UCAT Verbal Reasoning questions
VR gives you 44 questions in 22 minutes: 30 seconds each, on passages you have not seen. The answer is always in the passage, so find the sentence, then decide. Try one below.
Radiocarbon dating
Living things take in carbon throughout their lives, including a small amount of a radioactive form, carbon-14. When an organism dies, it stops taking in carbon, and its carbon-14 slowly decays at a known rate. By measuring how much carbon-14 remains in a piece of wood, bone or cloth, scientists can estimate how long ago the organism died.
The method has limits. After about fifty thousand years, too little carbon-14 remains to measure reliably, so older material cannot be dated this way. The amount of carbon-14 in the atmosphere has also varied over time, so raw results must be calibrated against records of known age, such as tree rings counted year by year.
Contamination is a further risk. A sample that has absorbed newer carbon, for example from groundwater or from careless handling, will appear younger than it really is. Laboratories therefore clean samples carefully and often date several samples from the same site.
Archaeologists also stress that the method dates the death of the organism, not the use of the object. A beam cut from an old tree, or reused from an earlier building, may give a date earlier than the building in which it was found.
Statement: A beam reused from an older building could make the building it was found in seem older than it is.
The worked answer
Statement: A beam reused from an older building could make the building it was found in seem older than it is.
Answer: A: True
- The method dates when the tree died, “not the use of the object”.
- A reused beam “may give a date earlier than the building in which it was found”: True.
Ready for the whole test? Sit the full free UCAT mock: 184 questions, marked by subtest.
Two kinds of question
| Question | What to decide |
|---|---|
| True, False or Can't Tell | Does the passage support it, contradict it, or not settle it? |
| Four options | Which one does the passage best support? |
Save the seconds
- Read the question first, then scan for its key word.
- Can't Tell means the passage does not settle it. It does not mean you are unsure.
- Leave nothing blank. A wrong answer costs nothing.
The full method: VR strategy