from some matched enclosures but leaves it in others. Why include the unchanged enclosures?

92.A food-web model shows less energy stored at each successive feeding level. Why?

93.A fish population declines after dissolved oxygen falls. Which evidence most directly tests oxygen as a limiting factor?

94.A plant’s stomata close during dry conditions. What tradeoff can follow?

95.Two carts have the same mass. One moves twice as fast. How does its kinetic energy compare?

96.A cart’s velocity changes from 2 to 10 meters per second in 4 seconds in one direction. What is its average acceleration?

97.A 2-kilogram cart at 6 meters per second joins a stationary 4-kilogram cart. External horizontal forces are negligible. What is their shared speed?

98.A resistor carries 0.5 ampere when the voltage across it is 6 volts. What is its resistance?

99.A device operates at 12 volts and 2 amperes. What electrical power does it use?

100.A spring stretches 0.02 meter under 4 newtons and obeys F = kx. What is k?

101.Two equal upward wave pulses meet on a rope. During their overlap, the displacement is larger. Which principle explains this?

102.Light strikes a flat mirror at 35 degrees to the normal. At what angle to the normal does it reflect?

103.Two electromagnetic waves travel in a vacuum. One has twice the frequency of the other. How do their wavelengths compare?

104.A car’s speed doubles while its mass stays fixed. Brakes provide the same average opposing force. Ignoring other changes, how does stopping distance compare?

105.A ball moves horizontally after leaving a table. Air resistance is neglected. Which force acts on it after release?

106.A sound wave travels at 340 meters per second with frequency 170 hertz. What is its wavelength?

107.A motor receives 500 joules of electrical energy and produces 350 joules of useful lifting work. What is its efficiency?

108.A winch lifts a 200-newton load 3 meters in 6 seconds at steady speed. What average useful power does it deliver?