Lesson 8 Hw-Passage set 3, #5 - Water on Mars

[ylikate]

Have a few questions regarding this comparative passage set

Q5: Why is (B) incorrect? I chose this b/c the chemical composition was discussed in B, but not in A.
Why is (D) superior?

Thank you in advance!

[David Boyle]

Have a few questions regarding this comparative passage set

Q5: Why is (B) incorrect? I chose this b/c the chemical composition was discussed in B, but not in A.
Why is (D) superior?

Thank you in advance!

Hello ylikate,

Answer B is not terrible, so to speak, in that passage B does discuss chlorine/bromine rocks. However, the "saturation" there may've been of salt, not water, see line 51. --Lines 62-63 discuss some rocks (which?) and "previous liquid water saturation", but this may not be enough to definitvely support answer B.
By contrast: looking at lines 42-47, answer D has pretty good support. ("rocks had at least soaked in... water", etc.)

Hope this helps,
David

[stephaniej830]

What LSAT is this passage from??

[Jon Denning]

Hi Stephanie - thanks for posting, and welcome to the Forum!

There are a few comparative reading passages in the course that were released as practice tools to help people understand the new passage format when it was first set to appear about ten years ago—in much the same fashion that LSAC has done with their new digital interface, where they allow some early practice to be attempted before the official change is administered (even though their current digital familiarization platform isn't fully functional)—since around that time there were no prior tests to pull them from, and certainly we didn't want to burn the most recent PTs by immediately including their comparative passages when they were released (students wanted/needed to take those tests as full, timed PTs having not seen any of the content beforehand).

Fortunately with those practice passage sets available as individual exercises we were able to use them in the course, give students a very clear understanding (I hope!) of how comparative reading works and how to approach it, and not run the risk of overlapping with the limited set of comp passages LSAC included on future exams. Note that even now, 12 years later, there are still fewer than 40 total comparative passage sets from administered LSATs, so having those extra, one-off sets was a real blessing!

Hope that helps!