. Read this excerpt from a student’s essay that compares and contrasts Earth to Mars. What points are being compared about the subjects?

In the entire solar system, Mars boasts general features that are some of the biggest, widest, and deepest. One of its standouts is the immense Olympus Mons, a volcano of such size and scale that its own peak reaches above most of the Martian atmosphere. Olympus Mons could not even exist on Earth; with Earth's stronger gravity field, the massive volcano would collapse under its own weight if it were here. The Martian giant rises about 23 kilometers from the surrounding plains. On Earth, the closest thing resembling this volcanic giant is the Mauna Loa peak on Hawaii, which rises about 10 kilometers from its base on the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Both of these mountains are dramatically taller than the Himalayan Mt. Everest. But Mt. Everest is not a volcano; both Mauna Loa and Olympus Mons are.

Read the passage, then answer the question that follows. no one could have seen it at the time, but the invention of beet sugar was not just a challenge to cane. it was a hint—just a glimpse, like a twist that comes about two thirds of the way through a movie—that the end of the age of sugar was in sight. for beet sugar showed that in order to create that perfect sweetness you did not need slaves, you did not need plantations, in fact you did not even need cane. beet sugar was a foreshadowing of what we have today: the age of science, in which sweetness is a product of chemistry, not whips. in 1854 only 11 percent of world sugar production came from beets. by 1899 the percentage had risen to about 65 percent. and beet sugar was just the first challenge to cane. by 1879 chemists discovered saccharine—a laboratory-created substance that is several hundred times sweeter than natural sugar. today the sweeteners used in the foods you eat may come from corn (high-fructose corn syrup), from fruit (fructose), or directly from the lab (for example, aspartame, invented in 1965, or sucralose—splenda—created in 1976). brazil is the land that imported more africans than any other to work on sugar plantations, and in brazil the soil is still perfect for sugar. cane grows in brazil today, but not always for sugar. instead, cane is often used to create ethanol, much as corn farmers in america now convert their harvest into fuel. –sugar changed the world, marc aronson and marina budhos how does this passage support the claim that sugar was tied to the struggle for freedom? it shows that the invention of beet sugar created competition for cane sugar. it shows that technology had a role in changing how we sweeten our foods. it shows that the beet sugar trade provided jobs for formerly enslaved workers. it shows that sweeteners did not need to be the product of sugar plantations and slavery.