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It may just be me... sometimes I'm a little slow to get these verbal explanations, but I think maybe just maybe AAMC might have gotten it wrong this time. For those who want to read the passage and have access to test 10, it's passage 1 of the verbal section, question 54. For those who don't have access, the pertinent part of the passage is:
Dort was initially, but only initially, skeptical. "We've tried everything we could think of to deny a meteorite impact, since it just eemed too exotic," he says. "But every bit of evidence kept coming back to that--we could not explain the depression in any other way. There are no volcanoes in the vicinity," Dort says, "the rock formations aren't the sort to collapse and form sinkholes, and the depression is too round and steep-sided to have been scoured by the wind.
Now for the question:
#54: Dort mentions sinkholes in order to:
A. to eliminate an alternative hypothesis regarding the formation of the crater.
B. to impress the reader with the uniqueness of the discovery.
C. to explain the absence of volcanoes in the vicinity.
D. to explain the shallowness of the depression.
I chose A. The solutions report says the correct answer is B, but even the explanations seem to point towards A as the answer. Here are the explanations:
A. The elimination of an alternative hypothesis is the reason for the reference to sinkholes, with the explanation that "the rock formations aren't the sort to collapse and form sinkholes."
B. The reason Dort concluded that it could only be a meteorite crater is because the feature seemed "too exotic." The inference is that the sinkhole would make the depression a less unique feature and thus require a more common explanation.
Am I just being slow again?
Dort was initially, but only initially, skeptical. "We've tried everything we could think of to deny a meteorite impact, since it just eemed too exotic," he says. "But every bit of evidence kept coming back to that--we could not explain the depression in any other way. There are no volcanoes in the vicinity," Dort says, "the rock formations aren't the sort to collapse and form sinkholes, and the depression is too round and steep-sided to have been scoured by the wind.
Now for the question:
#54: Dort mentions sinkholes in order to:
A. to eliminate an alternative hypothesis regarding the formation of the crater.
B. to impress the reader with the uniqueness of the discovery.
C. to explain the absence of volcanoes in the vicinity.
D. to explain the shallowness of the depression.
I chose A. The solutions report says the correct answer is B, but even the explanations seem to point towards A as the answer. Here are the explanations:
A. The elimination of an alternative hypothesis is the reason for the reference to sinkholes, with the explanation that "the rock formations aren't the sort to collapse and form sinkholes."
B. The reason Dort concluded that it could only be a meteorite crater is because the feature seemed "too exotic." The inference is that the sinkhole would make the depression a less unique feature and thus require a more common explanation.
Am I just being slow again?
