ashutosh_73 wrote:
Quote:
Nuclear fusion is the force that powers the Sun, the stars, and hydrogen bombs, merging the nuclei of atoms rather than splitting them apart, as nuclear reactors do.
Hi
GMATNinjaPlease help here..Have been racking my brains but can't figure out. Now i really hate this question:
How do we know that what nuclear reactors do?
I mean, how do we know what "as nuclear reactors do" refers to?
Is it just ''merging the nuclei of atoms instead of splitting them apart'' or just to ''splitting them apart''
Thanks!
You could make the same argument about choices (A), (B), and (D), and since (C) has a better comparison structure than those three, we can cross them out. For more on why those three can be eliminated, check out these two posts:
As explained in
this post, the "unlike" seems to illogically compare "atomic reactors" to the noun right before it (nuclei of atoms). It's okay to use "unlike" to compare two nouns (e.g. "nuclear fusion" and "atomic reactors"). But if that's the comparison we want, it would be much clearer to put the "unlike" part at the beginning of the sentence.
Also, the parallel structure in (E) makes it sound as though nuclear fusion does two distinct things: (1) it powers the sun/stars/bombs, and (2) it merges the nuclei of atoms. That's not quite right -- the
merging is HOW the fusion powers those things, not a separate and unrelated action.
As for (C), you make a very fair point, but the fact that we have "rather than" in between "merging" and "splitting" makes it fairly clear that the reactors do the latter -- it would be tough to argue that we should leapfrog "splitting" and pair reactors with the "merging" instead.
If we wanted to suggest that the reactors also
merge the nuclei of atoms, it would be much better to write something like this:
"... merging the nuclei of atoms, as nuclear reactors do, rather than splitting them apart."
Luckily, this is a fairly old question, so if you aren't convinced, don't lose any sleep over it!