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Course: LSAT > Unit 1
Lesson 10: Reading Comprehension - Worked Examples- Law passage overview | Cosmic Justice (paired passages)
- Main point | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Recognition | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Inferences about views | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Inferences about info | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Principles | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Analogies | Law passage | Cosmic Justice
- Law passage overview | Copyright
- Main point | Law passage | Copyright
- Purpose of reference | Law passage | Copyright
- Applying to new contexts | Law passage | Copyright
- Humanities passage overview | Music (paired passages)
- Main point 1 | Humanities passage | Music
- Main point 2 | Humanities passage | Music
- Recognition | Humanities passage | Music
- Inferences about views | Humanities passage | Music
- Principles and analogies | Humanities passage | Music
- Additional evidence | Humanities passage | Music
- Primary purpose | Humanities passage | Music
- Science passage overview | The Sun
- Recognition 1 | Science passage | The Sun
- Recognition 2 | Science passage | The Sun
- Organizing info | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 1 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 2 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about views 3 | Science passage | The Sun
- Inferences about info | Science passage | The Sun
- Social science passage overview | Wool
- Main point | Social science passage | Wool
- Recognition 1 | Social science passage | Wool
- Recognition 2 | Social science passage | Wool
- Inferences about info | Social science passage | Wool
- Inferences about attitudes | Social science passage | Wool
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Inferences about info | Science passage | The Sun
Watch a demonstration of one way to answer an Inferences about information question from a science passage on the LSAT. Created by Dave Travis.
Video transcript
- [Narrator] Which one of
the following statements about spectroscopy is
most strongly supported by the information in the passage? Okay, so this is strongly supported by the information in the passage, we can use the passage
and look around for it, hopefully we have some
idea about how spectroscopy was mentioned, it seemed
like a pretty valid thing, that the data was
misinterpreted, at one point, to think that iron was the
major element in the sun, and then we know about spectroscopy, that Cecilia Payne reinterpreted that data to find that hydrogen and helium were the predominant elements in the sun. Okay, so let's look at these choices. It's use during the 1920s was generally confined to the field of astronomy. I'm not sure that was mentioned. We shouldn't leap to a
conclusion about that. I'm not really liking that choice. It yielded data about
the sun's composition that Payne initially doubted
but ultimately came to accept. Well, it yielded data, well
did she doubt the data? I'm interested in this
choice a little bit, I may leave it in for now,
but we don't really know that she initially doubted the data. She believes the data, she's a scientist, it's the interpretation of the data that we're kind of wondering about. So let's keep looking. It played a crucial, though
often unacknowledged role in the emergence of our
present day understanding of the process of nuclear fusion. We don't know if it's unacknowledged, that seems like a reach, I'm
not really liking that choice, just because of this, we
don't really hear about that in the passage, so I'm gonna move on. D, it was regarded by
certain prominent scientists in the 1920s as an unproven tool that produced data of often
questionable reliability. No, we don't really hear
of any prominent scientists of the 20s doubting the
data, calling it unproven, calling it questionable reliability, that is definitely not
mentioned, D is out. E, it was a technique advanced enough by the 1920s to detect
the presence in the sun of elements that constituted
considerably less than 10 percent of it's mass. Okay, well maybe that's there, I kinda like that as well, I'm
gonna go back to the passage in a second to look, because
this is pretty specific. And if we learned ultimately
that there are trace elements, then they knew that there
were other things in there, let's look for that, that could be right. But let's also, we don't know this. Generally confined to
the field of astronomy, I'm not really looking for evidence for A. And what we're also looking for is whether Payne actually
initially doubted the data about the sun's composition. She doubted the
interpretation of that data, but whether she doubted the data, that connection makes
me really not like B. Okay, so we're going back
up, and we're gonna look for whether or not spectroscopy was able to detect the presence of things that were kind of trace elements in the sun. Okay, so let's head up
and see what we can find. We have a percentage
here, that number kind of points us in the right direction, let's see whether we can
find something we need here. Okay, She analyzed without preconceptions, she found the data could
be consistently read as indicating that while it
does indeed contain iron, along with other elements found on Earth, 90 percent of the sun is hydrogen, and most of the remainder is helium. Okay so, if 90 percent
we now know is hydrogen, and most of the remainder is helium, and if the data tells
us that it does indeed contain iron, okay, that means that this iron must be less than 10 percent. Okay, so that's pointing
us in the right direction to how to answer this question. Let's go back. It was a technique advanced
enough by the 1920s to detect the presence in the sun of elements that constituted
considerably less, okay so they detected
iron, and iron turned out not to be even 10 percent
of the mass of the sun. This is definitely our answer.