Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress Science Grade 11

1.A rail cart in a museum in Lansing rolls on a perfectly smooth, level track. Friction is zero, and the cart already moves at a constant velocity. What forward force is needed to keep that velocity constant?

2.A crate on a level dock in St. Joseph, beside Lake Michigan, has a mass of 3 kilograms. The forces on it do not cancel, and the net force is 12 newtons forward. What is the crate's acceleration?

3.A solid pebble from the shore of Lake Charlevoix has a mass of 36 grams. Fully submerged, it displaces 12 cubic centimeters of water. What is the pebble's density?

4.Counters near Saugatuck record 40,000 monarch butterflies at a stopover. Which form is the correct scientific notation for 40,000?

5.A cylinder-shaped sand mold at a foundry in Muskegon holds 21 cubic units of sand. A cone has the same circular base and the same height. How much sand does the cone hold?

6.A square garden bed in Holland has each side doubled, and the new bed is still a square. How does the area change?

7.Earth is closest to the Sun in January. Why is a January afternoon in Michigan still winter?

8.In a stand of paper birch near Tahquamenon, some trees already have slightly thicker bark than others. Which statement describes natural selection?

9.A ferry leaving the dock at St. Ignace then coasts with the engines off. Ignore friction and any current. What happens to its motion?

10.A curling stone on an ice sheet in Hancock has a mass of 2 kilograms and moves at 3 meters per second. What is its momentum?

11.A 4-kilogram toboggan near Ironwood moves at 3 meters per second on level snow. What is its kinetic energy?

12.A 2-kilogram rock sits on a ledge 5 meters above the Lake Superior shore near Munising. Use 10 meters per second squared for g. What is its gravitational potential energy relative to the shore?

13.A student in Marquette pulls a sled 4 meters with a steady force of 15 newtons in the direction of motion. How much work does that pull do?

14.A motor in a mill in Bay City does 600 joules of work in 20 seconds. What is its power?

15.A cyclist rides 18 kilometers from Ada to Lowell at a steady pace and arrives in 1.5 hours. What is the average speed?

16.A wave on Lake Michigan near South Haven has a wavelength of 4 meters and a frequency of 0.5 hertz. What is the wave speed?

17.A simple circuit in a classroom in Midland has a resistance of 6 ohms and a current of 2 amperes. What is the voltage across the resistor?

18.Two 4-ohm resistors are wired in series in a repair shop in Jackson. What is the total resistance?

19.Two 6-ohm resistors are wired in parallel in a classroom in Kalamazoo. What is the equivalent resistance?

20.A 200-gram sample of water in a pot in Frankenmuth warms by 5 degrees Celsius. Use 4.2 joules per gram per degree Celsius as the specific heat of water. How much thermal energy does the water absorb?

21.A rock sample from the Keweenaw Peninsula contains a radioactive isotope with a half-life of 10 years. A study starts with 80 grams of that isotope. How much of it remains after 30 years?

22.Of 200 white-tailed deer counted near Cadillac, 50 show a particular inherited antler trait. What percent of the counted deer show that trait?

23.Water temperatures in degrees Celsius at four spots on Higgins Lake are 12, 14, 16, and 18. What is the mean temperature?

24.A distance-time graph for a walk along the Huron River in Ann Arbor is a straight line that rises 12 meters for every 3 seconds. What speed does the slope show?

25.A scale model of the Mackinac Bridge uses 1 centimeter to represent 20 meters. One tower on the model is 8 centimeters tall. How tall is the tower that the model represents?

26.A cooler packed for a fishing trip out of Leland is a rectangular box 40 centimeters long, 20 centimeters wide, and 15 centimeters tall. What is its volume?

27.A rope pulls with a force of 200 newtons on a cleat at a dock in Charlevoix. The force is spread over 0.04 square meter of contact. What is the pressure on that contact area?

28.In East Lansing, a student drops a heavy textbook and a light pencil from the same height at the same instant. Ignore air resistance. Which one reaches the ground first?

29.A canoe paddle pushes water backward on Torch Lake near Bellaire. What is the paired force from Newton's third law?

30.A crate on a warehouse floor in Dearborn needs a forward force to keep moving at a constant velocity. Why is that force needed?

31.A seismic station near the Porcupine Mountains records a distant earthquake. S waves are missing after a path that crossed part of Earth's deep interior. Why can that path block S waves?

