LSAT-TEST Online Practice Questions and Answers

In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the federal government has exclusive rights to any oil and gas resources on the Atlantic Outer Shelf beyond the three-mile limit. Which one of the following must be true in order for this ruling to be logical?

A. The U.S. Supreme Court has met recently.

B. The Atlantic Outer Shelf may possibly contain oil and gas resources.

C. No oil and gas resources exist within the three-mile limit.

D. In 1977, the Court reversed this ruling.

E. Oil and gas on the Atlantic Shelf has not been explored for in the past three years.

The rural community of Pottsville has a low crime rate. Urban Los Angeles has a high crime rate. Shady Junction, a small agricultural community, has a high rate of criminal activity. The city of Washington, D.C. has a low rate of criminal activity.

Which one of the following most clearly expresses the main point in the passage above?

A. Urban communities generally have higher crime rates.

B. Crime is rampant in all communities.

C. Rural communities generally have higher crime rates.

D. Crime is not solely an urban or rural phenomenon.

E. Urban crime is more violent than rural crime.

Cats spend much of their time sleeping; they seem to awaken only to stretch and yawn. Yet they have a

strong, agile musculature that most animals would have to exercise strenuously to acquire.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent paradox described above?

A. Cats have a greater physiological need for sleep than other animals.

B. Many other animals also spend much of their time sleeping yet have a strong, agile musculature.

C. Cats are able to sleep in apparently uncomfortable positions.

D. Cats derive ample exercise from frequent stretching.

E. Cats require strength and agility in order to be effective predators.

Birds need so much food energy to maintain their body temperatures that some of them spend most of their time eating. But a comparison of a bird of a seed-eating species to a bird of a nectar-eating species that has the same overall energy requirement would surely show that the seed-eating bird spends more time eating than does the nectar-eating bird, since a given amount of nectar provides more energy than does the same amount of seeds.

The argument relies on which one of the following questionable assumptions?

A. Birds of different species do not generally have the same overall energy requirements as each other.

B. The nectar-eating bird does not sometimes also eat seeds.

C. The time it takes for the nectar-eating bird to eat a given amount of nectar is not longer than the time it takes the seed-eating bird to eat the same amount of seeds.

D. The seed-eating bird does not have a lower body temperature than that of the nectar-eating bird.

E. The overall energy requirements of a given bird do not depend on factors such as the size of the bird, its nest-building habits, and the climate of the region in which it lives.

Four boys -- Fred, Juan, Marc, and Paul -- and three girls -- Nita, Rachel, and Trisha -- will be assigned to

a row of five adjacent lockers, numbered consecutively 1 through 5, arranged along a straight wall. The

following conditions govern the assignment of lockers to the seven children:

Each locker must be assigned to either one or two children, and each child must be assigned to exactly

one locker.

Each shared locker must be assigned to one girl and one boy.

Juan must share a locker, but Rachel cannot share a locker.

Nita's locker cannot be adjacent to Trisha's locker. Fred must be assigned to locker 3

If lockers 1 and 2 are each assigned to one boy and are not shared lockers, then locker 4 must be

assigned to

A. Juan

B. Paul

C. Rachel

D. Juan and Nita

E. Marc and Trisha

The organizer of a reading club will select at least five and at most six works from a group of nine works.

The group consists of three French novels, three Russian novels, two French plays, and one Russian play.

The organizer's selection of works must conform to the following requirements:

No more than four French works are selected.

At least three but no more than four novels are selected.

At least as many French novels as Russian novels are selected.

If both French plays are selected, then the Russian play is not selected.

Which one of the following could be true about the organizer's selection of works?

A. No Russian novels are selected.

B. Exactly one French novel is selected.

C. All three plays are selected.

D. All three Russian novels are selected.

E. All five French works are selected.

A study of young and middle-aged men in the United States has found that the men whose diet was high in saturated fat also had a high amount of blood cholesterol. In another experiment, when the blood cholesterol level of laboratory rabbits was raised by feeding them exclusively on cholesterol, fat deposits formed in their blood vessels. Similar fat deposits are found in human patients of heart disease. Therefore, to reduce the occurrence of heart disease, people should reduce their dietary consumption of saturated fat.

Each of the following, if true, weakens the above argument EXCEPT:

A. The bodily reactions of animal models to internal or external stimulants are often poor predictors of the reactions of the human body to the same stimulants.

B. The per capita consumption of saturated fat in the United States has decreased by 27 percent since 1970 while the occurrence of heart disease in the country has increased by 400 percent in the same period.

C. An analysis of studies done on more than 600,000 men and women has established that blood cholesterol is inversely associated with the risk of death from infectious respiratory and digestive diseases.

D. A study that covered more than 10,000 individuals has found no relationship between the amount of blood cholesterol and the occurrence of heart disease.

E. In a study where the dietary saturated fat consumption of young and middle-aged American women was three to seven times higher than normal, the blood cholesterol level remained unchanged.

