Choose the answer that best completes the sentence below.
At first the main character gets in trouble for breaking something; , breaking stuff becomes the main character’s job.
Choose the answer that best completes the sentence.
The Avenger is bigger than Athena; , he is not as fast.
Choose the answer that best completes the sentence below.
People do not always agree on the same criteria. , one person may want to build a mousetrap that can kill mice while another person may want to build a mousetrap that only catches mice but does not kill them.
The hit movie Finding Nemo follows a clownfish that is scooped up from the Great Barrier Reef.
In real life, clownfish are among the thousands of colorful sea creatures that call the Great Barrier Reef home.
Stretching 1,250 miles along Australia's northeastern coast, the Great Barrier Reef is the longest coral reef in the world. A coral reef is a living underwater structure.
But these days, the Great Barrier Reef has found itself in trouble. Overfishing, pollution, and high temperatures are harming its health. That's why the government in Australia is trying to help rescue the reef.
While coral may look like a plant, it is actually made up of tiny sea animals. Those sea animals are called coral polyps.
As polyps die, they leave hard shells behind. Other polyps grow on top of the shells. Over thousands of years, they form a coral reef in warm water that is not very deep.
In many ways, the Great Barrier Reef resembles an underwater garden. Coral can be hard or soft. It forms in different colors and in strange shapes. Some coral looks like hardened brains. Other coral looks like fans and lettuces. The reef bursts with schools of tropical fish, darting among gaps in the coral.
The reef supplies food and shelter to creatures living in and around the coral. Turtles, sharks, sea horses, and crabs are among its many inhabitants.
While the reef is important to ocean life, it helps humans, too. People rely on the reef for both food and jobs. It also provides medicine used to treat disease. Each year, the Great Barrier Reef contributes about $975 million to the economy through tourism and fishing.
Is it surprising, then, that the Great Barrier Reef is under too much stress? Fishing nets and ships break off sections and damage the reef. Air and water pollution are also doing harm. At the same time, warmer sea temperatures have caused coral bleaching on half of the reef. The high temperatures cause the coral to turn white, often killing it.
In an effort to help save the reef, the government has limited fishing to two-thirds of it. That plan increases the number of "green zones." Those are areas that are off-limits to fishermen and boats. However, tourists and researchers can still visit them. Many fishermen are upset about the plan because they rely on the reef for jobs.
The Australian government says that its plan will help keep the reef safe from some threats. "It is very important that we give the reef proper protection for the future," said one government official. "The reef is Australia's greatest natural [treasure]."
Choose the answer that best completes the sentence.
The warmer temperatures cause the coral to turn white, the process is called coral bleaching.
Summer vacation had just begun, and Alex and Maria were ready to spend all day outside. They decided to walk to the neighborhood park, where there was a river that they liked to swim in when it was particularly hot. Alex and Maria began to sweat as they walked, even though their house was only ten minutes away from the park’s entrance.
When they got to the river, they saw that it was too shallow to swim in. The rocks that made up the bed of the river were even poking out of the water in some places, glistening in the sun. Alex and Maria were frustrated. On the other side of the river, about fifty yards away, and in a welcoming courtyard, there was a fountain spewing water in beautiful arcs.
“We should go play in the fountain,” Maria said.
“How will we get there?” asked Alex.
They thought for a moment. They knew if they walked upriver, they would eventually come to a walkway that crossed the river, but it was so hot, and they were eager to get to the fountain.
Maria looked around the grassy riverbank and noticed a few logs and branches lying close to the water. “We could build a bridge!” she said. She ran over to a thick tree branch that looked long enough to be placed across the river. Together, she and Alex hefted the branch onto their shoulders and walked it to the water. Here, they stopped. How would they get the branch across?
Maria suggested throwing it down into the water and seeing if it reached the other side. That seemed imprecise to Alex – what if the branch did not reach the other side of the river, and got stuck or swept away by the water? Then they would be unable to walk all the way across the river.
Maria wondered if they could measure the distance from the riverbank they stood on to the other shore. They put the log carefully down and decided to test the distance with lighter, thinner branches. They found a few wispy branches by the spot where they had first found the log, and they tied the branches together using their hair bands.
On their first attempt, they tied two branches together and went back to the river to test the length. The branches barely reached the center of the swirling water. After tying two more branches together to the initial branches, Alex and Maria were able to get the thin makeshift model bridge to touch the far bank.
“Hooray!” Maria said. “Now we know how long the log needs to be.”
