Free Grade 7 Reading Comprehension Passages & Answers

Have you ever placed a straight pencil into a glass of water and noticed that it suddenly looks broken or bent at the water’s surface? This optical illusion is caused by a phenomenon in physics known as refraction. Light travels in straight lines, but it changes speed depending on the medium it is passing through. It travels fastest through the empty vacuum of space, slightly slower through the air, and even slower through dense materials like water or glass. When light waves hit the water at an angle, they slow down and bend. This change in speed and direction alters how our eyes perceive the object, creating the illusion of a bent pencil.

When you put money into a savings account, the bank pays you a small percentage of that money as a reward for keeping it there. This is called “interest.” However, the real magic of saving is a concept known as “compound interest.” Compound interest occurs when you earn interest not only on your original money (the principal) but also on the interest you have already earned in the past. Over a long period of time, this causes your wealth to grow at an accelerating, exponential rate. The famous physicist Albert Einstein reportedly called compound interest “the eighth wonder of the world,” noting that those who understand it, earn it; and those who don’t, pay it.

To a computer scientist, an algorithm is simply a step-by-step set of instructions designed to solve a specific problem or complete a task. You use algorithms in your daily life all the time without realizing it! When you follow a recipe to bake a cake, you are following an algorithm. If you skip a step or add the wrong ingredient, the cake will fail. Computers work the exact same way. Because computers do not have human intuition, programmers must write algorithms with absolute, mathematical precision. Whether a program is sorting a list of thousands of names alphabetically or finding the fastest route on a GPS map, it is relying on a carefully constructed algorithm.

In the 14th century, a young Moroccan scholar named Ibn Battuta set out on a religious pilgrimage to Mecca. He intended to be gone for a few years, but his incredible journey ended up lasting nearly three decades. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Ibn Battuta traveled across North Africa, the Middle East, India, Southeast Asia, and China. By foot, camel, and boat, he covered an estimated 75,000 miles—a distance far greater than that of his famous European contemporary, Marco Polo. Upon his return home, he dictated the detailed accounts of the cities, cultures, and leaders he encountered. His famous travelogue, known as the Rihla, remains one of the most important historical records of the medieval world.

For her thirteenth birthday, Nora’s older brother didn’t just hand her a present; he handed her a piece of paper with a scrambled message: K L G G H Q L Q W K H R Y H Q. Nora smiled. She recognized this immediately. It was a Caesar Cipher, an ancient encryption technique where every letter is shifted by a certain number down the alphabet. Her brother always used a shift of three. This meant that ‘D’ became ‘A’, ‘E’ became ‘B’, and so on. She grabbed a pencil and began to shift every letter in the code backward by three spaces in the alphabet. Within two minutes, she had decoded the secret location of her gift and ran straight toward the kitchen.