Updated 2026-08-23intermediate

TOEFL Reading Practice #010 — The Wind That Wasn't the Problem

Free TOEFL Reading practice: The Wind That Wasn't the Problem. 11 questions with a full passage and answer key.

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How to use this practice: Read the passage once without a dictionary, then answer the questions on your own. Tap “Answer” under each question to reveal just the correct letter — no explanations, so you can keep testing yourself.
1

Passage

Read the full passage. Bracketed letters like [A] mark the four positions for the insert-text question.

The Wind That Wasn't the Problem

¶1 A suspension bridge is only as strong as its ability to move without breaking. In July 1940, engineers in Washington State opened one across the Puget Sound, linking Tacoma to the far shore. From its first days, drivers noticed something strange: in even a moderate wind, the roadway rolled up and down in long, smooth waves instead of simply swaying side to side. The motion earned the bridge its nickname, Galloping Gertie, and engineers who studied it judged it uncomfortable but not dangerous. Four months later, a wind of only about forty miles an hour, far weaker than what the bridge had been designed to withstand, tore the roadway apart and sent it into the water below.

¶2 The wind that afternoon did not blow in one steady sheet. [A] As it crossed the roadway, it separated into swirling pockets of air that pushed against the bridge first from above and then from below. [B] Every object has a natural rhythm at which it moves most easily, the way a playground swing rises highest when each push lands at exactly the right moment. [C] The wind's pushes that day happened to arrive in almost exactly that rhythm. This matching effect is called resonance: each new push lands at the peak of the last swing and adds to it. [D] Because of this pattern, the twisting did not settle down; each cycle added a little more, until the steel could no longer bend without breaking.

¶3 By mid-morning on November 7, the roadway was twisting so far that one edge of the deck rose several meters above the other before snapping back the opposite way. Drivers abandoned their cars in the middle of the span and crawled to safety along the swaying sidewalk. An engineering professor happened to be filming the bridge's motion that morning and captured its final collapse on camera. Just before eleven o'clock, a section of roadway broke free and fell into the water below, and slabs of concrete followed. No one on the bridge was killed, though a dog left behind in a car went down with the wreckage.

¶4 To the public, the collapse looked like proof that the wind that day had simply been too strong for the bridge to survive. Engineers who studied film of the disaster found the opposite. The wind on November 7 was only moderate, well within the range the bridge had been designed to handle if it blew steadily. What destroyed the bridge was not the wind's strength but its rhythm, and the solid, plate-like sides that gave the roadway its modern look were exactly what let the wind's pockets form in a steady beat. Engineers who rebuilt the crossing years later used open steel trusses instead of solid sides, letting wind pass through rather than push against a flat wall. Wind-tunnel testing of bridge models also became standard practice worldwide.

  • truss: a framework of steel beams with open spaces, used here so wind can pass through instead of pushing against a solid wall
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Questions

11 questions — every TOEFL Reading question type, in test order.

Q1 · Vocabulary
The word withstand in paragraph 1 ("far weaker than what the bridge had been designed to withstand") is closest in meaning to
  1. A. endure
  2. B. measure
  3. C. avoid
  4. D. predict
Answer
Correct: A
Q2 · Reference
The word it in paragraph 2 ("As it crossed the roadway, it separated into swirling pockets of air that pushed against the bridge first from above and then from below.") refers to
  1. A. the roadway
  2. B. the bridge
  3. C. the wind
  4. D. the rhythm
Answer
Correct: C
Q3 · Essential Term
Based on the information in the passage, the term resonance can best be explained as
  1. A. a general term for any strong gust of wind that damages a structure
  2. B. a repeated matching between a push's rhythm and an object's natural rhythm, so that each push adds to the last
  3. C. the natural rhythm at which any object moves before anything disturbs it
  4. D. the sound produced when metal bends under heavy pressure
Answer
Correct: B
Q4 · Factual Information
According to paragraph 2, why did the bridge's twisting grow larger with each cycle of wind?
  1. A. Each new push arrived at the same point in the bridge's motion as the one before it, so the pushes added together instead of canceling out
  2. B. The wind grew steadily stronger throughout the afternoon
  3. C. The bridge's steel cables had already begun to weaken before the storm
  4. D. Engineers had built the roadway with unusually thin steel
Answer
Correct: A
Q5 · Negative Fact
According to paragraph 3, all of the following are true of the morning the bridge collapsed EXCEPT
  1. A. Drivers abandoned their cars and crawled to safety along the sidewalk
  2. B. An engineering professor recorded the collapse on film
  3. C. A section of the roadway fell into the water before the concrete slabs did
  4. D. Several people were killed when the roadway collapsed
Answer
Correct: D
Q6 · Sentence Simplification
Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in paragraph 4? Incorrect choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

