You have 1 minute 30 seconds to answer the following question:
Certain instruments used in veterinary surgery can be made either of stainless steel or nylon. In a study of such instruments, 50 complete sterilizations of a set of nylon instruments required 3.4 times the amount of energy used to manufacture that set of instruments, whereas 50 complete sterilizations of a set of stainless steel instruments requires 2.1 times the amount of energy required to manufacture that set of instruments.
If the statements above are true, each of the following could be true EXCEPT:
- The 50 complete sterilizations of the nylon instruments used more energy than did the 50 complete sterilizations of the stainless steel instruments.
- More energy was required for each complete sterilization of the nylon instruments than was required to maufacture the nylon instruments.
- More nylon instruments than stainless steel instruments were sterilized in the study.
- More energy was used to produce the stainless steel instruments than was used to produce the nylon instruments.
- The total cost of 50 complete sterilizations of the stainless steel instruments was greater than the cost of manufacturing the stainless steel instruments.
Hint: the answer is painfully obvious if your brains aren’t melted (mine, apparently, are).
May 11, 2008 at 10:05 am
You’re going to have to explain it to me, because I think they all COULD be true.
A could be true depending on the energy it takes to manufacture each set of instruments, which we don’t know.
B could be true, I suppose, unless there’s some law of physics I don’t know that implies that it takes more energy to make something than it does to sterilize something, which I doubt.
C could be true, although it’s irrelevant to the prompt.
D could be true, since we know the ratios of each sterilize-energy to produce-energy, but not the ratio between the produce-energies.
E could be true if the raw steel was cheaper than the energy used to create the final product, if that’s possible.
Perhaps this question is testing knowledge of some scientific law that I don’t know; but if it’s purely a logic problem and you’re only supposed to use the information given, then I don’t think there’s enough given to eliminate any of those.