Read the passage. There are several questions about this passage.
needed to rise again.
An airtight cabin was welded beneath the float. Like the cabin of the FNRS, it
was a perfect sphere, but instead of aluminum, its walls were forged in steel
5 inches thick. It had two windows made of a strong artificial glass called Lucite.
And it had an air supply and purification system that allowed two crew members
to breathe safely for up to twenty-four hours.
3
5
6
= R X
7
Built in Italy, the Trieste was bought by the U.S. Navy in 1958. The following
year, the freighter Santa Maria transported it west from California to Guam. The
USS Wandank then towed it a further 250 miles to a site above the deepest part
of all the world's seas: the mysterious Challenger Deep. This great gash in the
earth's surface, deeper than Mount Everest is high, lies in the Mariana Trench on
the floor of the Pacific Ocean.
Here, in rough seas, Jacques Piccard and Lieutenant Don Walsh of the
U.S. Navy undertook one of the most nerve-rattling journeys ever made. On the
morning of January 23, 1960, the two men climbed through the hatch and sealed
themselves into their steel bubble. At precisely 8:23 a.m., they let seawater into
the air tanks above them and began a 288-minute descent, down, down to
the funeral-black floor of the ocean.
This question has two parts. Answer Part A, and then
answer Part B.
At 1,000 feet, Jacques tested the Trieste's quartz arc lights, casting bright
white beams into the surrounding sea. Plankton streamed past. By 2,400 feet,
they had moved from the twilight zone to the abyssal zone, where not a trace of
Part A
Why were the tanks inside the float of the Trieste
important?
O 1. They were used to control the depth of the craft.
O2. They stored supplies that the explorers might
need to use.
3. They enabled the explorers to breathe while
they were submerged.
4. They made the craft strong enough to survive
the depths of the ocean.
Part B
Which detail from the passage best supports the correct
To Jacques's surprise and dismay, at about 340 feet below the surface,
the Trieste came to a stop. It had met a dense layer of cold water (a
thermocline), which blocked their descent. After a quick calculation, he made his answer from Part A?
craft less buoyant by releasing some of the gas from the tank above, and
the Trieste continued dropping into the darkness.
1. "Gasoline and air are lighter than water"
(Paragraph 2)
2. "And it had an air supply and purification