32.Which layer of Earth is liquid metal and therefore cannot carry S waves across it?

33.A class in Petoskey watches the Moon pass into Earth's shadow. At which Moon phase can a lunar eclipse occur?

34.Observers in Alpena see the Moon pass in front of the Sun. At which Moon phase can a solar eclipse occur?

35.Over one month, the Moon looks different from a beach in Tawas City. What causes that regular change in apparent shape?

36.What causes the cycle of day and night in Michigan?

37.A class in Houghton lists electromagnetic waves from longest wavelength to shortest wavelength. Which order is correct?

38.Earth's axis is tilted about 23.5 degrees. What would Michigan's seasons be like if the axis had no tilt?

39.On an equinox, a student in Mount Pleasant notes that day and night are about equal. Why does that happen?

40.Around June 21, daylight in Marquette lasts much longer than it does in December. Why?

41.Students in Grand Haven study ocean tide charts. Spring tides have an especially large range between high and low water. When do spring tides occur?

42.A strong wind piles water toward one end of Saginaw Bay. After the wind eases, the water rocks back and forth across the bay. What is that rocking motion called?

43.Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere lets sunlight in and slows the escape of heat to space. What is that process called, and what does added carbon dioxide tend to do?

44.High in the atmosphere, ozone absorbs much of the ultraviolet radiation before it reaches Sleeping Bear Dunes. What does that absorption do for living things at the surface?

45.A cold front crosses Grand Rapids, thunderstorms form, and the air behind the front is cooler the next day. Which statement separates weather from climate?

46.Lake-effect snow often falls near Muskegon, on the shore downwind of Lake Michigan. What makes that snow likely in late fall and winter?

47.Across much of Michigan, weather systems often arrive from the west. Which large-scale pattern helps explain that?

48.Water evaporates from Lake Michigan near Ludington, forms a cloud, and later falls as rain near Cadillac. Which processes does that path include?

49.After a heavy rain in Flint, water runs off concrete pavement into the Flint River faster than it soaks into a nearby wooded lot. Why?

50.Rain that falls on the land around Dexter can drain toward the Huron River. What is that kind of land area called?

51.Wells near Kalamazoo draw water from sand and gravel underground. What is a layer that holds and yields that water called?

52.Rounded ridges of unsorted sediment, called moraines, cross southern Michigan. What mostly built them?

53.Sleeping Bear Dunes are hills of sand along Lake Michigan. Which process stacks much of that loose sand into dunes?

54.During high flow, a streambank on the Au Sable River near Grayling loses soil. What is that loss of soil called?

55.Where the Au Sable River slows on the inside of a wide bend, sand settles out of the water. What is that settling called?

56.Limestone under parts of Alpena formed from shells and other remains in an ancient sea. Which rock type is limestone?

57.Basalt has small crystals and formed from lava at Earth's surface. Which statement describes extrusive igneous rock?

58.Near Iron Mountain, a banded rock formed when an older rock was squeezed and heated but did not melt. Which rock type is it?

59.Sandstone is buried, heated, and pressed into quartzite, then later uplifted and weathered back into sand. What does that path illustrate?

60.The ancient Midcontinent Rift left volcanic rocks in the Keweenaw Peninsula. At a divergent plate boundary, what generally happens?

61.Two continental plates collide at a convergent boundary. What often builds there?

62.At a transform boundary, plates slide past each other. What is a common result along that fault?

63.Matching fossils appear in rock layers now far apart on different continents. Which idea uses that match as evidence?

64.In a road cut near Grand Ledge, a shale layer lies above a sandstone layer, and the layers have not been overturned. Which layer is older?

65.A fossil of an organism that lived for a geologically short time and spread widely is found in a rock layer near Alpena. How can that fossil help?

66.Geologists estimate the age of an igneous rock from radioactive isotopes inside it. What must be known to use that method?

67.A coarse-grained rock cooled slowly from magma deep underground, so its crystals grew large. Which rock fits that history?

68.A student in Houghton tests a mineral sample. It scratches glass, looks metallic, and leaves a dark streak. Which statement reports properties of the mineral?

69.Forest soil near Tahquamenon has a dark top layer rich in decayed leaves. What mostly produces that dark material?

70.A soil sample from a cedar swamp in the eastern Upper Peninsula has a pH of 4. What does that pH mean?

71.Pure water has a pH near 7. A stream sample near Iron River has a pH of 4. How does the stream's hydrogen ion concentration compare with that of pure water?