They set the tied branches on the ground next to the log. The log was luckily the exact length of the tied branches. Now Alex and Maria had to figure out how to make sure the log was secure on both sides of the bank before they walked across it to reach the other side of the river.
“I know!” Alex said. She began to gather thinner branches, like the ones they had tied together, which were pliable and easy to bend. She twisted them together into a tight bundle, then laid them horizontally across the edges of the log. Then she and Maria hauled some of the stones out of the river and placed them on the branches on either side of the log. In this way, they were able to stabilize the log—at least on one side—in order to run across.
When Alex and Maria got to the other side of the river, they secured the other side of the log with more branches and rocks, and looked back at their handiwork. It had been a good day’s work, but now they were free to enjoy the cool water in the fountain.
The question below is an incomplete sentence. Choose the answer that best completes the sentence.
The friends placed rocks on either side of the log to hold down the lighter branches; , the log was stable enough to walk on.
You know the best part about building a bridge? Finding out what makes it collapse.
This is the kind of thing I used to think about all the time when I was 10. At the end of every school day, the bus would drop me off about half a mile from my dad’s house. To get to our neighborhood, I would walk across a wooden footbridge that was built over a dried-up riverbed.
That rickety thing must have been older than anyone on my street. It was so old, in fact, that water hadn’t run under it for years. Kids would play in the riverbed, kicking soccer balls and chasing dogs into the brush. I’d sit on a rock and wonder what it would take to make the bridge fall down.
Eventually, curiosity and a hot summer day got the best of me. I won’t go into too much detail. Let’s just say it involved a few bicycles, some rope, and a lot of buckets. The affair ended with my dad telling me to go to my room. I was grounded for three weeks.
As soon as I was allowed to leave the house, he walked me down the street with a bundle of lumber. My dad was an architect, and that day he helped me figure out what made the bridge finally crack. Then, we fixed it.
In middle school, I kept looking for other bridges to break. Every time a math teacher began reading from the textbook and drawing diagrams on the board, I’d slip into a daydream. It was impossible to focus in the classroom. But during lunch hour, I’d read about airplanes and space shuttles, flying hundreds of miles an hour through sky and space. How did anyone come up with this stuff? How could anyone be sure that they were safe?
I imagined suiting up crash test dummies for a supersonic test flight. I wondered: could NASA scientists be grounded, too?
One day in high school, I noticed my trigonometry teacher working on a notebook computer. His screen had two windows open. Both had black backgrounds and were filled with line after line of intense-looking words.
“It’s a computer program,” he explained. “I just figured out why it’s broken.”
“Who broke it?” I asked, without thinking.
“Well, I broke it,” he responded. Looking at my perplexed expression, he added, “I mean, if you think about it, anything you’re building from scratch is broken until it works, right?”
After that conversation, I started staying after school to help my teacher break his program. It was supposed to read 300 homework assignments that our class had completed on the computer, grade them, and then show him the lowest grades. If he could get this thing to work, he could spend less time filling out grades and more time helping the students who weren’t doing as well.
The problem was that his program couldn’t understand a lot of the answers it was reading. It had to do with the way some students chose to type out fractions and math symbols. Different students typed out their answers in different ways, but the program only spoke one kind of math, I suppose.
My teacher had made a bunch of fixes to the program, and now he was thinking of other ways that students could surprise the computer. Every time he broke the program, he could figure out a way to teach it a new trick.
I learned that breaking computer programs was the only way to figure out whether or not they would work for every possible condition. Testing my teacher’s program was a lot like dragging buckets filled with sand onto an old, worn-out bridge.
The question, though, was who would be weird enough to act like my 10-year-old self when doing a high school math homework assignment. After a couple of weeks, we realized we were testing for things that would never happen, and stopped finding ways to break the program.
I started learning to code, taking classes online to become a software engineer. The next year, I found the perfect job, doing “Quality Assurance” work for a tech company downtown. I’ve been doing the same job, in different ways, ever since.
Working on the Q.A. team is kind of like waking up every day and finding new ways to break stuff. I talk to the engineers to see what they’re trying to build. This week, it’s an interactive web page that lets students see different pieces of a movie by jumping to different parts of the world on a map online.
Once they’ve got a prototype up and running, I create a fake person—a “test user”—on the computer. Instead of trying to break the map a hundred different ways myself, I turn my test user into its own program. The test user can try those hundred different things in just a few seconds, showing us what’s broken, and helping the team decide what to fix. Whenever we update the program, everything must be tested by Q.A. to be sure the new version won’t break.
