Link to video expl/quick view: https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-39-section-3-passage-3-questions/
My question is about the correct A/C, (A) and an incorrect one, (B).
I interpreted (A) as being far too much of a generalization, since we are only told about thermal radiation, not any other kind (with respect to the passage, we were already made aware that other kinds of radiation exist, as indicated in para. 1: gamma, X-rays, radio, heat, & light).
Had (A) said "radiation reflected by and radiation emitted by an object can be difficult to distinguish from one another," I'd have easily chosen it.
I could also buy that (A) might be a 'necessary assumption' if this were that type of question. Yet I'm struggling with understanding whether or not something that must be assumed to be true in order for certain things to make sense (i.e., why the PHYS had to choose certain types of objects when trying to accurately measure that body's radiation) should therefore be a valid, top-to-bottom inference as well. What allows us to infer something about radiation in general in any object when we are only told information about thermal/blackbody radiation and how blackbody objects relate to that?
I was also actually stuck on (B) for quite a while and hoped to hear some others' thoughts on my analysis. I acknowledge (B)'s relative "strength," compared with (A)--that was surely a red flag.
But I think (B) is ultimately faulted, not because we don't have standards for what is "nearly ideal"--after all, "little or no reflective capability" seems to give us this, but I suppose this could be interpreted as merely 'necessary' and not 'sufficient.' Ultimately, I think (B) is out because there can be an entire range of "dark" that a "dark room" could be, like pitch-black or a room with a thin ray of weak light coming in through the door crack. Since "dark" is not an absolute value, we can't be sure that an object in question in such a room isn't reflecting radiation from other things or surfaces that may be in the "dark room" as well, so we can't assume that object, especially if it weren't itself black, isn't reflecting radiation from elsewhere.
Maybe this is more a question about the passage itself, but I also thought when I was reading para. 2 again that it was reasonable to infer that the author's use of quotation marks at the first mention of "blackbody" radiation was not just use of another terminology we could interchange with "thermal" radiation, but perhaps also indicating to us that an object that could qualify as a blackbody object for an experiment need not itself be black, as long as we could guarantee that it had little-to-no ability to reflect thermal radiation coming from another source. So in other words, I thought the use of the "" could be construed as "so-called," and that it need not be literally a black-colored body in order to be a proper blackbody object, if that makes any sense.
I do acknowledge that "soot" and "black velvet" are black blackbody objects, but I saw these as examples of typical or representative blackbody objects, not necessarily as objects bearing a trait (having a black surface) that must therefore exclude something that could be "made" dark in a pitch-black room. So I guess a follow-up to this is, without reference to outside sources, would this have been a reasonable interpretation of "blackbody" radiation, in the way that the author chose to quote this? Based on para. 2, as much as a blackbody object could itself be black, could we have also reasonably interpreted that any object, whether pitch-black itself or red or green when viewed in bright light, could be a blackbody object candidate in a 100% pitch-black room where, in essence, all things are "black" and there is nothing else there in the room to reflect?
Thanks for anyone's #help on this!
Hi Admins - accidentally "commented" when I meant to "reply" to another's. No option from my end to delete this entirely, so to clear up some space, if you could kindly help with this it'd be appreciated!