Critical Reasoning

When glass products are made from recycled glass, the resulting products can be equal in quality to glass products made from quartz sand, the usual raw material. When plastics are recycled, however, the result is inevitably a plastic of a lower grade than the plastic from which it is derived. Moreover, no applications have been found for grades of plastic that are lower than the currently lowest commercial grade.

Which one of the following is a conclusion that can be properly drawn from the statements above?

(A) Products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade.
(B) It is impossible to make glass products from recycled glass that are equal in quality to the best glass products made from the usual raw material.
(C) Glass products made from recycled glass are less expensive than comparable products made from quartz sand.
(D) Unless recycled plastic bears some symbol revealing its origin, not even materials scientists can distinguish it from virgin plastic.
(E) The difference in quality between different grades of glass is not as great as that between different grades of plastic.
please discuss this argument.

[spoiler]OA later
Please explain your answers.
[/spoiler]

The answer is A.

Fairly straight forward reasoning;

Sentence 2 of the passage says that when plastic is recycled the result is a lower grade plastic. Sentence 3 says that no applications have been made from plastic that was made from recycling the lowest commercial grade plastic.

Thus, A, if you don't have any applications for recycled lowest grade commercial plastic, then you certainly aren't making products out of it.

(B) the passage says you can make products equal to that of quartz, but it doesn't say these quartz products aren't the best so we can't say B for sure.

(C) The passage doesn't give us any clue as to what the relative price of these goods are.

(D) The passage says nothing of symbols either.

(E) This is a very tricky answer, but the passage doesn't give us any idea as to what the variance in the grades of relative quality are.

Could you please confirm the OA is A?

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Jared

Definitely A

Good question. Here,we need to understand what is meant by 'applications' on choice 'A'.

I am confused between 'A' & 'E'.

paddle_sweep wrote:Good question. Here,we need to understand what is meant by 'applications' on choice 'A'.

I am confused between 'A' & 'E'.

OA is A. Source LSAT tests
I was also confused between A and E.
considering "applications === products", I selected E

Argument :

no applications(products) have been found for grades of plastic that are lower than the currently lowest commercial grade.

It doesn't prove that :

Products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade.

Can somebody explain how A is the answer ?

sk818020 wrote:The answer is A.

Fairly straight forward reasoning;

Sentence 2 of the passage says that when plastic is recycled the result is a lower grade plastic. Sentence 3 says that no applications have been made from plastic that was made from recycling the lowest commercial grade plastic.

Thus, A, if you don't have any applications for recycled lowest grade commercial plastic, then you certainly aren't making products out of it.

(B) the passage says you can make products equal to that of quartz, but it doesn't say these quartz products aren't the best so we can't say B for sure.

(C) The passage doesn't give us any clue as to what the relative price of these goods are.

(D) The passage says nothing of symbols either.

(E) This is a very tricky answer, but the passage doesn't give us any idea as to what the variance in the grades of relative quality are.

Could you please confirm the OA is A?

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Jared

Thanks Jared.
As you wrote : you certainly aren't making products out of it. --> Agree
but A says : Products cannot presently be made --> don't agree

Can you have a look again on this issue ?

The last sentence of the argument says that they have not found any applications for this plastic recycled from the lowest commercial grade plastic. This means that out of everyone who has tried, no one has found any application for this plastic. If we have found no use for this plastic, then it can be said that, at present, we have not created a product out of this plastic. Or, products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade.

The reason E is incorrect is that E assumes that we have some relative standard by which we can judge grades of glass against grades of plastic. The passage does not indicate this.

We do not, from the passage, know what the variance in the grades of plastic and the grades of glass are. So we cannot conclude E.

Hope this helps.

Thanks,

Jared

sk818020 wrote:The last sentence of the argument says that they have not found any applications for this plastic recycled from the lowest commercial grade plastic. This means that out of everyone who has tried, no one has found any application for this plastic. If we have found no use for this plastic, then it can be said that, at present, we have not created a product out of this plastic. Or, products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade.

A says: Products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade. But in stem its said: no applications have been found for grades of plastic that are lower than the currently lowest commercial grade... it means that we have not found application for plastic which has lower than the currently lowest commercial grade but not the currently lowest commercial grade...

Still not satisfied with A...

bakhshaliyev wrote:

sk818020 wrote:The last sentence of the argument says that they have not found any applications for this plastic recycled from the lowest commercial grade plastic. This means that out of everyone who has tried, no one has found any application for this plastic. If we have found no use for this plastic, then it can be said that, at present, we have not created a product out of this plastic. Or, products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade.

A says: Products cannot presently be made out of plastic recycled entirely from the currently lowest commercial grade. But in stem its said: no applications have been found for grades of plastic that are lower than the currently lowest commercial grade... it means that we have not found application for plastic which has lower than the currently lowest commercial grade but not the currently lowest commercial grade...

Still not satisfied with A...

The question stem states two relevant premises:

1) plastic degrades when recycled: recycled plastic is of inferior quality to the original. This apparently is true for any plastic of any level - if recycle, result is lower quality that before. So Therefore, we can infer that If we recycle plastic of LCG level, we get a result that is lower quality than LCG.

2) Plastic lower than the LCG has no use.


The combination these premises is why a is right - if we attempt to make a prodcut from plastic made entirely from recycled LCG, the recycled plastic is of lower quality than LCG (according to (1)), and thus we will not be able to make such a product (according to (2).

Good ques but confusing.

I also chosen E but the fact that the difference in both glass poducts & plastic products can not be compared from the premises is missed.

Thanks.