ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the coldest desert on Earth,

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which, for some reason, makes us crave ice cream.

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Huh. Cold weather's kinda weird.

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All right, well, check out the following passage. Here we go.

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All right, well, which of the following statements about Antarctica

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is accurate according to the passage?

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And here are the potential answers. [ ding ]

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[ chuckles ]

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All right, well, we can get the ball rolling by eliminating option A.

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Even though Antarctica is cold and we usually equate cold with snow,

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the passage tells us that Antarctica gets very little precipitation.

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Hopefully they still get snow days, though, but it sounds unlikely.

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[ aww ]

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We can also rule out option B.

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The passage states that the continent's forbidding climate

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prevents extensive plant and animal life.

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Looks like they're stuck watching silly cat videos on YouTube.

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I can haz Shmoop. [ meow ]

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We also safely eliminate option D, because the last sentence of the passage

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tells us that the whole continent is a scientific preserve.

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We're more strawberry preserve kind of people, but we'll settle for scientific

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if we have to.

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The correct answer here is option C -

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Antarctica is the coldest continent on Earth,

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and it is a desert.

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Even though Antarctica is

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very different from the hot, sandy deserts we usually picture,

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it still is technically a desert.

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But we imagine mirages there are...

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quite a bit different.

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[ ah ]

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