MCAT English (Reading Comprehension) for Medical College Aptitude Test Preparation (Part VI)
Medical College Entry Test (MCAT) Online Preparation from Topic "Reading Comprehension" (03 Passages and 10 Questions)
Passage #1
In addition to practical reasons for using brick as the principal construction material, there was also an ideological reason, Brick represented durability and permanence. The Virginia Company of London instructed the colonists to build hospitals and new residences out of brick. In 1662, the Town Act of the Virginia Assembly provided with the approval for the construction of thirty two buildings and prohibited the use of wood as a construction material. Had this law ever been successfully enforced, Jamestown would have been a model city: Instead, the residents failed to comply fully with the law and by 1699 Jamestown had collapsed into a pile of rubble with only three or four habitable houses.
Passage #2
If one were to ask a group of randomly selected individuals to define "price" many would reply that price is an amount of money paid by the buyer to the seller of a product or service or, in other words, that price is the money value of a product or service as agreed upon in a market transaction. This definition is of course, valid as far as it goes. For a complete understanding of a price in any particular transaction, much more than the amount of money involved must be known. Both the buyer and the seller should be familiar with not only the money amount, but also with the amount and quality of the product or service to be exchanged, the time and place at which the exchange will take place and payment will be made, the form of money to be used, the credit terms and discounts that apply to the transaction, guarantees on the product or service, delivery terms, return privileges, and other factors. In other words, both buyer and seller should be fully aware of all the factors that comprise the total "package" being exchanged for the asked-for amount of money in order to evaluate a given price.
Passage #3
The apparent brightness of a star as we see it from the Earth is its apparent magnitude (m). A fairly bright star such as Aldebaran is of first magnitude (i.e. has = 1), a rather fainter one such as the polestar has m = 2 and so on. The faintest star visible to the naked eye has m = 6, and is 100 times fainter than a star of m = 1. The faintest detectable stars have m = 23. At the other end of the scale, stars brighter than first magnitude can have m = 0(e.g. Alpha Centauri) or even minus values, such as Sirius with m = -1.5. The Sun has m = -26. A star's apparent magnitude depends upon both its real brightness and its distance from us. It can happen that a star which is really very luminous can appear faint simply because it is far away. To compare the real brightness of stars, astronomers use absolute magnitude (M), this is the apparent magnitude a star would have if placed at a standard distance from the Earth of 32.6 light years. The Sun has M = 4.8 while Aldebaran has M = 0.1. Aldebaran is thus inherently nearly 100 times more luminous than the Sun.
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