Bennett Mechanical Aptitude

&
Spatial Reasoning Test
Study Guide

Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Exam

The Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Tests is used to determine your aptitude for
learning mechanical skills in your applied mechanical job. It measures a complex set of
abilities. Your mechanical knowledge, spatial intelligence and mechanical reasoning are
tested and analyzed.
The Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test is administered in a number of ways.
Generally, the questions are read over to you either in group or individually. However, some
testers may prefer to use tape recorders to read the questions.
When you answer the items in any mechanical aptitude test, each of your correct answer is
counted to complete your personality profile. However, these raw scores are useless unless
they are interpreted in the way as manual of the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test
defines. You are required to answer all 68 multiple choice questions within the given thirty
minutes.
The Bennett Mechanical Test is reported to have high level of reliability. Not only the testing
industry, the psychologists but also the employers have been giving a solid weight to the
results and predictions of the Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Test.
For jobs requiring multiple aptitudes, the BMCT is most effective when used in combination
with other tests.

Elements Of Bennett Mechanical Comprehension

Test
A professional Bennett Mechanical Comprehension test contains categories
of the 135 questions into 18 content areas. Each category shows the number of question
that a Bennett Test may generally have.

1- Acoustics - 3
2- Inertia 5
3- Belt Drive - 2
4- Levers 8
5- Center of Gravity 7
6- Optics 6
7- Centrifugal Force 5
8- Planes and Slopes 2
9- Electricity 6
10-Pulley Systems 10

Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Exam

11- Gears - 10
12- Resolution of Forces 6
13- Gravity and Velocity 9
14- Shape and Volume - 7
15- Heat- 8
16- Structures 12
17- Hydraulics 16
18- Miscellaneous - 14

Advice To Encounter Bennett Mechanical

Comprehension Test
The importance of Bennett Mechanical Comprehension test for a mechanical job demands
that you should know a bit of different concepts of physics. There are some daily life
experiences given in physics terminology:
1) Inertia of a body is the inability of the body to change by itself the state of rest or of
uniform motion.
2) Pushing the roller over a step requires a larger force than pulling the roller over the step.
3) A person on frictionless surface can get away by blowing out the air from the mouth or
by throwing away an object in direction opposite to the one in which he/she wants to move.
4) The forces acting on a point are concurrent forces and they are in equilibrium if resultant
force is zero.
5) To produce extension or compression in the spring, two equal and opposite forces are to
be applied on the spring. In equilibrium restoring force developed due to elasticity of the
spring is equal to either force and opposite to applied force. A definite amount of work has
to be done against restoring force both in compressing the spring. This work done is stored
in the form of potential energy in the spring.

Bennett Test and Problem Types

Your skills to mentally animate a static diagram in a Bennett test are highly related to your
spatial visualization ability. You are required to read the question, analyze the diagram and
visualize movements of different components of the mechanical object offered in an item.

Bennett Mechanical Comprehension Exam

However, there is a limitation to your mental simulation ability. You cant animate all
components of a mechanical diagram simultaneously.
How to handle such limitations in a Bennett Mechanical test?
Simply decompose the system into its components and visualize movements of each
component individually. When motion of a component is related to many other components
or a mechanical interaction between different components is happening in different planes,
the visualization becomes a tricky job. You can score well in a Bennett test by
understanding different mechanical systems.

Multiple Gear Problems

When a Bennett test offers a problem of many interactive gears, it becomes difficult to
analyze in which direction the last gear shall move. You shall find all gears fixed in their
center.
You should animate each gear while keeping movement of a single adjacent gear in mind.
This way you can develop a piecemeal strategy to analyze motion of only one gear at a
time. In most of such gear problems, you may discover that every other gear will turn into
the same direction. In gear related problems, the verbal strategies can also help you to
solve the problem. The movement would either be clockwise or anticlockwise in such
Bennett test items.

Multiple Gears and Belt Problems

When you are offered multiple gears and attached belt problems in a Bennett test, you can
solve it by following piecemeal strategy. You will observe that motion of each component
can be inferred that of a single component that touches it. However, you cant go to verbal
strategy because frame of reference keeps changing with axel movement. In other words
you cant represent the movement of the pulley as clockwise or anticlockwise.

Pulley Systems
The pulley problems in a Bennett test offer a static diagram of pulley systems. You are
required to decide which pulley requires more force to lift the given weight. Some pulley
items may differ from others for one or more attributes to see how you combine information
from such differences. The variation may take place in relevant and irrelevant attributes.
Your responses shall be analyzed by keeping all these variations.

Wheel Problems
The wheel problems in a Bennett test may require you to visualize movement of a bigger
wheel in comparison to the movement of the smaller wheel. You will find several
components constraining each other in many ways. In such complicated situations you need
to visualize movement of the whole system at once. Your spatial visualization shall be
tested at higher degree.