Email Us [email protected]
LOG IN SIGN UP 0

Free Test Prep MCAT Exam Questions

Try our Free Demo Practice Tests for Comprehensive MCAT Exam Preparation

  • Test Prep MCAT Exam Questions
  • Provided By: Test Prep
  • Exam: Medical College Admission Test: Verbal Reasoning, Biological Sciences, Physical Sciences, Writing Sample
  • Certification: Test Prep Certifications
  • Total Questions: 815
  • Updated On: Sep 28, 2024
  • Rated: 4.9 |
  • Online Users: 1630
Page No. 1 of 163
   
Add To Cart
  • Question 1
    • Gauguin's attitude toward art marked a break from the past and a beginning to modern art. Like all PostImpressionist artists, he passed through an Impressionist phase but became quickly dissatisfied with the
      limitations of the style, and went on to discover a new style that had the directness and universality of a symbol
      and that concentrated on impressions, ideas and experiences. The beginning of his modern tradition lay in his
      rejection of Impressionism. He considered naturalism an error to be avoided. He was preoccupied with
      suggestion rather than description, seeking to portray not the exterior, but the essence of things in their purest,
      simplest, and most primitive form, which could only be achieved through simplification of the form. He firmly
      believed throughout his life that “art is an abstraction” and that “this abstraction [must be derived] from nature
      while dreaming before it.” One must think of the creation that will result rather than the model, and not try to
      render the model exactly as one sees it. This was the birth of “Synthetism” or rather Synthetist-Symbolic, as
      Gauguin referred to it, using the term “symbolic” to indicate that the forms and patterns in his pictures were
      meant to suggest mental images or ideas and not simply to record visual experience.
      Symbolism flourished around the period of 1885 to 1910 and can be defined as the rejection of direct, literal
      representation in favor of evocation and suggestion. Painters tried to give a visual expression to emotional
      experiences, and therefore the movement was a reaction against the naturalistic aims of Impressionism.
      Satisfying the need for a more spiritual or emotional approach in art, Symbolism is characterized by the desire
      to seek refuge in a dreamworld of beauty and the belief that color and line in themselves could express ideas.
      Stylistically, the tendency was towards flattened forms and broad areas of color, and features of the movement
      were an intense religious feeling and an interest in subjects of death, disease, and sin.
      Similarly, “Synthetism” involved the simplification of forms into large-scale patterns and the expressive
      purification of colors. Form and color had to be simplified for the sake of expression. This style reacted against
      the “formlessness” of Impressionism and favored painting subjectively and expressing one's ideas rather than
      relying on external objects as subject matters. It was characterized by areas of pure colors, very defined
      contours, an emphasis on pattern and decorative qualities, and a relative absence of shadows.
      Gauguin's new art form merged these two movements and succeeded in freeing color, form, and line, bringing
      it to express the artists' emotions, sensibilities, and personal experiences of the world around them. His style
      created a break with the old tradition of descriptive naturalism and favored the synthesis of observation and
      imagination. Gauguin sustained that forms are not discovered in nature but in one's wild imagination, and it was
      in himself that he searched rather than in his surroundings. For this reason, he scorned the Impressionists for
      their lack of imagination and their mere scientific reasoning. Furthermore, Gauguin used color unnaturalistically
      for its decorative or emotional effect and reintroduced emphatic outlines. “Synthetism” signified for him that the
      forms of his pictures were constructed from symbolic patterns of color and linear rhythms and were not mere
      scientific reproductions of what is seen by the eye.
      Dempsey, A., & Dempsey, A. (2010). Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to
      Modern Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
      Given the passage’s discussion of Synthetist-Symbolism, and some undiscussed remarks about how Japanese
      art influenced Gauguin’s work, which of these features of Japanese painting can be reasonably assumed to
      characterize Gauguin’s art form?

      Section: Verbal Reasoning

      Answer: A
  • Question 2
    • An automatic external defibrillator (AED) is simply a series of capacitors used to store a very large charge,
      which is then discharged through the patient’s chest in a short time. If the capacitor in an AED is fully charged
      and the AED is no longer connected to the power source, what will happen to the energy stored in the AED if
      the dielectric (k = 1.5) is removed?

