PTE Academic / UKVI / Core Sample Questions: Multiple Choice Single Answer Practice

B-15 broke off from the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica. It was the largest iceberg ever documented, with a surface area of more than 4,200 square miles — more than twice the size of the state of Delaware. After it started breaking up, the largest of its pieces, B-15a, drifted along the coast of Antarctica, lingered on a shallow seamount, and collided with an ice tongue, before running aground and breaking again. Late in 2007, the largest remaining chunk floated out into the South Pacific where, in the warmer water, it began to disintegrate.For the whole of the next year, the ocean was noisier than usual. All the way up past the equator, 4,350 miles or so away from where B-15a broke apart, hydrophones that scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) had suspended underwater were picking up strange signals. Another set of hydrophones, this one in the Juan Fernández Islands, off the coast of Chile, picked up the noise, too, even louder. When the scientists used the two sets of data to determine the source of the noise, they found the most likely culprits: B-15a and C-19a, another giant iceberg.Twenty years ago, not so long before B-15 broke off from Antarctica, “we didn’t even know that icebergs made noise,” says Haru Matsumoto, an ocean engineer at NOAA who has studied these sounds. But in the past few years, scientists have started to learn to distinguish the eerie, haunting sounds of iceberg life — ice cracking, icebergs grinding against each other, an iceberg grounding on the seafloor — and measure the extent to which those sounds contribute to the noise of the ocean. While they’re just now learning to listen, the sounds of ice could help them understand the behavior and breakup of icebergs and ice shelves as the poles warm up.

Greenhouse gases arise from a wide range of sources and their increasing concentration is largely related to the compound effects of increased population, improved living standards, and changes in lifestyle. From a current base of 5 billion, the United Nations predicts that the global population may stabilize in the twenty-first century between 8 and 14 billion, with more than 90 percent of the projected increase taking place in the world’s developing nations. The associated activities to support that growth, particularly to produce the required energy and food, will cause further increases in greenhouse gas emissions. The challenge, therefore, is to attain a sustainable balance between population, economic growth, and the environment.

Large earthquakes or volcanic eruptions can cause tsunamis, which in Japanese means “wave in the harbor”. Tsunamis move very fast, up to 500 miles per hour. Upon reaching shallower waters, they start to decelerate but increase in height. A tsunami can become a wall of water that can reach more than 10 meters high as it approaches the shore. The height depends on two factors: the depth of coastal waters and the shape of the beach. If the wave reaches dry land, it can cause considerable damage and inundate vast areas.

What constitutes traditional psychology in the West can be rechristened as modern social psychology in India. The concepts and principles of social psychology inherent in these texts not only mirrored Indian society but also proscribed models of social behavior till the beginning of the twentieth century. historically speaking, sociology and social anthropology have a much longer history in India than social psychology. what is today known as social psychology has its origins in the first psychology department established at Calcutta University N.N. Sengupta, the first chairman of the department, had worked with Hugo Munsternberg at Harward University.

At one time, one could only trace one's family ancestry by writing letters, visiting courthouses, and begging relatives for any crumb of information. However, today with the World Wide Web, the task has become much simpler. Much of the archived history of our lives and our ancestors' lives is readily available online. In addition, there are specific software programs in existence that will walk you through the process of creating a family tree and take you to appropriate internet sites for record information. Another alternative is hiring someone or some company to do your tree for you. Depending on your dedication and time, a method is available for you. You might think about tracing your family roots. It is fun for many and will let you in on your family's past. Even if you find a skeleton in the closet, maybe you could just ignore that twig of your family tree.

For many years, most physicists supported one of two cosmological theories: the steady-state universe, and the Big Bang. The theory of the steady-state universe states that the universe has always existed exactly as we observe it at present, whereas the Big Bang theory postulates that the universe was conceived from a singularity in space-time that has expanded into the current universe. The validity of either theory was not tested until 1900 when Edwin Hubble famously discovered what is now known as Hubble’s Law. Hubble’s experiment is now a famous benchmark in modern physics. Hubble, using the Mount Wilson Observatory, observed a class of stars known as Cepheid variables, luminous stars that blink and flicker with a rate that depends on their distance from the observer.

Using this relation and years of observing, Hubble calculated the distance to many of these variable stars. Milton Humason, a fellow astronomer, helped Hubble to calculate the stars’ relative velocities to Earth. When Hubble combined the two data sets he found an interesting relationship: all the stars appeared to be moving away from us! In fact, the speed at which they were moving increased with an increasing distance from Earth. Hubble realized, from this small set of data, that the earth was a part of the expanding universe.

As the universe expands outward in all directions, any observer from a fixed vantage point will look out and see everything running away from them. The further away any two points are, the more the expansion affects them, and the faster they appear to be moving away from each other. Hubble’s result was the first experimental proof that we do not live in a steady-state universe, but rather a dynamic and expanding one.

Those of us who have the happiness of being pupils of the true teachers know what this teacher-taught relation ought to be. A teacher who tries to frighten his students into doing what he wishes does not see that they only obey him while he is there, and that as soon as they are out of his sight they will pay no attention to his rules, or even take pleasure in breaking them because they dislike him. But if he draws them to do what he wants because they love him, they will keep his rules even in his absence, and so make his work much easier.

Many sociologists have argued that there is a functional relationship between education and the economic system. They point to the fact that mass formal education began in industrial society. They note that the expansion of the economies of industrial societies is accompanied by a corresponding expansion of their educational systems. they explain this correspondence in terms of the needs of industry for skilled and trained manpower, needs which are met by the educational system. Thus, the provision of mass elementary education in Britain in 1870 can be seen as a response to the needs of industry for a literate and numerate workforce at a time when industrial processes were becoming more complex and the demand for technical skills was steadily growing.

Thomas Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a longlasting, practical electric light bulb. He was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large-scale teamwork to the process of the invention, and because of that, he is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and, in particular, telecommunications.

Could Washington, Madison, and the other framers of the Federal Constitution revisit the earth in this year 1922, it is likely that nothing would bewilder them more than the recent Prohibition Amendment. Railways, steamships, the telephone, automobiles, flying machines, submarines all these developments, unknown in their day, would fill them with amazement and admiration. They would marvel at the story of the rise and downfall of the German Empire; at the growth and present greatness of the Republic, they themselves had founded. None of these things, however, would seem to them to involve any essential change in the beliefs and purposes of men as they had known them. The Prohibition Amendment, on the contrary, would evidence to their minds the breaking down of a principle of government which they had deemed axiomatic, the abandonment of a purpose which they had supposed immutable.