Passage IV

Some students conducted experiments using different brands of adhesive tape, one kind each of paper and plastic, a board, and a spring scale.

Experiment 1

A student stuck one end of a piece of tape onto the edge of a board that was wrapped with paper. The other end of the tape was clamped to a spring scale, as shown in Figure 1.

While one student held the board, a second student pulled the spring scale until the tape came off the paper wrapping; a third student recorded the force in newtons, N, indicated on the spring scale at the moment the tape came off the paper wrapping.

The procedure was repeated for 3 different brands of tape; each brand of tape came in many different widths, of which 2 or 3 were tested. The results are shown in Table 1.

Experiment 2

The students performed an experiment similar to Experiment 1, except that the paper wrapping was replaced by a plastic wrapping. The results are shown in Table 2.

24. The students’ instructor gave them a strip of tape that was 2.5 cm wide and asked them to identify the brand. The students repeated the procedures from Experiments 1 and 2 using the tape and obtained average forces of 4.9 N for paper and 4.1 N for plastic. Which of the following brands would most likely have produced these results?

Answer and Explanation

Your Answer is

Correct Answer is F

Explanation

First exclude brand Y, because there are Y tapes with a width of 2.5 cm in table 1 and table 2, but the force used is 5.4 N, which does not match the question.

Looking at brand X again, the width of 2.5 cm is between 2.0-3.0 cm, so corresponding to the data in table 1, the force required to tear off the tape on the paper wrapping is between 3.8-5.8 N ;

Compared to the data in table 2, the force required to tear off the tape on the plastic wrapping is between 3.2-5.0 N. The 4.9 N and 4.1 N given in the question stem just fit these two ranges. So it should be Brand X tape