GRE最新練習(xí)題第4部分

字號:

(20)ness and fitness. What would be the shape of the com-
    bustion chamber? Where should the valves be placed?
    Should it have a long or short piston? Such questions
    have a range of answers that are supplied by experience,
    by physical requirements, by limitations of available
    (25)space, and not least by a sense of form. Some decisions,
    such as wall thickness and pin diameter, may depend on
    scientific calculations, but the nonscientific component
    of design remains primary.
    Design courses, then, should be an essential element
    (30)in engineering curricula. Nonverbal thinking, a central
    mechanism in engineering design, involves perceptions,
    the stock-in-trade of the artist, not the scientist. Because
    perceptive processes are not assumed to entail “hard
    thinking,“ nonverbal thought is sometimes seen as a prim-
    (35)itive stage in the development of cognitive processes and
    inferior to verbal or mathematical thought. But it is para-
    doxical that when the staff of the Historic American
    Engineering Record wished to have drawings made of
    machines and isometric views of industrial processes for
    (40)its historical record of American engineering, the only
    college students with the requisite abilities were not engi-
    neering students, but rather students attending architec-
    tural schools.
    It courses in design, which in a strongly analytical
    (45)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
    (50)controls were unable to operate in a snowstorm because
    a fan sucked snow into the electrical system. Absurd ran-
    dom failures that plague automatic control systems are
    not merely trivial aberrations; they are a reflection of the
    chaos that results when design is assumed to be primarily
    a problem in mathematics.
    21.In the passage, the author is primarily concerned
    with
    (A) identifying the kinds of thinking that are used
    by technologists
    (B) stressing the importance of nonverbal thinking
    in engineering design
    (C) proposing a new role for nonscientific thinking
    in the development of technology
    (D) contrasting the goals of engineers with those of
    technologists
    (E) criticizing engineering schools for emphasizing
    science in engineering curricula
    22.It can be inferred that the author thinks engineering
    curricula are
    (A) strengthened when they include courses in
    design
    (B) weakened by the substitution of physical
    science courses for courses designed to
    develop mathematical skills
    (C) strong because nonverbal thinking is still
    emphasized by most of the courses
    (D) strong despite the errors that graduates of such
    curricula have made in the development of
    automatic control systems
    (E) strong despite the absence of nonscientific
    modes of thinking
    23.Which of the following statements best illustrates
    the main point of lines 1-28 of the passage?
    (A) When a machine like a rotary engine mal-
    functions, it is the technologist who is best
    equipped to repair it.
    (B) Each component of an automobile-for
    example, the engine or the fuel tank-has a
    shape that has been scientifically determined
    to be best suited to that component's function
    (C) A telephone is a complex instrument designed
    by technologists using only nonverbal thought
    (D) The designer of a new refrigerator should
    consider the designs of other refrigerators
    before deciding on its final form.
    (E) The distinctive features of a suspension bridge
    reflect its designer's conceptualization as well
    as the physical requirements of its site.