Cambridge 13 Reading Test 4 - Answers With Explanation

1. Clippers were "built to transport goods around the world, although some also took passengers" — goods came first, passengers were secondary — FALSE.

2. A "cutty sark" is "an old Scottish name for a short nightdress" worn by the witch Nannie — the ship is named after the garment, not a character — FALSE.

3. Willis "ensured that the contract with them put him in a very strong position. In the end, the firm was forced out of business" — TRUE.

4. "Cutty Sark was designed to make the journey more quickly than any other ship" in the tea trade — TRUE.

5. "Cutty Sark reached London a week after Thermopylae" despite her early lead — FALSE.

6. "Steam ships reduced the journey time between Britain and China by approximately two months" using the new canal route — TRUE.

7. The passage says clippers needed ocean winds and steam ships could use the canal, but never states whether steam ships also sometimes took the ocean route — NOT GIVEN.

8. Woodget took the ship "further south than any previous captain, bringing her dangerously close to icebergs" — TRUE.

9. Her most successful period involved "transporting wool from Australia to Britain."

10. Woodget "was an excellent navigator, who got the best out of both his ship and his crew."

11. "Badly damaged in a gale in 1922, she was put into Falmouth harbour... for repairs."

12. "Dowman used Cutty Sark as a training ship, and she continued in this role after his death" until 1954.

13. "The ship suffered from fire in 2007, and again, less seriously, in 2014."

14. Healthy soil holds microorganisms "living amid decomposing plants and various minerals."

15. Soil microorganisms "lock in their carbon content, holding three times the amount of carbon as does the entire atmosphere."

16. "Soils also store water, preventing flood damage."

17. "Agriculture is by far the biggest problem" behind soil degradation.

18. "Humans tend not to return unused parts of harvested crops directly to the soil to enrich it" — the nutrients stay out of the soil.

19. "Chemical fertilisers can release polluting nitrous oxide into the atmosphere and excess is often washed away with the rain, releasing pollutants into rivers."

20. After Floris's mix was applied, "a good crop of plants emerged that were not just healthy at the surface, but had roots strong enough to pierce dirt as hard as rock."

21. The zero-net-degradation idea is "an easily understood concept that can help shape expectations and encourage action" for policy-makers who don't speak scientists' language.

22. Floris "came to realise that the best way to ensure his trees flourished was to take care of the soil" — his personal motivation.

23. "In the wild, when plants grow they remove nutrients from the soil, but then when the plants die and decay these nutrients are returned directly to the soil" — how it stayed healthy before farming.

24. The Global Soil Map project takes "measurements from field surveys, drone surveys, satellite imagery, lab analyses and so on."

25. "Several researchers are agitating for the immediate creation of protected zones for endangered soils."

26. "There is no agreed international system for classifying soil" — a key reason an overview is hard to build.

27. "Those who think in this way are oblivious to the vast philosophical literature in which the meaning and value of happiness have been explored and questioned" — they're ignorant of the relevant ideas.

28. "The Greek philosopher Aristotle may have identified happiness with self-realisation" — an alternative to Bentham's pleasure-and-pain view, suggesting happiness is more than that.

29. Bentham's money-based measure "set the stage for the entangling of psychological research and capitalism that would shape the business practices of the twentieth century" — linking work and psychology.

30. Bentham wrote to the Home Office "suggesting that the departments of government be linked together through a set of 'conversation tubes'" — better communication.

31. He designed "a printing device that could produce unforgeable banknotes" — increasing security.

32. His "frigidarium" was meant "to keep provisions such as meat, fish, fruit and vegetables fresh" — preservation of food.

33. In his Panopticon prison, "prisoners would be kept in solitary confinement while being visible at all times to the guards" — constant observation.

34. Bentham "suggested two ways" happiness "might be quantified" — pulse rate or money — his approach to measurement.

35. The book "places the current cult of happiness in a well-defined historical framework" and shows "how economic problems are being redefined and treated as psychological maladies" — a real strength.

36. Bentham treated pleasure as uniformly measurable by pulse or price, treating all pleasurable sensations as comparable on one scale — the text gives no basis for saying some emotions are harder to measure than others — NO.

37. "When he became president of the American Psychological Association in 1915, he had never even studied a single human being: his research had been confined to experiments on white rats" — NO.

38. Britain's Behaviour Insights Team is mentioned, but there's no comparison of Watson's influence on governments inside versus outside America — NOT GIVEN.

39. "Modern industrial societies appear to need the possibility of ever-increasing happiness to motivate them in their labours" — YES.

40. The final line calls the idea that "governments should be responsible for promoting happiness... always a threat to human freedom" — the writer disagrees — NO.