Updated 2026-08-23upper

TOEFL Reading Practice #023 — Why Almost No Shooting Star Ever Reaches the Ground

Free TOEFL Reading practice: Why Almost No Shooting Star Ever Reaches the Ground. 11 questions with a full passage and answer key.

Read inEnglish한국어Español日本語हिन्दी
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.

Why Almost No Shooting Star Ever Reaches the Ground

¶1 Every clear night, small streaks of light flash across the sky. Observers call all of them shooting stars, but none of these streaks are actually stars. Each one is a small chunk of rock or metal, called a meteoroid, burning as it plunges into the atmosphere. What decides the outcome is not how bright the streak looks or how fast it moves. It comes down almost entirely to size, and that one factor splits meteoroids into two very different outcomes. Some burn away completely, and these are called meteors. A rare few reach the surface intact, and these are called meteorites.

¶2 Most meteoroids burn away completely because they are tiny, no larger than a grain of sand or a pebble. Even so, they travel at enormous speed, often more than twenty kilometers per second. Friction with the air heats a meteoroid's outer surface far faster than heat can spread through its interior. That outer layer boils off almost instantly, a process called ablation. A fresh layer is exposed to the same intense heat a moment later. For an object this small, the entire mass ablates within seconds, well above seventy kilometers in altitude, long before gravity could pull it any closer. The Perseid meteor shower, visible every August, is made almost entirely of dust and gravel shed by a passing comet. Even though dozens of Perseid streaks can appear in a single hour, essentially none of that debris ever reaches the ground. Every particle finishes ablating high in the atmosphere.

¶3 Meteorites survive for the opposite reason: they enter the atmosphere already too large, or too tough, for ablation to strip away their whole mass. Unlike the sand-sized grains that produce meteor showers, an object heavier than a car cannot fully vaporize before it slows down. [A] In February 1947, an iron mass weighing many tons entered the atmosphere over the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of eastern Russia. [B] It burned brighter than the sun and stayed visible even in daylight. [C] It broke apart under aerodynamic stress a few kilometers above the ground, scattering more than one hundred fragments across a strewn field. [D] The heaviest single piece recovered weighed over seventeen hundred kilograms, and craters more than twenty meters wide still mark where the largest fragments struck.

¶4 Size decides most outcomes, but composition tilts the odds further. Iron meteoroids are denser and structurally tougher than stony ones, so an iron object of a given size ablates more slowly and is less likely to shatter under the pressure of entry. A stony meteoroid the same weight as the Sikhote-Alin fragments would be far more likely to crumble into pieces too small to survive. That difference is part of why most meteorites recovered on the ground are iron, or stone mixed with iron. Iron itself, however, makes up only a small share of the rock and metal that enters the atmosphere overall.

¶5 Researchers now use networks of all-sky cameras to record fireballs and calculate a falling object's size, speed, and path within minutes of its entry. Knowing whether an object is large enough, and tough enough, to survive ablation lets them predict a strewn field before anyone searches for fragments on the ground. Astronomers had long noticed a pattern that this reasoning explains: meteor showers, built from comet dust, almost never leave meteorites behind. Isolated meteoroids heavy enough to become meteorites, in turn, rarely arrive as predictable showers.

