Passage Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything
Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything
Located underground near Geneva, Switzerland, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) helps scientists study and understand how the smallest particles of matter interact with one another. The LHC propels atomic particle beams along a 17-mile-long ring.
There are the things the world is made of,
things we can see and feel, and then
there are the things even smaller, things that seem
to exist only when we are looking right at them.
So beneath the level of molecules are atoms,
and beneath the level of atoms, we find
protons, electrons, neutrons; and beneath that—
what, exactly? Because we are talking about
everything here: your fingernail,
the candy at the back of your mouth,
the coffee your teacher drank this morning,
your little sister, and the stuffed dog
she used to carry around with her everywhere.
And everywhere.
Everything and everywhere
are made up of the same stuff, whatever
it is. How do we find it? We can listen for it
in the wavelengths from deep space,
talking back to us from unimaginable
distances. Or we can build long,
deep circular tunnels beneath the surface
of this Earth and race particles
(like racing cars, only very tiny cars
flashing along at close to the speed of light)
until everything we think we know
bangs against everything else we know.
And there, in the explosion, in the darkness,
briefly incandescent, they appear:
the quarks, the leptons, and the bosons;
the baryons and the mesons. Their names
sound like dinosaurs or maybe bands
playing terrible music in someone’s garage.
The one thing we know for sure
is that they spin. This is how gravity
enters our world, how our world is held
both together and apart, what keeps
together the pencil in your hand right now
as well as separate from, say,
Jupiter. They spin, and it is only down there
in the darkness—in the vast garage
where physicists jot down
what they can, whatever seems most real—
that they let us perceive their wild dancing,
combusting to the music they make.
Question
The break between the second stanza (lines 5–14) and the third stanza (lines 15–26) serves as a transition from
- Aidentifying common physical objects to explaining how the particles that make up all physical things are observed.
- Bsuggesting that the visible world is made up of simple materials to revealing why invisible materials make the world complicated.
- Cdiscussing the methods used to study particles in space to describing how matter is researched on Earth.
- Ddescribing an environment that feels comfortable to characterizing an environment that seems unstable.
Show the answer
Correct answer: A
The question asks how the break between the second stanza (lines 5–14) and the third stanza (lines 15–26) serves as a transition between ideas.
A. CORRECT. The second stanza describes physical objects, including “your fingernail, / the candy at the back of your mouth, / the coffee your teacher drank this morning” (lines 9–11) and even “the stuffed dog” that “your little sister” (line 12) carries around. In the third stanza, the speaker introduces the topic of observation by asking, “How do we find it?” in line 17. Lines 17–18 offer one possible method for finding “it” (“We can listen for it / in the wavelengths from deep space”), while lines 20–22 describe a second method (“Or we can build long, / deep circular tunnels beneath the surface / of this Earth and race particles”). With these details, the focus of the poem shifts toward explaining how the particles that make up everything are observed.
B. Incorrect. While the speaker does list common items such as “candy” and “coffee” (lines 10–11) that many people are familiar with and that seem to be simple in composition or structure, the speaker does not imply in the third stanza that invisible objects complicate the world. In fact, the speaker claims that everything is “made up of the same stuff” (line 16), which simplifies the invisible world.
C. Incorrect. The second stanza focuses on the structure of matter (“beneath the level of molecules are atoms, / and beneath the level of atoms, we find / protons, electrons, neutrons” [lines 5–7]) and does not discuss the methods used to explore this structure in space. The third stanza mentions space (“We can listen for it / in the wavelengths from deep space” [lines 17–18]) and how we can “race particles” (line 22) on Earth but does not compare the methods of study used in these different locations.
D. Incorrect. While the second stanza describes items that are familiar to readers, including “your fingernail, / the candy at the back of your mouth, / the coffee your teacher drank this morning” (lines 9–11), the familiarity of these items does not necessarily mean they are part of a comfortable environment. The third stanza discusses studying the parts of matter “until everything we think we know / bangs against everything else we know” (lines 25–26). The “banging” the speaker refers to is not related to an unstable environment but rather to the mysteries of atomic structure.
Question analysis
This structure question on the poem “Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything,” about the Large Hadron Collider, asks what shift the break between the second stanza (lines 5–14) and the third stanza (lines 15–26) marks. Students must sum up what each stanza is doing and check that both halves of a two-part choice fit, each matched to the right stanza.
- NYS standards
- 7R5 structure and genre features
- Grade level
- Grade 7 reading and task
- Compared with grade 7
- At grade 7 Explaining how a stanza break shifts a poem’s focus is regular grade 7 structure work. Both stanzas use everyday language, and each two-part choice must be checked half by half, a typical grade 7 demand.
