Q15 - Physicists attempting to create new kinds of

[ohthatpatrick]

Question Type:
Inference (Most Supported)

Stimulus Breakdown:
To make new atoms, we have to smash two existing atoms together at super high speeds. But if the speed is TOO high, the excess heat energy will immediately ruin the new atom and make it fall apart.

Answer Anticipation:
The friction point here seems to be the tension of "it's gotta be fast enough / energetic enough of a collision that we overcome the repellant EM force", but "if it's too fast / too energetic, then the new atom will fall apart".

A synthesis of this information might be something like, "Physicists are aiming to smash them together at a speed that BARELY exceeds repellant EM force".

Correct Answer:
E

Answer Choice Analysis:
(A) We don't have any information about frequency of success/failure, so "USUALLY" is unsupportable.

(B) No, the 2nd half here is the opposite of what it should be. If we were SO fast that we ruined the new atom, then we went way above what we needed to overcome the EM force.

(C) It's a very extreme formulation to say "the more X, the more Y". And in the information, "the hotness" of the new atom is based on whether or not we greatly exceed the minimum required. The stronger two atoms repel each other, the greater the minimum required, but since there's this variability in whether we barely exceed that minimum or greatly exceed that minimum, we can't say anything is always true about the new atom's hotness.

(D) We can't get behind such an extreme rule as , "If the new atom doesn't immediately split apart, then little energy was produced in the collision". Having excess energy in a collision didn't GUARANTEE the new atom would split; it just made it more likely. So it's possible to produce a lot of energy, even though the new atom does NOT immediately split apart.

(E) YES, this is just summarizing the causal chain we're told after the word "But". Can we PROVE "likely to split apart"? No, but we can support it very well.

Takeaway/Pattern: The correct answer was surprisingly straightforward. They really just removed a lot of the modifiers from the last two sentences and summarized the causal chain.

The correct answers to Inference usually involve combining ideas via CONDITIONAL, CAUSAL, or QUANTITATIVE wording.

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