Every once in a while, I write a test and find a bug that would be really difficult to fix. Sometimes, I break the system in a way that’s so clever there’s no point in making a fix. The team will tell me that no sane person would go to that much effort to break the system, so the bug will probably never cause us trouble.
I keep waiting for them to tell me to go to my room.
What is the first thing that the person telling this story tries to break?
When does the main character in this story break stuff?
Breaking something can make it better.
What evidence from the story supports this statement?
Why is doing “Quality Assurance” the perfect job for the main character of this story?
What is a theme of this story?
Read the following sentences:
“I learned that breaking computer programs was the only way to figure out whether or not they would work for every possible condition. Testing my teacher’s program was a lot like dragging buckets filled with sand onto an old, worn-out bridge.”
Why does the author compare testing a computer program and dragging buckets of sand onto an old bridge?
Jeffrey and Jeremy were identical twins: they had always been very tall for their age, and had curly blonde hair that their mother used to call “the hair of angels.” Their mother, an ardent church-goer, always told them that they were her gift from God; she knew this, she explained, because they looked exactly like the little images of Baby Jesus that were printed in the illustrated Bibles that were available at her church.
But the twins’ cherubic faces were not the most interesting thing about Jeffrey and Jeremy: the most amazing thing about the twins was a secret that they had never told anyone. Jeremy and Jeffrey had their own mysterious ways of communicating.
When the twins were five years old, they realized that they did not need to speak English in order to understand each other. One day, as they were playing with plastic building blocks, Jeremy started speaking a strange language. Some of the words were English, but many of them seemed to be entirely made up. Luckily, their parents were watching TV in the living room; otherwise, they would probably have been very concerned. The most amazing thing about this was that Jeffrey completely understood his brother, and even started speaking in the exact same language, almost immediately, in response.
As they grew up, they spoke in their secret language only when they were by themselves. They went to the library and did research on twins, to see if maybe other people had experienced a similar thing: apparently, throughout history, twins were seen as kind of magical, inhabited by otherworldly powers and able to communicate in mysterious ways, distinct from other people. Something told Jeffrey and Jeremy that they were special.
When the twins were around twelve years old, they began the difficult task of translating their secret language into English. They closed and locked their bedroom door so their little sister Carrie wouldn’t come in while they were working, and then sat on the lower bunk bed with a notebook between them. They had spent weeks and weeks writing down all of their secret words in the notebook, spelling them out phonetically.
“Okay,” Jeremy said, pulling the notebook over to look at it and pointing to the first word. “How would you describe this word?”
Jeffrey narrowed his eyes in concentration. “Probably something like: “I don’t get it” or “why is this specific person doing that—it’s out of character.”
Jeremy nodded his head and wrote the two meanings down in erasable pen on the line next to the word. “Yeah, totally. When did we last use this word?”
“I think to talk about that time Carrie brought us each a glass of water before bed,” Jeffrey said, laughing. “That was, like, too nice of her.”
Jeremy chuckled. “You’re right,” he said. “Okay, I feel like the second word on our list actually does have a direct translation to English. Wouldn’t you say it means something like ‘gorgeous’?”
Jeffrey thought for a second. “Yeah. It’s definitely in the ‘pretty’ category and means more than just ‘beautiful.’” He nodded as Jeremy wrote that down.
The twins worked on their translation dictionary for weeks, and tried to keep it hidden from their family. They didn’t know what their sister and parents would think about the job they had given themselves, much less about the new language they had basically founded. When they were finished, they typed it up and printed it: in total, it came out to over sixty pages long.
“Do you think we should show this to Mom and Dad?” Jeffrey said, holding the huge stack of paper in both hands and looking down at it doubtfully. “Or do you think it would freak them out?”
Jeremy swung around in the wheeled office chair in their dad’s study. “They know we’ve been working on something,” he said. “Maybe they would think it’s cool? It’s a totally new way to communicate. It’s also way more efficient than English.”
They ultimately decided to keep their language to themselves, at least for the time being. Maybe in the future they would share it, but for now, it was their own special secret.
What prompted the twins to create their secret language?
How old were the twins when they started translating their secret language?
What did the twins use to document their secret language?
How long did the twins work on their translation dictionary?
What was Jeffrey's concern about showing their language to parents?
Why did the twins start translating their language?
How did they feel about their secret language initially?
What did their research at the library reveal?
Alex set down the screwdriver with a slam. “There! We’ve finished it!” he said. Alex looked around at his three teammates. The four of them had been working together to build a robot for the last three months. Now the robot was complete, and they had given it a name: Athena. Battle of the Bots was the state’s biggest robot competition, and it was starting in two days. The team had finished just in time.