- Estimated difficulty
- Straightforward: two steps or one careful reading.
- Thinking it demands
- Depth of knowledge 2, skills and concepts · mainly analyze
- What makes it hard
- How, not what minor
- Every choice must be checked minor
- Evidence
- Answered from several paragraphs or stanzas
- Reading level
- Passage: 346 words (a poem; reading level not measured); question and choices: about grade 12, 84 words.
- Students, last 30 days
- Not enough answers yet to show (it takes 10).
Why it is hard, traps and wrong answers (shows the answer)
Why it is hard
The shift is easy to hear: stanza 2 closes with a list running from a fingernail to a stuffed dog and “everywhere,” and stanza 3 asks how the shared stuff can be found. The wrong choices fail on one half or put content in the wrong stanza, the most tempting being the one that splits stanza 3’s two methods, deep space and underground tunnels, across the break. Checking each half against its own stanza separates them.
How, not what minor Working it out
The stem asks what the stanza break marks, so students must sum up what stanza 2 does, listing everyday things made of particles, and what stanza 3 does, asking “How do we find it?” (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001)
Every choice must be checked minor Choosing the answer
Every choice has a “from” half and a “to” half, and each half must be matched to its own stanza, so a choice can fail on either side or by moving content across the break. (Embretson & Wetzel, 1987)
Strategy: Write a few words for what stanza 2 does and a few for what stanza 3 does, then choose the pair that matches both, in the right order.
Traps
- Half right: One half of a two-part choice is right and the other is not.
- Wrong part of the text: A choice is true of another paragraph, stanza or speaker than the one asked about.
- Wrong tone or attitude: Misjudges the tone, attitude or point of view, such as reading admiration as criticism, or taking a character's or subject's feelings for the author's.
The wrong answers, classified
B Half right (King et al., 2004; Thissen, Steinberg & Fitzpatrick, 1989)
Accepts that stanza 2 lists everyday things but then reads stanza 3 as making the world complicated, though it says everything is “made up of the same stuff.”
C Wrong part of the text (Kirsch & Mosenthal, 1990)
Notices the “wavelengths from deep space” and the tunnels “beneath the surface / of this Earth,” but both methods come in stanza 3, and stanza 2 describes no methods at all.
D Wrong tone or attitude (Graesser, Singer & Trabasso, 1994)
Feels the coziness of candy and a sister’s stuffed dog, then hears “bangs against” as an unstable place, though the collisions belong to the particle experiment, not to anyone’s surroundings.
Working it out, step by step
Understand the transition question
This asks what changes at the break between stanza 2 and stanza 3. A stanza is a group of lines in a poem, like a paragraph. A transition is a move from one idea to the next. Each choice has a “from” part and a “to” part, and both must match.
Sum up stanza 2, lines 5–14
Stanza 2 goes smaller and smaller: molecules, then atoms, then “protons, electrons, neutrons.” Then it turns to everyday things made of that tiny stuff: “your fingernail, / the candy at the back of your mouth, / the coffee your teacher drank this morning.” It ends with a little sister and her stuffed dog. These are common physical objects, things you can touch.
Sum up stanza 3, lines 15–26
Stanza 3 says all things are “made up of the same stuff.” Then line 17 asks, “How do we find it?” The rest of the stanza gives two answers. We can listen “in the wavelengths from deep space.” Or they can build tunnels and race particles, the tiny bits that make up matter. So stanza 3 is about how people observe, or study, those particles.
Check both halves of each choice
- A fits. Stanza 2 names common things. Stanza 3 explains how particles are found.
- B does not fit. Stanza 3 says everything is the same stuff. It never says hidden materials make the world complicated.
- C does not fit. Stanza 2 has no methods at all. Both ways of searching, in space and on Earth, come in stanza 3.
- D does not fit. Candy and a stuffed dog are familiar, but no comfortable place is described. The banging in line 26 is particles crashing in a tunnel.
Choose the answer
Watch out: C is tempting because the poem does mention deep space and the Earth. But both come after the break, so C splits stanza 3 in two. So the answer is A.
Why this answer and not the closest wrong one
C comes closest, because space and the Earth are both in the poem. But they sit side by side in stanza 3, as two ways to search. Stanza 2 searches for nothing; it lists things from a fingernail to a stuffed dog. A matches each stanza: everyday objects first, then how scientists find the particles inside them.
More questions like this
The original DOE question
The passage “Looking for the Smallest Spark of Everything” as printed (pages 32–33)