72.A neutral sodium atom has atomic number 11 and mass number 23. How many electrons does that atom have?

73.Two atoms each have 6 protons. One has 6 neutrons, and the other has 8 neutrons. What are the two atoms?

74.A chlorine atom gains one electron. What does that atom become?

75.Sodium atoms transfer electrons to chlorine atoms, and the resulting ions form sodium chloride crystals. What kind of bond holds that compound together?

76.Two oxygen atoms share electrons to form an oxygen molecule, O2. What kind of bond is that share?

77.Elements in the same column of the periodic table, such as the alkali metals, tend to react in similar ways. Why?

78.In a closed container in a classroom in Midland, 12 grams of reactants form products. No gas enters or leaves. What is the mass of the products?

79.Hydrogen gas reacts with oxygen gas to form water. Which equation is balanced?

80.An instant cold pack used by a trainer in Battle Creek feels colder as the substances inside mix and take in energy. What kind of process absorbs energy from the surroundings?

81.Burning propane in a camp stove near Interlochen releases heat to the surroundings. What kind of reaction is that combustion?

82.Vinegar in a kitchen in Holland turns blue litmus red. Which description fits an acid such as the acetic acid in vinegar?

83.A baking-soda solution mixed in a kitchen in Holland has a pH of 9. Which description fits that solution?

84.An enzyme in a cell speeds a reaction and is still present after the reaction. Which role matches that enzyme?

85.Maple leaves in a woods near Chelsea make sugar while they stand in sunlight. What does the light energy do in photosynthesis?

86.Muscle cells in a runner in Okemos release usable energy from sugar. What does cellular respiration do?

87.Cells use a small molecule to carry usable energy for many jobs, such as moving muscles and building large molecules. Which molecule is that carrier?

88.The inherited instructions for building a maple tree's proteins are stored in a molecule in the cell nucleus. Which molecule stores that information?

89.A sequence of bases in DNA corresponds to a sequence of amino acids. What molecule is built from those amino acids?

90.A root cell in a white pine near Grayling divides to add cells for growth. What does mitosis produce in that kind of division?

91.Lake trout form gametes before spawning in a stream near Honor. What does meiosis do in making those gametes?

92.In a classroom cross in Ypsilanti, both parent plants have genotype Tt. Tall T is dominant to short t. What fraction of the offspring is expected to be short?

93.A person has genotype Aa for a gene, with one dominant allele and one recessive allele. What does heterozygous mean here?

94.Tall is completely dominant to short. A plant has genotype Tt. What is its phenotype?

95.A change in one DNA base occurs in a gamete and can be passed to offspring. What is a mutation?

96.Meiosis and fertilization in a population of lake trout in Burt Lake produce offspring that are not genetically identical. Why does that variation matter for evolution?

97.On a rocky Lake Superior shore near Marquette, snails that already have thicker shells are crushed less often than snails with thinner shells. What does the better survival of the thick-shelled snails illustrate?

98.Two groups of one fish population are separated by a lasting land barrier and stop interbreeding. Over a very long time, what can happen?

99.Students in Kalamazoo compare diagrams of forelimb bones from a human, a bat, and a whale. The bones share a similar layout. What does that similarity suggest?

100.Students in Big Rapids study a diagram of a snake skeleton that includes tiny limb bones not used for walking. How can those bones be interpreted?

101.In a marsh near Pointe Mouillee, cattails capture sunlight, muskrats eat cattails, and mink eat muskrats. Which organism is a producer?

102.About 1,000 energy units are stored in the producers of a field near Mason. About 10 percent of the energy at one level is stored in the next level. About how much is stored in the primary consumers?

103.A deer near the Pigeon River exhales carbon dioxide, and a nearby tree takes carbon dioxide in. Which cycle includes both events?

104.Bacteria in the soil of a soybean field in Michigan's Thumb change nitrogen gas into forms that plants can take up. What is that change called?

105.A deer population in a fenced preserve near Rose Lake grows quickly and then levels off near 400 animals as food and space run short. What is that leveling off called?

106.Ice on Houghton Lake melts into liquid water, and the water is still H2O. Which statement describes that change?

107.A non-native mussel spreads in Lake St. Clair and filters so much plankton that some native animals have less food. What does this illustrate?

108.The Upper Peninsula has cold winters, mixed forests, and many lakes. Which factors most shape which plants can live there?