“Are you sure?” Alyssa asked. “Don’t you think we could still improve some things?”
“No!” cried everyone else in unison. Alyssa always wanted to keep adding things to the robot. She had come up with some great ideas; the razor defense mechanism had been her suggestion. She had also figured out a way to attach the robot’s wheels so that it could roll over its opponent. But now there was no time left. They needed to stop building and prepare their strategy.
Each year the state put on Battle of the Bots. It was a showdown to see which school could build the competition’s winning robot. For a full day, the robots faced off in an arena. By the end of the day, the arena would be filled with mechanical arms and levers from the defeated robots. The team that built the winning robot would receive $5,000.
Alex looked at his group. If they split the prize evenly, that would be $1,250 each. What would everyone else do with $1,250? He knew that he would save his for camp that summer. Alyssa would probably use hers to buy more tools—she was always building something. Alex shook himself. This was not the time to be daydreaming about the prize. They still needed to design a strategy so that they could win the competition.
“Alright, guys,” said Alex. “How are we going to beat the Cougars?” The Cougars had won the competition for the last two years. Last year their robot, “The Destroyer,” had won Battle of the Bots in record time. Large, scissor-like jaws had chomped down the competition.
“I have an idea,” said Kumar. “I’ve been watching videos from last year’s competition. I noticed something. The Cougars use the same strategy every year.”
Kumar’s brother Arif nodded and chimed in. “The Cougars always build a robot that is big and strong. It wins through force. But usually their robot isn’t very fast,” Arif explained.
“Our robot is fast,” Alyssa said, thoughtfully.
“Exactly!” Kumar said. “We need to use our speed to beat them. And I have a plan for how to do it.” Kumar explained his plan to the group and they began to prepare.
Two days later, the team gathered at Battle of the Bots. Alyssa was chewing on her nails. Alex was so nervous he felt sick. Arif was pacing back and forth. Only Kumar looked calm. “Don’t worry guys,” he said. “The plan will work. Athena will win.”
The competition began, and Athena was winning all of her battles. The team had designed her for speed, and she was able to outpace her opponents. Several of Alyssa’s secret weapon designs proved deadly for the competition. The bad news was that the Cougars’ robot was doing equally well. Once again the Cougars had built an enormous, powerful robot. This year they called the robot “The Avenger.” By the end of the day, The Avenger and Athena were the only two robots remaining.
“Finalists, could you please come to the main arena and prepare your robots?” said the announcer. “We will begin the Final Death Match in five minutes.” Alex and the team walked down to the main arena. Alex could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Athena was half the size of The Avenger—could their robot really win?
The match began, and the two robots moved towards each other. The Avenger lunged for Athena, but the small robot was too quick for him. Athena circled behind The Avenger and, before the larger robot had time to turn, Athena hit The Avenger from behind. There was the harsh sound of metal cutting metal and then silence. The Avenger lay on the ground. Athena had cut the wires connecting the body of the robot to its wheels. Not only had they won, but they had won in record time.
Alex, Alyssa, Kumar and Arif all hugged. “Now it’s time for the real question,” said Alex. “How will we spend that $5,000?”
What is the Battle of the Bots?
What is the climax of this story?
Read this paragraph from the story.
“The match began, and the two robots moved towards each other. The Avenger lunged for Athena, but the small robot was too quick for him. Athena circled behind The Avenger and, before the larger robot had time to turn, Athena hit The Avenger from behind. There was the harsh sound of metal cutting metal and then silence. The Avenger lay on the ground. Athena had cut the wires connecting the body of the robot to its wheels. Not only had they won, but they had won in record time.”
What can be concluded from these sentences?
How do the members of Alex’s team interact with each other?
What is a theme of this story?
Read this paragraph from the story
“Finalists, could you please come to the main arena and prepare your robots?” said the announcer. “We will begin the Final Death Match in five minutes.” Alex and the team walked down to the main arena. Alex could feel his heart pounding in his chest. Athena was half the size of The Avenger— could their robot really win?
What feeling might the author be trying to create in the reader with the last three sentences of this paragraph?
Have you ever heard this quote: “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”
In the United States, these words are commonly credited to Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the great American thinkers of the 19th century. The quote is often used to describe how one should become a successful inventor. The idea is that brand new solutions to unsolved problems aren’t necessary for success. Most inventors can simply come up with slightly better solutions and find success by staying ahead of the game.
