PrepTest 113, Section 1, Question 10
Spurred by the discovery that a substance containing(462 more words not shown)
The passage implies which one(14 more words not shown)
- APitchblende was not(10 more words not shown)
- BRadioactivity was suspected(17 more words not shown)
- CPhysicists and chemists(9 more words not shown)
- DResearch was not(16 more words not shown)
- EThe majority of(10 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
My first thought is that the scientific understanding was incomplete. But that is a broad prediction, and several facts about the period could fit. Let's check the particular claim each answer makes about what was known when Curie began.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
Pitchblende was known to contain uranium. Its greater radioactivity led Curie to look for something else, and she isolated “previously unknown elements,” polonium and radium. That sequence supports A: other radioactive elements in the mineral had not yet been identified. This gives us a concrete example of the incomplete understanding we predicted.
- B
We aren't told that scientists blamed pitchblende's overall structure for its radiation. An unexplained phenomenon doesn't establish this particular proposed explanation.
- C
Physicists and chemists did approach the atom differently. But C changes the subject of their disagreement to the cause of radiation. Their differing views of atoms aren't competing explanations of radiation.
- D
Not having settled a question doesn't mean no research connected to it was being conducted. The nature of the atom was debated, and chemists were drawing on observations of reactions. We aren't given the sweeping absence of research D claims.
- E
No majority opinion among physicists about uranium is stated. Knowing it was the identified radioactive ingredient in pitchblende is much narrower than believing it was the only source of radioactivity anywhere.
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