2

Questions

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

Q1 · Vocabulary
The word plunges in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to
  1. A. shatters into many small pieces
  2. B. moves suddenly and forcefully downward into
  3. C. glows brightly without moving
  4. D. rises steadily away from
Answer
Correct: B
Q2 · Reference
The word It in paragraph 3 ("It broke apart under aerodynamic stress a few kilometers above the ground") refers to
  1. A. the iron mass that entered the atmosphere over the Sikhote-Alin Mountains
  2. B. the strewn field created by the fragments
  3. C. the aerodynamic stress acting on the meteoroid
  4. D. the Perseid meteor shower described in paragraph 2
Answer
Correct: A
Q3 · Essential Term
Based on the information in the passage, the term ablation can best be explained as
  1. A. the tendency of a meteoroid to shatter into fragments under aerodynamic pressure
  2. B. the area on the ground where recovered meteorite fragments are scattered
  3. C. the process by which friction with the air boils away a meteoroid's outer layer, exposing a fresh layer to the same heat
  4. D. the visible streak of light produced by any object entering the atmosphere, regardless of size
Answer
Correct: C
Q4 · Factual Information
According to paragraph 2, why does an object the size of a sand grain or pebble usually vaporize completely before it can reach the ground?
  1. A. Its speed slows down enough for gravity to pull it safely to the ground
  2. B. It collides with larger meteoroids and breaks into smaller pieces
  3. C. Local weather conditions in the lower atmosphere cause it to burn up
  4. D. Its entire mass ablates within seconds, well above seventy kilometers in altitude
Answer
Correct: D
Q5 · Negative Fact
According to paragraph 3, all of the following are true about the 1947 event EXCEPT
  1. A. It occurred in February 1947 over the Sikhote-Alin Mountains of eastern Russia
  2. B. The meteoroid was made mostly of stone rather than iron
  3. C. The meteoroid stayed visible even in daylight
  4. D. The heaviest recovered fragment weighed over seventeen hundred kilograms
Answer
Correct: B
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: "Iron meteoroids are denser and structurally tougher than stony ones, so an iron object of a given size ablates more slowly and is less likely to shatter under the pressure of entry."
  1. A. Because iron is denser and tougher than stone, an iron meteoroid of the same size ablates more slowly and resists breaking apart better during entry.
  2. B. Iron meteoroids ablate more slowly than stony ones only once they grow far larger in size.
  3. C. Stone meteoroids are denser than iron meteoroids, which is why they break apart less easily during entry.
  4. D. All iron meteoroids survive atmospheric entry completely intact, regardless of their size.
Answer
Correct: A
Q7 · Inference
Based on the information in paragraph 4, what can be inferred about why the Perseid meteor shower, described in paragraph 2, essentially never produces meteorites, even though isolated iron meteoroids sometimes do?
  1. A. Perseid debris travels at a slower speed than other meteoroids, giving it more time to cool during entry
  2. B. Perseid debris is made of iron, but iron alone is never enough to prevent ablation
  3. C. Perseid debris only falls in August, when the atmosphere near the ground is too dense for any object to survive entry
  4. D. Perseid debris is small enough that it would burn away completely during atmospheric entry no matter what it is made of
Answer
Correct: D
Q8 · Rhetorical Purpose
The author mentions that researchers use "networks of all-sky cameras" in paragraph 5 in order to
  1. A. argue that most meteorite falls are too fast to observe with modern equipment
  2. B. explain why meteor showers occur at predictable times of year
  3. C. show a practical application of knowing how size and composition affect whether a meteoroid survives entry
  4. D. describe how the Sikhote-Alin fragments were first located in 1947
Answer
Correct: C
Q9 · Paragraph Relation
How does paragraph 4 relate to the earlier discussion of meteors and meteorites in paragraphs 2 and 3?
  1. A. It repeats the same case study from paragraph 3 using different numbers
  2. B. It introduces a second factor, composition, that refines the size-based explanation given earlier
  3. C. It contradicts the earlier explanation by arguing that size does not actually matter
  4. D. It shifts to an unrelated topic, the chemical origin of comets
Answer
Correct: B
Q10 · Insert Text
Look at the four squares [■] in paragraph 3 that indicate where the following sentence could be added.

Witnesses hundreds of kilometers away reported seeing the light and hearing a delayed roar minutes later.

Where would the sentence best fit?
  1. A. Square A
  2. B. Square B
  3. C. Square C
  4. D. Square D
Answer
Correct: C
Q11 · Schematic Table 3 pts
Directions: Complete the table by matching the phrases below to the category they belong to. Two of the answer choices will NOT be used. This question is worth 3 points.

Meteors Meteorites

  1. A. Objects this size are usually no larger than a grain of sand or a pebble before they ablate away completely.
  2. B. Nearly all of the material in the Perseid shower each August burns up without any of it reaching the ground.
  3. C. The entire mass typically disappears within seconds, usually more than seventy kilometers above the ground.
  4. D. Iron examples are structurally tougher than stony ones of the same size, making them less likely to shatter during entry.
  5. E. The February 1947 event in the Sikhote-Alin Mountains scattered more than one hundred fragments across a strewn field.
  6. F. Ablation always destroys the entire mass of a meteoroid before it can reach the ground.
  7. G. Researchers first tracked the Sikhote-Alin fragments using satellite-mounted magnetic detectors.
Answer
Correct: Meteors: A, B, C · Meteorites: D, E