AMY FASSLER: Hi, everyone.
I heard you're looking for some tips
on taking the AP Environmental Science exam.
My name is Amy Fassler, and I teach APES
at Marshfield High School.
Welcome to AP Daily Practice Session 1.
There's a PDF of all the questions
that we're going to be covering in the video.
So go ahead and open that up, as you can follow along
as we go through.
This first session is going to be on multiple choice
common option sets.
That's going to be our main focus.
We'll look at a couple of the regular multiple choice
questions as well.
Common option sets are those that start the multiple choice
section of the exam.
And they're common option sets because all
of the options or choices for a set of questions
are all the same.
So you're going to have four options that
are always the same and two to three questions that follow.
Let's take a look.
Which of the following graphs shows a population growing
at its biotic potential?
We want to make sure that we focus on the keywords that
are going to help me dial in on which of those graphs
shows that image.
So think to yourself a minute what biotic potential means,
and you can pause the video and see if you
can select the correct one.
Hopefully, you selected graph C. That's
showing a population that starts out slow,
starts growing exponentially, and it keeps
going at its biotic potential.
One of the things students might wonder
about is why letter A doesn't show a population growing
at its biotic potential because it looks
like it's increasing over time.
But notice that that's showing a linear relationship rather than
the more exponential growth curve in letter C.
Here's another question with the common options.
Which graph shows a population that has reached its carrying
capacity?
So, pause the video for a minute and think to yourself
what carrying capacity means.
If you selected letter B, you got it correct.
That population was growing at its biotic potential,
but hit limits to growth.
Here's another example of a question set.
In this case, the prompt or stimulus, that common options,
are not four different graphs, but a map
with four different letters represented on it.
Let's take a look at what this question is asking--
the area where new crust is being created
at a divergent plate boundary.
You should be able to pick letter B as the correct answer
here.
Letter B is showing me where plates are separating
and new Earth material is being formed.
The next question in this set is asking
me to select an area that is showing non-volcanic mountain
chain due to uplift.
And letter C is the correct answer here.
You might remember that that's Mount Everest, where
plates are coming together and pushing upward.
This question is asking you to identify an area where
one plate is being pushed beneath another plate
at a convergent plate boundary.
If you selected A, you got the correct answer.
To this is often referred to as the island
arc volcanoes, where one plate is
subducting underneath another.
Here's our last example of a common option set.
This is where you're going to select
a choice that is best fitting the statement looking
at water quality.
So, notice that our common options
are a word bank, or four different water quality
tests I could do.
Which of the following tests would
be used to determine the impact of logging
on streams in a watershed?
I'll give you a hint.
Remember that logging is going to take all those trees away
and loosen up the soil.
The correct answer for this one is B, turbidity.
Turbidity is going to increase that sediment
and make it very cloudy.
Another example from this question set on water quality--
which of the following tests would
be used to determine if water was contaminated
with runoff from a feedlot?
So, remember what's happening at a feedlot.
And you should have selected the correct answer is C, dissolved
oxygen. As that waste is broken down,
all of the dissolved oxygen is used up.
A lot of times, students might think
of this as turbidity because maybe a lot of feces
in the water could make it sort of cloudy.
But certainly, the best answer that we're
going to associate with runoff from a feedlot
is dissolved oxygen being lowered.
Let's take a look, now, at just the regular individual item
multiple choice questions.
This is one of my favorites.
This is a data analysis question where
we're being asked to explain the pattern in nitrogen oxide
concentration.
So the first thing you want to do
is, there's a lot going on this graph,
a lot of different pollutants.
Let's go ahead and clearly circle where the nitrogen oxide
is so that we make sure we're looking
at the correct line on the graph.
And we can see that, over time--
since I want to look for a pattern
and be able to explain that pattern,
the first thing I have to do is describe that pattern.
So I can see that, over time, the nitrogen oxide
concentration increases and then decreases.
Now I want to look at my options and see which of these options
best explains that.
Notice in letter A, it's saying that nitrogen oxide
is a secondary pollutant.
Right away, I can eliminate that choice
because nitrogen oxide is a primary pollutant.
The next choice, letter B, is saying
that it's formed in the lower atmosphere in the morning
by the rising sun.
And you might think, oh, that sounds kind of close,
but what they're really describing
there is how that nitrogen oxide leads to the formation of ozone
later in the day.
Nitrogen oxide is quickly absorbed by plants
and convert it into sugar.
I think they're talking about carbon dioxide there.
And finally, nitrogen oxide is produced by rush hour traffic
and quickly oxidized in the atmosphere.
That's the correct answer.
It's the one that explains the pattern or trend in the data.
Here's another example of a regular individual multiple
choice option question.
A scientist is studying PCBs in tertiary consumers.
She wants to determine if the PCBs can
be found in tertiary consumers even
though these compounds were banned in the United States
in the 1970s.
Which of the following identifies
a testable hypothesis for the student?
Take a look at those four choices.
Pause the video and see if you can come up
with the correct answer.
Choice D is the correct answer.
Those PCBs are persistent organic compounds
or persistent organic pollutants.
And they're fat soluble, so that they
accumulate in the fatty tissue in tertiary consumers.
Let's take a look at what's wrong with choice A.
It's telling us right away that PCBs
are highly soluble in water.
And because we identified PCBs in the stem of the question,
we stopped and thought, oh, I know
those PCBs are persistent organic pollutants
and that they're going to be fat soluble.
Letter B says that it kills most organisms really
quickly upon exposure, and that's just not true.
The characteristic of PCBs is that they accumulate.
And finally, that they have synergistic effects
and are broken down in soil and water--
and again, not a good way of describing PCBs.
Let's take a look at this next question,
which has this great model of the atmosphere.
And let's go through the stem of the question
and highlight the key information.
There are solid arrows.
That represents incoming solar radiation.
And there are dashed arrows.
That represents outgoing infrared radiation.
Here's the question we're trying to answer.
How many units of energy are absorbed by Earth's surface?
So you can pause the video for a moment
and see if you can interpret the diagram correctly.
Hopefully, you selected 120.
Notice that there are two down arrows showing
the amount of energy absorbed by Earth's surface.
There's the 50 units absorbed directly
by the incoming radiation, and 70 units
that are re-irradiated after that molecule strikes
a greenhouse gas.
Let's summarize some tips for answering multiple choice
questions.
Let's focus on those common options sets first.
Remember that they have choices that may be used more than once
or not at all.
Make sure you underline and identify key vocabulary
terms that are going to help you focus in on the question.
Interpret and label those diagrams.
You get over a minute per multiple choice question.
And I know that you're in a stressful time situation.
But go ahead and take a few moments and process
what's going on in the diagram, and avoid careless mistakes.
Answer the question in your mind first.
Process what the question saying even before you
look at those choices.
Read the entire question and all four responses.
Most of us are pretty good at that at this point.
And a really important one-- make
sure you cross out and eliminate wrong answers.
You can pick out some key word in there
that is making that choice incorrect
and eliminate it or get it off your plate.
Thanks for joining me.
We'll see you next time on the AP Daily Practice Sessions.