      Answer: A
  • Question 3
    • Just as the ingestion of nutrients is mandatory for human life, so is the excretion of metabolic waste products.
      One of these nutrients, protein, is used for building muscle, nucleic acids, and countless compounds integral to
      homeostasis. However, the catabolism of the amino acids generated from protein digestion produces ammonia,
      which, if not further degraded, can become toxic. Similarly, if the same salts that provide energy and chemical
      balance to cells are in excess, fluid retention will occur, damaging the circulatory, cardiac, and pulmonary
      systems.
      One of the most important homeostatic organs is the kidney, which closely regulates the excretion and
      reabsorption of many essential ions and molecules. One mechanism of renal function involves the secretion of
      antidiuretic hormone (ADH).
      Diabetes insipidus (DI), is the condition that occurs when ADH is ineffective. As a result, the kidneys are unable
      to concentrate urine, leading to excessive water loss. There are two types of DI – central and nephrogenic.
      Central DI occurs when there is a deficiency in the quantity or quality of ADH produced. Nephrogenic DI occurs
      when the kidney tubules are unresponsive to ADH. To differentiate between these two conditions, a patient’s
      urine osmolarity is measured both prior to therapy and after a 24-hour restriction on fluid intake. Exogenous
      ADH is then administered and urine osmolarity is measured again. The table below gives the results of testing
      on four patients. Assume that a urine osmolarity of 285 mOsm/L of H2O is normal.
      MCAT-part-2-page295-image149
      An elevated and potentially toxic level of ammonia in the blood (hyperammonemia) would most likely result
      from a defect in an enzyme involved in:

      Section: Biological Sciences 

      Answer: C
  • Question 4
    • When Gwendolyn Brooks published her first collection of poetry A Street In Bronzeville in 1945 most reviewers
      recognized Brooks’ versatility and craft as a poet. Yet, while noting her stylistic successes few of her
      contemporaries discussed the critical question of Brooks’ relationship to the Harlem Renaissance. How had she
      addressed herself, as a poet, to the literary movement’s assertion of the folk and African culture, and its
      promotion of the arts as the agent to define racial integrity?
      The New Negro poets of the Harlem Renaissance expressed a deep pride in being Black; they found reasons
      for this pride in ethnic identity and heritage; and they shared a common faith in the fine arts as a means of
      defining and reinforcing racial pride. But in the literal expression of this impulse, the poets were either
      romantics, or realists and, quite often within the same poem, both. The realistic impulse, as defined best in the
      poems of McKay’s Harlem Shadows (1922), was a sober reflection upon Blacks as second class citizens,
      segregated from the mainstream of American socio-economic life, and largely unable to realize the wealth and
      opportunity that America promised. The romantic impulse, on the other hand, as defined in the poems of
      Sterling Brown’s Southern Road (1932), often found these unrealized dreams in the collective strength and will
      of the folk masses.
      In comparing the poems in A Street in Bronzeville with various poems from the Renaissance, it becomes
      apparent that Brooks brings many unique contributions to bear on this tradition. The first clue that A Street In
      Bronzeville was, at its time of publication, unlike any other book of poems by a Black American is its insistent
      emphasis on demystifying romantic love between Black men and women. During the Renaissance, ethnic or
      racial pride was often focused with romantic idealization upon the Black woman. A casual streetwalker in
      Hughes’ poem, “When Sue Wears Red,” for example, is magically transformed into an Egyptian Queen. In A
      Street In Bronzeville, this romantic impulse runs headlong into the biting ironies of racial discrimination. There
      are poems in which Hughes, McKay and Brown recognize the realistic underside of urban life for Black women.
      But for Brooks, unlike the Renaissance poets, the victimization of poor Black women becomes not simply a
      minor chord but a predominant theme.
      …Brooks’ relationship with the Harlem Renaissance poets, as A Street in Bronzeville ably demonstrates, was
      hardly imitative. As one of the important links with the Black poetic tradition of the 1920s and 1930s, she
      enlarged the element of realism that was an important part of the Renaissance world-view. Although her poetry
      is often conditioned by the optimism that was also a legacy of the period, Brooks rejects outright their romantic
      prescriptions for the lives of Black women. And in this regard, she serves as a vital link with the Black Arts
      Movement of the 1960s that, while it witnessed the flowering of Black women as poets and social activists as
      well as the rise of Black feminist aesthetics in the 1970s, brought about a curious revival of romanticism in the
      Renaissance mode.
      The passage suggests that the author would be most likely to agree with which one of the following statements
      about the poetry of the Harlem Renaissance?