Highlighted: "What destroyed the bridge was not the wind's strength but its rhythm, and the solid, plate-like sides that gave the roadway its modern look were exactly what let the wind's pockets form in a steady beat."
  1. A. The bridge failed because of the wind's rhythm rather than its strength, and the solid roadway design that gave the bridge its modern look was actually what allowed that rhythm to form.
  2. B. The bridge failed because the wind grew far stronger than engineers had expected, damaging its modern-looking solid sides.
  3. C. The solid, modern design of the roadway made the bridge stronger against wind of any rhythm or strength.
  4. D. Engineers only removed the solid sides of the roadway because they wanted the bridge to look more modern.
Answer
Correct: A
Q7 · Inference
Based on the information in paragraphs 2 and 4, what can be inferred about a steady wind that was much stronger than the wind on November 7 but did not match the bridge's natural rhythm?
  1. A. It would have caused the same kind of resonance and destroyed the bridge just as quickly
  2. B. It might not have caused the same destructive twisting, since resonance depends on matching rhythm rather than raw wind strength
  3. C. It would have been too weak to move the roadway at all
  4. D. It would have been blocked entirely by the bridge's solid sides
Answer
Correct: B
Q8 · Rhetorical Purpose
Why does the author mention that engineers who studied the bridge's early motion judged it "uncomfortable but not dangerous"?
  1. A. To argue that the engineers who built the bridge were not qualified for the job
  2. B. To compare the bridge's design to that of older suspension bridges
  3. C. To show that even experts underestimated the danger of a motion that would later destroy the bridge
  4. D. To explain the specific wind speed the bridge had been designed to withstand
Answer
Correct: C
Q9 · Paragraph Relation
How does paragraph 3 relate to paragraph 2?
  1. A. It shows that the resonance effect described in paragraph 2 failed to occur on November 7
  2. B. It describes the specific real-world result of the resonance effect explained in paragraph 2
  3. C. It introduces a different, unrelated cause of the bridge's collapse
  4. D. It contradicts the explanation of the bridge's motion given in paragraph 2
Answer
Correct: B
Q10 · Insert Text
Look at the four squares [■] in paragraph 2 that indicate where the following sentence could be added.

This matching does not require a strong wind, only a persistent one.

Where would the sentence best fit?
  1. A. Square A
  2. B. Square B
  3. C. Square C
  4. D. Square D
Answer
Correct: D
Q11 · Prose Summary Select THREE · 2 pts
Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage. Some sentences do not belong in the summary because they express ideas that are not presented in the passage or are minor ideas in the passage. This question is worth 2 points.

In 1940, a new suspension bridge in Washington State collapsed just months after opening, and the cause turned out to be not the strength of the wind but the rhythm of its pushes matching the bridge's own natural motion.

  1. A. The wind's pushes matched the bridge's natural rhythm, a matching effect called resonance that made the twisting grow larger with each cycle.
  2. B. Drivers abandoned their cars and escaped along the bridge's swaying sidewalk on the morning it collapsed.
  3. C. The bridge's solid, plate-like sides, which had made it look modern, were what allowed the wind to form a steady rhythm against it.
  4. D. The wind that struck the bridge on November 7 was far weaker than the level the bridge had been designed to withstand.
  5. E. After the collapse, engineers began testing bridge models in wind tunnels and replaced solid roadway sides with open steel trusses.
  6. F. The bridge was rebuilt using the same solid, plate-like sides as the original, to keep wind from passing through.
Answer
Correct: A, C, D