GRE Reading Comprehension

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Source: 1999

Benjamin Franklin established that lightning is the transfer of positive or negative electrical charge between regions of a cloud or from cloud to earth. Such transfers require that electrically neutral clouds, with uniform charge distributions, become electrified by separation of charges into distinct regions. The greater this separation is, the greater the voltage, or electrical potential of the cloud. Scientists still do not now the precise distribution of charges in thunderclouds nor how separation adequate to support the huge voltages typical of lightning bolts arises. According to one theory, the precipitation hypothesis, charge separation occurs as a result of precipitation. Larger droplets in a thundercloud precipitate downward past smaller suspended droplets. Collisions among droplets transfer negative charge to precipitating droplets, leaving the suspended droplets with a positive charge, thus producing a positive dipole in which the lower region of the thundercloud is filled with negatively charged raindrops and the upper with positively charged suspended droplets.

Question List: 1 2 3 4

Which of the following, if true, would most seriously undermine the precipitation hypothesis, as it is set forth in the passage?

  • A Larger clouds are more likely than smaller clouds to be characterized by complete separation of positive and negative charges.
  • B In smaller clouds lightning more often occurs within the cloud than between the cloud and the earth.
  • C Large raindrops move more rapidly in small clouds than they do in large clouds.
  • D Clouds that are smaller than average in size rarely, if ever, produce lightning bolts.
  • E In clouds of all sizes negative charges concentrate in the center of the clouds when the clouds become electrically charged

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