      Section: Verbal Reasoning

      Answer: B
  • Question 5
    • Although we know more about so-called Neanderthal men than about any other early population, their exact
      relation to present-day human beings remains unclear. Long considered sub-human, Neanderthals are now
      known to have been fully human. They walked erect, used fire, and made a variety of tools. They lived partly in
      the open and partly in caves. The Neanderthals are even thought to have been the first humans to bury their
      dead, a practice which has been interpreted as demonstrating the capacity for religious and abstract thought.
      The first monograph on Neanderthal anatomy, published by Marcelling Boule in 1913, presented a somewhat
      misleading picture. Boule took the Neanderthals’ lowvaulted cranium and prominent brow ridges, their heavy
      musculature, and the apparent overdevelopment of certain joints as evidence of a prehuman physical
      appearance. In postulating for the Neanderthal such “primitive” characteristics as a stooping, bent-kneed
      posture, a rolling gait, and a forward-hanging head, Boule was a victim of the rudimentary state of anatomical
      science. Modern anthropologists recognize the Neanderthal bone structure as that of a creature whose bodily
      orientation and capacities were very similar to those of present-day human beings. The differences in the size
      and shape of the limbs, shoulder blades, and other body parts are simply adaptations which were necessary to
      handle the Neanderthal’s far more massive musculature. Current taxonomy considers the Neanderthals to have
      been fully human and thus designates them not as a separate species, Homo neanderthalensis, but as a
      subspecies of Homo sapiens: Homo sapiens neanderthalensis.
      The rise of the Neanderthals occurred over some 100,000 years – a sufficient period to account for evolution of
      the specifically Neanderthal characteristics through free interbreeding over a broad geographical range. Fossil
      evidence suggests that the Neanderthals inhabited a vast area from Europe through the Middle East and into
      Central Asia from approximately 100,000 years ago until 35,000 years ago. Then, within a brief period of five to
      ten thousand years, they disappeared. Modern human, not found in Europe prior to about 33,000 years ago,
      thenceforth became the sole inhabitants of the region. Anthropologists do not believe that the Neanderthals
      evolved into modern human beings. Despite the similarities between Neanderthal and modern human anatomy,
      the differences are great enough that, among a population as broad-ranging as the Neanderthals, such an
      evolution could not have taken place in a period of only ten thousand years. Furthermore, no fossils of types
      intermediate between Neanderthals and moderns have been found.
      A major alternative hypothesis, advanced by E. Trinkaus and W.W. Howells, is that of localized evolution.
      Within a geographically concentrated population, free interbreeding could have produced far more pronounced
      genetic effects within a shorter time. Thus modern human could have evolved relatively quickly, either from
      Neanderthals or from some other ancestral type, in isolation from the main Neanderthal population. These
      humans may have migrated throughout the Neanderthal areas, where they displaced or absorbed the original
      inhabitants. One hypothesis suggests that these “modern” humans immigrated to Europe from the Middle East.
      No satisfactory explanation of why modern human beings replaced the Neanderthals has yet been found. Some
      have speculated that the modern humans wiped out the Neanderthals in warfare; however, there exists no
      archeological evidence of a hostile encounter. It has also been suggested that the Neanderthals failed to adapt
      to the onset of the last Ice Age; yet their thick bodies should have been heat-conserving and thus well-adapted
      to extreme cold. Finally, it is possible that the improved tools and hunting implements of the late Neanderthal
      period made the powerful Neanderthal physique less of an advantage than it had been previously. At the same
      time, the Neanderthals’ need for a heavy diet to sustain this physique put them at a disadvantage compared to
      the less massive moderns. If this was the case, then it was improvements in human culture – including some
      introduced by the Neanderthals themselves – that made the Neanderthal obsolete.
      All of the following are hypotheses about the disappearance of the Neanderthals EXCEPT:

      Section: Verbal Reasoning 

      Answer: C
PAGE: 1 - 163
   
Add To Cart

© Copyrights Dumpscity 2024. All Rights Reserved

We use cookies to ensure your best experience. So we hope you are happy to receive all cookies on the Dumpscity.