Mechanical Reasoning

The Mechanical Reasoning test from Project Talent, the 1960 study that tested some 440,000 American high-school students, about 5% of everyone then in grades 9–12. Twenty questions about drawings of boats, gears, pulleys, levers and valves, reproduced as they were. Read each question, study the picture, and pick the answer. As in 1960, you have 11 minutes; you can skip and go back.

The booklet's own sample question: Which way will the bucket move when the ball goes up? — A. In direction A (down); B. In direction B (up); C. There is no way of telling. The answer is A: if the ball moves up, the bucket moves down.

The score is the number correct out of 20. Your percentile is against a nationally representative sample of the students of 1960 (N = 10,991), scored from their item-level answers. Bear in mind that they were teenagers answering on paper; an adult today has some advantage.