Absolute Free MCAT Exam Practice for Comprehensive Preparation 

Elephants have large flat feet. It helps them, having heavy weight, in walking properly on ground and

maintaining proper body posture by:

Gauguin's attitude toward art marked a break from the past and a beginning to modern art. Like all PostImpressionist artists, he passed through an Impressionist phase but became quickly dissatisfied with the

limitations of the style, and went on to discover a new style that had the directness and universality of a symbol

and that concentrated on impressions, ideas and experiences. The beginning of his modern tradition lay in his

rejection of Impressionism. He considered naturalism an error to be avoided. He was preoccupied with

suggestion rather than description, seeking to portray not the exterior, but the essence of things in their purest,

simplest, and most primitive form, which could only be achieved through simplification of the form. He firmly

believed throughout his life that “art is an abstraction” and that “this abstraction [must be derived] from nature

while dreaming before it.” One must think of the creation that will result rather than the model, and not try to

render the model exactly as one sees it. This was the birth of “Synthetism” or rather Synthetist-Symbolic, as

Gauguin referred to it, using the term “symbolic” to indicate that the forms and patterns in his pictures were

meant to suggest mental images or ideas and not simply to record visual experience.

Symbolism flourished around the period of 1885 to 1910 and can be defined as the rejection of direct, literal

representation in favor of evocation and suggestion. Painters tried to give a visual expression to emotional

experiences, and therefore the movement was a reaction against the naturalistic aims of Impressionism.

Satisfying the need for a more spiritual or emotional approach in art, Symbolism is characterized by the desire

to seek refuge in a dreamworld of beauty and the belief that color and line in themselves could express ideas.

Stylistically, the tendency was towards flattened forms and broad areas of color, and features of the movement

were an intense religious feeling and an interest in subjects of death, disease, and sin.

Similarly, “Synthetism” involved the simplification of forms into large-scale patterns and the expressive

purification of colors. Form and color had to be simplified for the sake of expression. This style reacted against

the “formlessness” of Impressionism and favored painting subjectively and expressing one's ideas rather than

relying on external objects as subject matters. It was characterized by areas of pure colors, very defined

contours, an emphasis on pattern and decorative qualities, and a relative absence of shadows.

Gauguin's new art form merged these two movements and succeeded in freeing color, form, and line, bringing

it to express the artists' emotions, sensibilities, and personal experiences of the world around them. His style

created a break with the old tradition of descriptive naturalism and favored the synthesis of observation and

imagination. Gauguin sustained that forms are not discovered in nature but in one's wild imagination, and it was

in himself that he searched rather than in his surroundings. For this reason, he scorned the Impressionists for

their lack of imagination and their mere scientific reasoning. Furthermore, Gauguin used color unnaturalistically

for its decorative or emotional effect and reintroduced emphatic outlines. “Synthetism” signified for him that the

forms of his pictures were constructed from symbolic patterns of color and linear rhythms and were not mere

scientific reproductions of what is seen by the eye.

Dempsey, A., & Dempsey, A. (2010). Styles, Schools and Movements: The Essential Encyclopaedic Guide to

Modern Art. London: Thames & Hudson.

Given the passage’s discussion of Synthetist-Symbolism, and some undiscussed remarks about how Japanese

art influenced Gauguin’s work, which of these features of Japanese painting can be reasonably assumed to

characterize Gauguin’s art form?

Synthetic dyes constitute a commercially significant area of organic chemistry. The color producing properties

of these compounds are the result of highly delocalized electron systems giving rise to electronic transitions

whose absorptions occur in the visible region. Most commercially useful dyes can be classified as one of three

types – anthraquinones, azo dyes, or triarylmethyl salts. Examples of each type are illustrated in Figure 1.

Section: Biological Sciences 

There are two opposing theories of light: the particle theory and the wave theory. According to the particle

theory, light is composed of a stream of tiny particles that are subject to the same physical laws as other types

of elementary particles. One consequence of this is that light particles should travel in a straight line unless an

external force acts on them. According to the wave theory, light is a wave that shares the characteristics of

other waves. Among other things, this means that light waves should interfere with each other under certain

conditions.

In support of the wave theory of light, Thomas Young’s double slit experiment proves that light does indeed

exhibit interference. Figure 1 shows the essential features of the experiment. Parallel rays of monochromatic

light pass through two narrow slits and are projected onto a screen. Constructive interference occurs at certain

points on the screen, producing bright areas of maximum light intensity. Between these maxima, destructive

interference produces light intensity minima. The positions of the maxima are given by the equation d sin θ= nλ,

where d is the distance between the slits, θ is the angle shown in Figure 1, the integer n specifies the particular

maxima, and λ is the wavelength of the incident light. (Note: sin θ ≈ tan θ ≈ θ for small angles.)

Section: Physical Sciences 

Equation 3 where M is the molar mass of the gas particles. The average distance a particle travels between collisions is known as the mean free path l. Intuitively, the mean free path (mfp) could be expected to be larger for gases at low pressure, since there is a lot of space between particles. Similarly, the mfp should be larger when the gas particles are small. The following expression for the mfp shows this to be correct.

Section: Physical Sciences