Marie Curie was one of the most accomplished scientists in history. Together with her husband, Pierre, she discovered radium, an element widely used for treating cancer, and studied uranium and other radioactive substances. Pierre and Marie's amicable collaboration later helped to unlock the secrets of the atom. Marie was born in 1867 in Warsaw, Poland, where her father was a professor of physics. At the early age, she displayed a brilliant mind and a blithe personality. Her great exuberance for learning prompted her to continue with her studies after high school. She became disgruntled, however, when she learned that the university in Warsaw was closed to women. Determined to receive a higher education, she defiantly left Poland and in 1891 entered the Sorbonne, a French university, where she earned her master's degree and doctorate in physics. Marie was fortunate to have studied at the Sorbonne with some of the greatest scientists of her day, one of whom was Pierre Curie. Marie and Pierre were married in 1895 and spent many productive years working together in the physics laboratory. A short time after they discovered radium, Pierre was killed by a horse-drawn wagon in 1906. Marie was stunned by this horrible misfortune and endured heartbreaking anguish. Despondently she recalled their close relationship and the joy that they had shared in scientific research. The fact that she had two young daughters to raise by herself greatly increased her distress. Curie's feeling of desolation finally began to fade when she was asked to succeed her husband as a physics professor at the Sorbonne. She was the first woman to be given a professorship at the world-famous university. In 1911 she received the Nobel Prize in chemistry for isolating radium. Although Marie Curie eventually suffered a fatal illness from her long exposure to radium, she never became disillusioned about her work. Regardless of the consequences, she had dedicated herself to science and to revealing the mysteries of the physical world.

Her ______________ began to fade when she returned to the Sorbonne to succeed her husband.

A. misfortune

B. anger

C. wretchedness

D. disappointment

E. ambition

Always read the meter dials from the right to the left. This procedure is much easier, especially if any of the dial hands are near the zero mark. If the meter has two dials, and one is smaller than the other, it is not imperative to read the smaller dial since it only registers a small amount. Read the dial at the right first. As the dial turns clockwise, always record the figure the pointer has just passed. Read the next dial to the left and record the figure it has just passed. Continue recording the figures on the dials from right to left. When finished, mark off the number of units recorded. Dials on water and gas meters usually indicate the amount each dial records.

When you have finished reading the meter, mark off

A. the number of units recorded

B. the figures on the small dial

C. the total figures

D. all the zero marks

E. the last reading of the month

Donna Haraway's Primate Visions is the most ambitious book on the history of science yet written from a feminist perspective, embracing not only the scientific construction of gender but also the interplay of race, class, and colonial and postcolonial culture with the "Western" construction of the very concept of nature itself. Primatology is a particularly apt vehicle for such themes because primates seem so much like ourselves that they provide ready material for scientists' conscious and unconscious projections of their beliefs about nature and culture.

Haraway's most radical departure is to challenge the traditional disjunction between the active knower (scientist/historian) and the passive object (nature/history). In Haraway's view, the desire to understand nature, whether in order to tame it or to preserve it as a place of wild innocence, is based on a troublingly masculinist and colonialist view of nature as an entity distinct from us and subject to our control. She argues that it is a view that is no longer politically, ecologically, or even scientifically viable. She proposes an approach that not only recognizes diverse human actors (scientists, government officials, laborers, science fiction writers) as contributing to our knowledge of nature, but that also recognizes the creatures usually subsumed under nature (such as primates) as active participants in creating that knowledge as well. Finally, she insists that the perspectives afforded by these different agents cannot be reduced to a single, coherent reality ?there are necessarily only multiple, interlinked, partial realities.

This iconoclastic view is reflected in Haraway's unorthodox writing style. Haraway does not weave the many different elements of her work into one unified, overarching Story of Primatology; they remain distinct voices that will not succumb to a master narrative. This fragmented approach to historiography is familiar enough in historiographical theorizing but has rarely been put into practice by historians of science. It presents a complex alternative to traditional history, whether strictly narrative or narrative with emphasis on a causal argument.

Haraway is equally innovative in the way she incorporates broad cultural issues into her analysis. Despite decades of rhetoric from historians of science about the need to unite issues deemed "internal" to science (scientific theory and practice) and those considered "external" to it (social issues, structures, and beliefs), that dichotomy has proven difficult to set aside. Haraway simply ignores it. The many readers in whom this separation is deeply ingrained may find her discussions of such popular sources as science fiction, movies, and television distracting, and her statements concerning such issues as nuclear war bewildering and digressive. To accept her approach one must shed a great many assumptions about what properly belongs to the study of science.

Which one of the following best exemplifies the type of "traditional history" mentioned at the end of 3rd paragraph

A. a chronological recounting of the life and work of Marie Curie, with special attention paid to the circumstances that led to her discovery of radium

B. a television series that dramatizes one scientist's prediction about human life in the twenty-second century

C. the transcript of a series of conversations among several scientists of radically opposing philosophies, in which no resolution or conclusion is reached

D. a newspaper editorial written by a scientist trying to arouse public support for a certain project by detailing the practical benefits to be gained from it

E. detailed mathematical notes recording the precise data gathered from a laboratory experiment