SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Transitions (Drill 16)

Question 1. When the physicist Chien-Shiung Wu designed her 1956 experiment on beta decay, she first cooled cobalt-60 atoms to temperatures near absolute zero so that their nuclei could be lined up by a magnetic field. She then recorded the directions in which the emitted electrons flew away from the sample; ______ she compared those counts and found that the electrons favored one direction over its mirror image, a lopsided result suggesting that a symmetry many physicists had long assumed did not hold after all.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) finally, ✓
• B) in contrast,
• C) for instance,
• D) admittedly,

Explanation: (A) The passage lays out ordered actions -- cool the atoms, record the directions, then compare the counts -- so the transition has to mark the last of them. "Finally" names that closing step, which is where the asymmetry shows up. (B) "In contrast" signals opposition, but the comparison step does not oppose the earlier ones; it continues and completes them. (C) "For instance" would introduce an example of a prior claim, yet the sentence reports the next action in a procedure, not an illustration. (D) "Admittedly" concedes a point against the writer's line, but nothing is being conceded -- the build runs straight to its result.

Question 2. Studying the crumbling sea cliffs of southern England, the fossil collector Mary Anning noticed that certain stony lumps, then sold to tourists as curiosities, held the same crushed fish scales and small bones she kept finding inside the bellies of ichthyosaur skeletons. She reasoned that the lumps were fossilized dung rather than ordinary pebbles; ______ she began carefully slicing them open and studying the contents, reading the diets of marine reptiles that had swum and died many millions of years before her.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) even so,
• B) for one thing,
• C) by the same token,
• D) as a result, ✓

Explanation: (D) "As a result" links a conclusion to the action it justifies: because she judged the lumps to be fossilized dung, she acted on that judgment by cutting them open. A reasoned finding leads here to its practical consequence. (A) "Even so" sets up a concession, implying she dissected the lumps despite her conclusion; in fact she did so because of it. (B) "For one thing" begins to list reasons supporting a claim, but the second clause is an action she took, not evidence for a point. (C) "By the same token" claims her dissection follows the same logic as a prior action, yet no earlier action is on the table to echo.

Question 3. The choreographer Katherine Dunham trained as an anthropologist before she founded her dance company, and audiences sometimes treated her staged works as faithful records of the Caribbean rituals she had studied in the field. ______ the performances did draw real steps and rhythms from those communities, lending the stage scenes a measure of authenticity. Yet Dunham freely reshaped the material for the proscenium, compressing long ceremonies into tight theatrical numbers that served her own artistic ends rather than any documentary purpose she might have claimed.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Conversely,
• B) To be fair, ✓
• C) Above all,
• D) In short,

Explanation: (B) "To be fair" concedes a point that runs toward the audience's view -- the dances really did borrow authentic material -- before the later "Yet" pivots to Dunham's reshaping. The decisive signal sits after the blank: the sentence grants ground only to take it back. (A) "Conversely" announces an opposite, but the borrowed steps do not reverse the idea that audiences saw the works as faithful; they partly support it. (C) "Above all" ranks one point as most important, yet the passage is not ordering claims by weight -- it is conceding, then countering. (D) "In short" promises a summary of what came before, but the borrowing of real steps is fresh information, not a recap.

Question 4. The bristlecone pine called Methuselah, growing high on a windswept slope in California's White Mountains, has been dated by its growth rings to roughly forty-eight centuries, old enough to predate much of recorded history. That figure impresses chiefly when it is set beside the ordinary run of trees. ______ the oaks and maples of a temperate forest seldom pass three or four hundred years before disease, drought, or storms bring them down, so the pine has outlasted those common trees more than ten times over.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) Likewise,
• B) Instead,
• C) Notably, ✓
• D) In any case,

Explanation: (C) "Notably" introduces the telling baseline that confirms the outlier: common hardwoods rarely reach four centuries, so a tree roughly 4,800 years old is remarkable. The typical case is offered as the evidence that makes the extreme one register. (A) "Likewise" would make the second case resemble the first, but short-lived oaks are the opposite of the ancient pine, not a parallel to it. (B) "Instead" would correct or replace the prior statement; the baseline does not overturn the pine's age, it underscores it. (D) "In any case" waves the previous point aside as no longer relevant, yet the baseline is precisely what makes that point land.

Question 5. A Roman engineer laying out an aqueduct had to hold a steady downhill grade across many miles of country so that the water would flow smoothly without pooling in the channel or racing too fast and overtopping its sides. Surveyors first checked the slope with a chorobates, a long leveling bench fitted with plumb lines and a shallow water trough. ______ where the route had to run underground, they cut vertical shafts down to the planned tunnel line, giving the crews access and letting engineers check the grade before the channel was sealed away for good.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?

• A) In addition, ✓
• B) As a result,
• C) Otherwise,
• D) That said,

Explanation: (A) "In addition" adds a second technique to the first: beyond the leveling bench, the surveyors also sank vertical shafts on the tunneled stretches. Both clauses describe methods for holding the grade, and the blank piles one onto the other. (B) "As a result" would make the shafts a consequence of using the bench, but they are a separate, parallel method, not an effect of the first. (C) "Otherwise" sets up an alternative to a failed condition; here both techniques are used together, so no either-or is in play. (D) "That said" flags a qualification or contrast, yet the second check does not push against the first -- it reinforces the same aim.