Reading Standards for Informational Text > Reading and Comprehending Informational Texts Proficiently (CCSS.RI.4.10) Practice Test

In many cities, summer feels extra hot. Dark roads and roofs absorb heat, which means they soak it up like a sponge. During the day, these surfaces get warmer than grass or water. At night, they cool slowly, so the city stays warm after sunset. This is called the urban heat island effect. There are simple ways to reduce it. Light-colored, reflective roofs bounce heat away. Shade from trees blocks sunlight and lowers the temperature on sidewalks. You can test this idea: touch a blacktop playground and a grassy field on the same sunny day. The blacktop will feel hotter because it holds more heat. By choosing materials that reflect, not absorb, heat, people can make neighborhoods more comfortable.

Before phones, people sent messages by telegraph. Samuel Morse helped design a code of dots and dashes so words could travel along wires. An operator pressed a key to make short and long clicks. The clicks moved through the wire to the next town, where another operator heard them and wrote the letters. Stations could relay, or pass along, the message from place to place very quickly. A battery supplied power, and the metal wire carried the signal like a road for electricity. Even though a single wire could stretch for miles, the message still arrived in minutes, not days. Compared to a horseback rider or a train, the telegraph made long-distance news travel fast and more reliably.