GRE Reading Comprehension

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Source: CHP

Design courses should be an essential element in engineering curricula. Because perceptive processes are not assumed to entail "hard thinking," nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a primitive stage in the development of cognitive processes and inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is paradoxical that when the staff of the Historic American Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of machines and isometric views of industrial processes for its historical record of American engineering, the only college students with the requisite abilities were not engineering students, but rather students attending architectural schools.

If courses in design, which in a strongly analytical engineering curriculum provide the background required for practical problem-solving, are not provided, we can expect to encounter silly but costly errors occurring in advanced engineering systems. For example, early models of high-speed railroad cars loaded with sophisticated controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because a fan sucked snow into the electrical system.

Question List: 1 2

The author uses the example of the early models of high-speed railroad cars primarily to

  • A weaken the argument that modern engineering systems have major defects because of an absence of design courses in engineering curricula
  • B support the thesis that the number of errors in modern engineering systems is likely to increase
  • C illustrate the idea that courses in design are the most effective means for reducing the cost of designing engineering systems
  • D support the contention that a lack of attention to the nonscientific aspects of design results in poor conceptualization by engineers
  • E weaken the proposition that mathematics is a necessary part of the study of design

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