However, the quote is inaccurate. Emerson never actually said these words, and when people recite this quote, they’re continuing one of the greatest misinterpretations of our time. Originally, Emerson described people’s desire to have the best product—for example, corn, pigs, chairs or knives. Over the years, the words “better mousetrap” found their way into the quote, and the effect has been so strong that the mousetrap is now the most reinvented device in United States history.
What exactly makes for a “better mousetrap”? A quick look at the market for mousetraps reveals a great variety of solutions. T-Rex traps, glue traps, catch traps, and bait-less traps are just a few examples. But what makes any of these mousetraps better than the others? Is there such a thing as a best mousetrap?
The trick to answering these questions is to understand a basic truth about solving problems in the real world: There is never one best solution to a problem. Whenever people are faced with a problem to overcome, there are a number of ways to arrive at a solution. And when deciding what solution is best, you are choosing the right balance between two things: criteria and constraints.
Criteria are the ways that you know your solution is working. People don’t always agree on the same criteria, so if you’re setting out to build (or buy) a better mousetrap, it’s important to decide what you want the mousetrap to do for you.
The trap should kill the mouse.
The trap should catch the mouse, but not harm it. Don’t hurt the mouse!
The trap has to be very, very light.
The trap can be as big as a shoebox, but it must fit under your kitchen sink.
The trap shouldn’t hurt any human who accidentally touches it.
Let’s say that your goal is to catch the mouse, but you don’t want to kill the mouse or hurt it in anyway. Instead, you want to put the mouse in a cage and bring it to school to show your classmates. It’s easier to spot your ideal mousetrap, but you can’t start building until you’ve considered all of your constraints.
Constraints are the things that stop you from doing whatever you want to meet your criteria. The most common constraint is cost. For example, some people would love to have a mousetrap that instantly puts the mouse to sleep, so they can safely move the mouse to another location without harming it. Unfortunately, this kind of technology is too expensive for the typical person to afford.
It’s very expensive to capture a mouse without harming it.
The only materials that are available to build the trap are not as light as you would like.
The only traps that can fit under your kitchen sink also kill the mouse.
Traps that only harm mice and never harm humans cost at least $10 to build.
Another possible constraint is building materials. Maybe one of your criteria is that the mousetrap should be very light. However, if light materials like plastic are not available, then it might be very difficult to meet that criterion. The next best solution might be a mousetrap made of wood or metal.
When you’re deciding which mousetrap is the best, you will always have to keep track of your constraints. You’ll often find several different solutions, and each solution will fit a different combination of constraints and criteria. As a problem solver, your job is to decide which one is the best fit.
According to the United States Patent Office, over 4,000 people have tried to invent a better mousetrap. The misquoted words of Ralph Waldo Emerson are also used to describe the efforts of thousands of businesses, all of which are trying to write a smarter computer program, build a faster airplane, or make a better ice cream flavor to bring more customers to their doors. The promise of a better solution is something that many people try to fulfill every single day.
Think, though, about the last time you saw a mousetrap. Even if a hundred new mousetraps are invented every year, they’re not always better than the ones that came before. At the end of the day, the criteria for a better mousetrap might be so simple there is no better solution out there. And the constraints of building a new mousetrap might outweigh any of the criteria you can think of for a better solution.
Build a better mousetrap, and the world might never notice.
What is the intended message of the quote “build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door”?
What argument does the author present at the end of the passage?
The author claims that there is never one best solution to a problem. What evidence from the passage best supports this conclusion?
Based on the passage, why will you always have to keep track of the constraints while creating a better solution?
What is this passage mostly about?
Read the following sentence: “Build a better mousetrap, and the world might never notice.”
Why does the author end the passage with this phrase specifically?
According to the text, what is a living underwater structure?
Which section describes the problem in this text?
The Australian government believes that if less people can access the coral reef, less damage will be caused.
What sentence from the text supports this conclusion?
Read this sentence from the text.
The reef bursts with schools of tropical fish, darting among gaps in the coral.
What image does the author most likely want the reader to visualize?
What is this text mostly about?
Read this sentence from the text.
Each year, the Great Barrier Reef contributes about $975 million to the economy through tourism and fishing.
What does the author mean that the Reef "contributes" money to the economy?
What did Alex and Maria want to build?
What is the main challenge faced by the characters in this story?
Which of the following sentences from the story provides evidence that Maria was deliberate and thoughtful in her plans?
Which sentence from the text supports the idea that Alex and Maria used teamwork to build the bridge?
What is this passage mostly about?
Read this sentence:
“Now Alex and Maria had to figure out how to make sure the log was secure on both sides of the bank before they walked across it to reach the other side of the river.”
What is the meaning of the word secure in this sentence?