#8 - Energy analyst: During this record-breaking heat wave

[Administrator]

Complete Question Explanation

Resolve the Paradox. The correct answer choice is (B)

The energy analyst’s comments concern record breaking heat that has been plaguing the region.
As a result of the heat wave, air conditioning use has apparently increased significantly, leading to
an overload of the city’s electrical grid, causing blackouts to occur in various regional locations.
Local residents have been asked, on a voluntary basis, to reduce their use of air conditioners, but the
analyst says that even if residents comply, the blackouts are likely to continue until the heat wave
ends.

If the blackouts are likely to continue despite local residents’ compliance with the request to cut
back on air conditioner use, that means that there must be other reasons for the blackouts. Since
the stimulus is followed by a Resolve the Paradox question, the correct answer choice will most
likely provide some alternative cause of the referenced blackouts which would exist even with local
residents’s compliance.

Answer choice (A): The analyst specifies that air conditioner use has overloaded the region’s
electrical power grid. There are likely to be other significant drains on the region’s electrical grid,
but this would not explain why the blackouts would be expected to keep happening for as long as the
heat wave continues, in spite of possibly willingness on the part of local residents’ to comply with
the request to cut back on air conditioning use.

Answer choice (B): This is the correct answer choice, since this is the choice that resolves the
paradox presented by the energy analyst. If the majority of the region’s air conditioning is used
by businesses and factories, rather than residences, that would explain why blackouts are likely to
continue even if residents comply with the request to cut back—residents use of air conditioning
makes up only a small part of the air conditioning used in the region, so their cutbacks could have
very limited effect.

Answer choice (C): This choice tells us that most air conditioning systems could be made more
energy efficient with some basic design changes. While this choice provides one way to attack the
problem of an exhausted electrical grid, it does not explain why the blackouts are likely to continue
for as long as the heat wave lasts, even if the region’s residents comply with the request and cut back
on their air conditioning use. Since it does not resolve the paradox in this case, this choice can be
ruled out of contention.

Answer choice (D): This choice provides that the region’s residents are not likely to comply with
the request to cut back on their use of air conditioning, but even if the residents don’t comply with
this request, that is not relevant to the energy analyst’s argument and would not resolve the paradox,
which is that the blackouts are likely to continue even if local residents comply. Since this choice
fails to resolve the paradox presented, it should be eliminated.

Answer choice (E): If, as this choice provides, the heat is expected to drop off in the near future, that
might be great news for the region, but the paradox presented here is that the blackouts are likely to
continue for as long as the heat wave lasts, even if residents comply with the request. How much
longer the heat wave lasts is irrelevant, and even if the heat wave were to end tomorrow, that would
not resolve the paradox presented by the analyst.

[ccampise]

For this question I selected A. B, which is apparently the correct answer, seems extremely overreaching to me? We clearly see that residents alone will not help the power situation, and there must be another drain on the power supply, which would resolve the paradox in my opinion, which is what answer A says exactly. B seems to make an unwarranted leap to factories and businesses? I mean I guess they specified it was only the AC that was draining the power and that would cause A to be incorrect and have B make more sense? Just wanted to see if I was on the right track here. Thanks!

[David Boyle]

For this question I selected A. B, which is apparently the correct answer, seems extremely overreaching to me? We clearly see that residents alone will not help the power situation, and there must be another drain on the power supply, which would resolve the paradox in my opinion, which is what answer A says exactly. B seems to make an unwarranted leap to factories and businesses? I mean I guess they specified it was only the AC that was draining the power and that would cause A to be incorrect and have B make more sense? Just wanted to see if I was on the right track here. Thanks!

Hello ccampise,

A may help resolve the paradox a tiny bit; though even if there are other significant drains on power, it still may help the power problem if residents cut down on air-conditioning consumption. B is a better answer (it focuses on air conditioning, for one thing), and is entitled to discuss, if it wants, that businesses are a larger drain on power. (A question from the 2nd family, the "Help" family, may add new information.)

Hope this helps,
David

[ccampise]

Thanks David that helps. Is there any page in the lesson materials, online, or anywhere really that summarizes the different families and their respective question types? For quick reference purposes that would be extremely helpful and I know there probably is somewhere. Thanks!

[Steve Stein]

Hi C,

The question families are discussed at the beginning of Lesson One.


I hope that's helpful! Let me know--thanks!

~Steve

[Garrett K]

Hello PowerScore,

Can you please tell my for question 8 why answer choice A is wrong? I understand why B is correct, and is a better answer, but why is A incorrect?

Thanks,
Garrett

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Garrett,

A is incorrect because the question actually tells us that "air conditioner use has overloaded" the grid; so we know that another drain is not the concern here.

Hope that helps!

[lanereuden]

So if A had said air coniditioning is not the only significant overloading mechanism on the electrical system in the area, would A then be correct?

I say overloading mechanism, but basically what I mean by that is that difference that you point out: the thing that pushes it over the edge (from 100 to 101%) versus. a general drain (the thing that accounts for 100% of the problem).

[Claire Horan]

Hi Lanereuden,

That change might make A more palatable but would still not make it correct. The correct answer must explain why the electrical system would be overloaded during a heatwave but not during other times.

Good question!

[cornflakes]

Hi Powerscore,

To continue the dialogue here - I also was a sucker for A instead of B. Reading through I was reluctant to accept B, but I can now see why it does a better, clearer job of explaining the paradox than A.

Extending off the overloading mechanism comment by Lane - the stimulus tells us that air conditioning has overloaded the power grid. So we must accept that air conditioning is the variable that, when aggregated with all the other drains on the power grid, which could even be significant drains, pushes it over the top into blackout.

Once we remove a certain amount of the variable that pushed it to blackout (air conditioning), we would logically expect the grid to move closer to normal, even if it doesn't quite get there. Simply stating that these other significant drains still exist, which the original situation allowed for, doesn't help on its own to explain why the blackout will likely continue despite the overloading variable being mitigated.

What one would need to infer when given the information that there are other significant drains on the grid besides AC is that those other significant drains grow larger or become more significant in response to the un-abating heat, or perhaps to the resident's curtailment of AC. Perhaps 25% of the residents that curtail their AC use go out and buy plug in fans that chew up 5x the electricity that the same quantity of AC would. Whatever the concocted reason is - the issue here is that one would need to assume that those other significant drains grow larger in order to reasonably say that answer would help resolve the paradox at all.

And even if we were to assume all this, B is still probably the better answer because it directly address the AC variable and gives us concrete information to understand that more than half the AC variable is being used by entities that will not mitigate their use. I digress.