PrepTest 131, Section 4, Question 20

Working the answers

• A

  Fuller was an architect and knew about the steel. That doesn't establish that he had used it in his own architectural designs before recommending it.

• B

  The steel made Noguchi's idea practical because it was reflective and economically available. We aren't told that he thought industrial materials would make his sculptures easier to sell. Affordable material and a commercially successful artwork are different things.

• C

  I was initially tempted because the sculpture is described as invisible. But it still has its own shape; reflections reveal that shape. Imagine your face reflected in a curved surface. The distortion tells you about the surface's contours—it doesn't mean the surface takes on the shape of your face. C confuses what reveals the sculpture's dimensions with what those dimensions are.

• D

  Losing reflectiveness wouldn't necessarily destroy the sculpture's recognizable likeness of a person. Its surface could become dull while its physical shape remained recognizable. The account doesn't support that stronger prediction.

• E
  Correct

  Negative light is the shadow-based approach. It doesn't require reflected images of surrounding objects to reveal the sculpture's shape. That dependence on reflections belongs to Noguchi's positive-light approach. If the labels got switched in your head, returning to their definitions resolves the difficulty.