SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 15)

Question 1. Studying captive octopuses over several weeks, researchers noticed that the animals grew visibly restless and began methodically dismantling the fittings of their tanks when they were kept in bare, featureless enclosures with nothing to do. The behavior strongly suggested the frustration of an unusually intelligent animal with far too little to occupy its attention. ______ many public aquariums now supply their octopuses with jars to unscrew, mazes to solve, and shifting puzzles changed out regularly, all meant to keep a famously curious mind genuinely engaged.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Conversely,
• B) In any case,
• C) That is,
• D) For that reason, ✓

Explanation: (D) "For that reason" links the observed restlessness to the change it produced: enriched tanks full of puzzles. The action follows directly from what the researchers saw. "Conversely" signals an opposite, but the new tanks respond to the behavior rather than contradicting it. "In any case" waves aside what came before as not decisive, yet the restlessness is precisely what drives the response. "That is" promises a restatement, yet the enrichment is a new action, not a rewording of the observation.

Question 2. The printer Aldus Manutius believed that books ought to travel along with their readers rather than sit chained to desks in a few great libraries. Working in Venice around the year 1500, he issued the classics in a small octavo format light enough to carry in one hand, paired with a compact italic type that packed far more words onto every page. ______ his editions helped turn reading into something a merchant or traveler could carry through an ordinary day and open whenever a spare moment allowed.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Even so,
• B) Otherwise,
• C) Naturally, ✓
• D) Even then,

Explanation: (C) "Naturally" marks the portable editions as the apt outcome of Aldus's guiding belief that books should travel. The result fits the principle the passage opened with. "Even so" concedes against an expectation, but the pocket books fulfill his aim rather than working against it. "Otherwise" describes an alternative condition, which the passage never sets up. "Even then" grants a point despite some obstacle, yet nothing obstructs the outcome here; it flows straight from his design.

Question 3. Lightning is commonly said never to strike the same place twice, a tidy bit of folk wisdom that offers a comforting sense of safety after a near miss. Tall structures expose the saying as pure folklore; ______ the spire of one famous skyscraper is struck dozens of times in a typical year, drawing those strikes precisely because its great height offers passing storms the easiest available path to the ground. Repetition, not avoidance, is the real rule for anything that stands high enough above its surroundings.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) as it turns out, ✓
• B) therefore,
• C) likewise,
• D) for example,

Explanation: (A) "as it turns out" overturns the familiar saying with the documented case: a spire struck dozens of times a year. The blank corrects folklore with fact. "therefore" draws a consequence, but the repeated strikes contradict the saying rather than following from it. "likewise" claims agreement, yet the example disproves the prior claim. "for example" would offer an instance of the saying, when the sentence instead refutes it -- the tempting wrong turn on this kind of item.

Question 4. Enthusiasts often present early photography as an instant and total triumph over the older art of painted portraiture, as though the brush were rendered obsolete overnight. ______ the daguerreotype did capture a sitter's likeness with a fidelity no painter's hand could ever quite match. Yet the long exposures it required demanded an unnatural, frozen stillness, and the delicate silvered plate yielded only a single image that could not be reproduced from a negative the way later processes allowed, real limits that portrait painters never had to face at all.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) As a result,
• B) True, ✓
• C) In the same way,
• D) For one thing,

Explanation: (B) "True" concedes photography's real strength -- unmatched fidelity -- before the following "Yet" turns to its limits: long exposures and a plate that could not be reproduced from a negative. The later "Yet" is the signal that settles it. "As a result" reads the sentence as an effect of the topic sentence, but the blank grants a point rather than deriving a consequence. "In the same way" claims a parallel, yet the "Yet" that follows reveals a contrast is being built. "For one thing" begins to list supporting reasons, when the passage is instead conceding ground before qualifying it.

Question 5. Lise Meitner explained a startling result her collaborators could detect chemically but could not interpret: bombarding uranium with neutrons had somehow produced much lighter elements. Working out the physics with her nephew Otto Frisch, she showed how a uranium nucleus could divide into two smaller nuclei, releasing energy in the amount that mass-energy equivalence would predict. ______ a tiny loss of mass during the split would reappear as an enormous burst of energy, the very release that their calculation, not the original chemistry, first made sense of.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) By contrast,
• B) Even so,
• C) For its part,
• D) In plain terms, ✓

Explanation: (D) "In plain terms" restates the mechanism more simply: missing mass becomes released energy. The blank rewords the prior sentence's physics rather than adding a new claim. "By contrast" sets up opposition, but the sentence agrees with and clarifies the explanation. "Even so" concedes against an expectation, yet nothing is being conceded here. "For its part" shifts focus to a separate actor, when the sentence simply restates the same point in clearer language.