2017年1月北美SAT整体分析

与亚洲卷（或去年6月北美卷）相比，1月北美SAT真题文学偏简单，科学三篇难度照常是最简单的。最难的还是历史双篇，选自林肯和道格拉斯著名的7场辩论赛之一。语法方面难点还是在词汇题上，但是有些单纯语法题也有坑，拿到370以上还是有相当难度的。

1月SAT真题阅读回顾

第一篇文学：The Angel’s Game /Carlos Ruiz Zafon

原文地址：http://literarymusings-blog.blogspot.jp/2010/06/friends-made-of-paper-and-ink.html

文章大意：讲主人公小时候在巴塞罗那的经历。主人公小时候和别的小朋友不一样，别人都不识字的时候他就阅万卷了。但是他爸不喜欢他读书，他只能偷偷读。然后讲了一下主人公在最喜欢的书店里读到了查尔斯狄更斯，觉得这是最好的礼物。

第二篇社会科学：Why null results rarely see the light of day /Jeffrey Mervis

原文链接：http://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6200/992

部分原文：

A team at Stanford University reports online this week in Science that scientists are unlikely to even write up an experiment that produces so-called null results. A study of 221 survey-based experiments funded by the TESS (Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences) program at the National Science Foundation has found that almost two-thirds of the experiments yielding null findings are stuck in a file drawer rather than being submitted to a journal, and only 21% are published. In contrast, 96% of the experiments that yield strong results are written up, and 62% of them are published. Such practices by researchers can skew the literature and lead to wasteful duplication, the authors argue. To combat the problem, the authors call for a social science registry that would contain all such data, as well as descriptions of the methodology used to analyze the results.

文章大意：文章主要分析为什么实验当中的null result（零结果）从来得不到关注和发表。科学家们做了个实验来研究原因，随后作者表达了对零结果偏见带来坏处的担心，最后给出解决办法。

第三篇自然科学：Salt stretches in nanoworld /Rachel Ehenberg

原文链接：https://www.sciencenews.org/article/salt-stretches-nanoworld

部分原文：

Inflexible old salt becomes a softy in the nanoworld, stretching like taffy to more than twice its length, researchers report in the June 10 Nano Letters. The findings may lead to new approaches for making nanowires that could end up in solar cells or electronic circuits. The work also suggests that these ultra-tiny salt wires may already exist in sea spray and large underground salt deposits.

“We think nanowires are special and go to great lengths to make them,” says study coauthor Nathan Moore of Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. “Maybe they are more common than we think.”

文章大意：描述了一个神奇的现象：inflexible salt在nanoworld是soft的。作者随后告诉我们这个现象是怎么被发现的，背后的原理，以及在技术当中的应用。

第四篇历史双篇：The Lincoln-Douglas Debates /Stephen Lincoln，Abraham Douglas

原文链接：http://housedivided.dickinson.edu/debates/cloud/government.html

部分原文：

Here are the most important and material resolutions of this Abolition platform:

1. Resolved, That we believe this truth to be self-evident, that when parties become subversive of the ends for which they are established, or incapable of restoring the government to the true principles of the constitution, it is the right and duty of the people to dissolve the political bands by which they may have been connected therewith, and to organize new parties upon such principles and with such views as the circumstances and exigencies of the nation may demand.

文章大意：第一篇是道格拉斯指责林肯，认为后者觉得Constitution违背了law of God因此cannot stand是不对的，他认为美国人口和地域能不断扩大证明现有的Constitution就是合理的；林肯在第二篇里指出道格拉斯误解了他说的 “Constitution can not stand”，他认为各地区存在差异是合理的，但是当讨论到expansion的时候slavery就会存在问题。

第五篇自然科学：What A Plant Knows A FIELD GUIDE TO THE SENSES /Daniel Chamovitz

原文链接：https://www.amazon.com/What-Plant-Knows-Field-Senses/dp/0374533881

文章大意：文章主要讨论扑蝇器的原理。文章使用short-term memory来解释扑蝇器是怎么储存信息的，然后提出一个model来验证。