Q23

[RichardK852]

I can see why A is correct.

I selected E as the answer on my first try and now that I look back, I think E is incorrect because there are two things that Zanotto calculates, but both aren't a hypothesis.

[ohthatpatrick]

We should begin by looking in the text for where the author indicates her view on Zanotto’s study.

I see relevant lines like
20-23: “it debunks the idea that medieval glass bulges at the bottom because glass flows downward”
39-43: “the study demonstrates dramatically what many scientists had thought before”

All the other lines about what the study said are still relevant, but if we’re looking for how the author “summarized” the study, then we’d be most attracted to lines that speak about the study broadly.

(A) Yes, sounds like line 39-43, and lines 28 and 34 talk about Zenotto’s calculations (quantitative data)

(B) “stimulated new research” is out of scope

(C) “explain where the popular misconception came from”? The author did that in Paragraph 1, but Zenotto doesn’t do any of that.

(D) his study debunks one possible explanation (which we would strain to even call a ‘scientific view’)

(E) His study debunks one possible explanation, i.e. hypothesis (that ‘medieval glass bulges at the bottom because it flows downward from gravity’). He looks at the flow rate for glass in the most charitable way possible, considering germanium oxide, the flowiest of glasses, and even accounting for impurities that would speed up the flow, and there’s still no way something that would require billions of years could have taken place in the handful of centuries that this glass has existed.

Thanks for adding this to the forum.