COMPASS-Test – Computer-adaptive Placement, Assessment, and Support System: English, Math, Writing

The Railways of Egypt

Egypt was the second country in the world, after the United Kingdom, to develop a railway system. The first railway ran from Cairo to Alexandria, a distance of 209 kilometers, and was built by the British engineer Robert Stephenson from 1851 to 1856. Stephenson had been hired by the Khedive, or Viceroy, Abbas I to head the project. The British were particularly interested in the railway as a means of reaching India in the days prior to the construction of the Suez Canal.

Stephenson served as Engineer in Chief to the Egyptian State Railway Company, which eventually extended the line from Cairo onwards to Assuit and to Luxor in 1898. This was truly a massive undertaking for the times. It involved not only the laying of track, but also the construction of several bridges spanning the Nile and its tributaries. The Imbaba Bridge was constructed in 1891 to allow trains to cross the Nile near Cairo, a key step to connect Lower and Upper Egypt. The contemporary Imbaba Bridge was erected in 1924 and represents the only railway crossing of the Nile in Cairo.

A number of private companies, such as the Qena-Aswan Railway Company, were also formed during the nineteenth century and provided service to smaller cities and into the Sudan, supplying military campaigns into that region. The Palestine Railway linked El Kantara with Palestine and Lebanon. It was built in two phases during the First and Second World Wars. Commenced in 1916, it was extended to Rafah on the border with Palestine as part of campaigns against the Ottoman Empire. The route was extended along the Mediterranean coast to link with Turkish Railways in 1940 and became a vital part of the supply route for Egypt.

Today, Egyptian Railway is the backbone of passenger transportation in Egypt. It provides 800 million passenger miles each year. Air-conditioned passenger trains usually have 1st and 2nd class service, while a lower class of service is maintained at low fares as a social service. Most of the network connects the densely populated area of the Nile delta between Cairo and Alexandria, just as the first rail line did long ago.

According to the passage, what is the meaning of Khedive?

The following sentences either have existing or require additional commas somewhere in their structures. Choose the option that best reflects proper comma usage in each sentence.

My cousin has moved to 56 Central Street Narragansett, Rhode Island 02882.

PASSAGE: The discoveries of the white dwarf, the neutron star, and the black hole, coming well after the discovery of the red giant are among eh most exciting developments in decades because they may be well present physicists with their greatest challenge since the failure of classical mechanics. In the life cycle of the star, after all of the hydrogen and helium fuel has been burned, the delicate balance between the outer nuclear radiation.pressure and the stable gravitational force becomes disturbed and slow contraction begins. As compression increases, a very dense plasma forms. If the initial star had mass of less than 1.4 solar masses (1.4 times the mass of our sun) , the process ceases at the density of 1,000 tons per cubic inch, and the star becomes the white dwarf. However, if the star was originally more massive, the white dwarf plasma can’t resist the gravitations pressures, and in rapid collapse, all nuclei of lthe star are converted to a gas of free neutrons. Gravitational attraction compresses this neutron gas rapidly until a density of 10 tons per cubic inch is reached; at this point the strong nuclear force resists further contraction. If the mass of the star was between 1.4 and a few solar masses, the process stops here, and we have a neutron star. But if the original star was more massive than a few solar masses, even the strong nuclear forces cannot resist the gravitational orunch. The neutrons are forced into one another to form heavier hadrons and these in turn coalesce to form heavier entities, of which we as yet know nothing. At this point, a complete collapse of the stellar mass occurs; existing theories predict a collapse to infinite density and infinitely small dimensions Well before this, however, the surface gravitational force would become so strong that no signal could ever leave the star – any photon emitted would fall back under gravitational attraction – and the star would become black hole in space. This gravitational collapse poses a fundamental challenge to physics. When the most widely accepted theories predict such improbable things as infinite density and infinitely small dimensions, it simply means that we are missing some vital insight. This last happened in physics in the 1930’s, when we faced the fundamental paradox concerning atomic structure. At that time, it was recognized that electrons moved in table orbits about nuclei in atoms. However, it was also recognized that if charge is accelerated, as it must be to remain in orbit, it radiates energy; so, theoretically, the electron would be expected eventually to spiral into the nucleus and destroy the atom. Studies centered around this paradox led to the development of quantum mechanics. It may well be that an equivalent t advance awaits us in investigating the theoretical problems presented by the phenomenon of gravitational collapse.

According to the passage, in the final stages of its devedlopment our own sun is likely to take the form of a