TASK DEFINITION: You are given a background paragraph that describes one or more causal or qualitative relationships such as a relationship in economics or a scientific law and a story that makes use of the concepts or the relationship described in the provided paragraph. You need to come up with a question about the story that requires an understanding of the relationship described in the background paragraph. The generated question should not be answerable without both the background and story. Write a question about the story that requires a relationship in the background paragraph to answer. Check whether your question requires both the background paragraph and the story to answer. If your question can be answered by only one of these, try to rewrite your question so that it requires both. Note that "flipping" a word in the question can give rise to a new question where the answer will be different from the original question. Often, "flipping" a word gives rise to flipping the direction of the relationship, for example, from "increase" to "decrease."
PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: A large log placed in a fire will burn relatively slowly. If the same mass of wood were added to the fire in the form of small twigs, they would burn much more quickly. This is because the twigs provide a greater surface area than the log does. An increase in the surface area of a reactant increases the rate of a reaction. Surface area is larger when a given amount of a solid is present as smaller particles. A powdered reactant has a greater surface area than the same reactant as a solid chunk. In order to increase the surface area of a substance, it may be ground into smaller particles or dissolved into a liquid. In solution, the dissolved particles are separated from each other and will react more quickly with other reactants. 
Story: Danny went camping and made a fire in the woods. he used large logs he fell a few months back. Bob was camping 300 yards away and he made a fire using small sticks, kindlings and sawdust he had left over. Bob's fire burned fast and bright.

SOLUTION: Which person didn't make a fire that burned for a longer time?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: As a star begins to run low on hydrogen, since the initial quantity has been fused into the denser helium gas, the core will contract due to gravity. The collapsing core increases temperature to the point that the star can begin to fuse helium into carbon. When that happens, the outer portion of the star expands greatly due to the higher temperature. The star can expand to 1000 times the diameter of the sun. At this point, the star is called a red giant . If our sun became a red giant, its surface would expand out past the orbit of Mars. Red giants are red because the surface of the star is cooler than white or blue stars, but remain highly visible because of their gigantic size. 
Story: John is an amateur astronomer. He recently found two stars, star A and star B. Upon observation, he figured out that star A is a blue star, but star B is a red giant. He had to do some research to find out the differences between them.

SOLUTION: Which star would be less visible, star A or star B?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: The frequency of sound waves is measured in hertz (Hz), or the number of waves that pass a fixed point in a second. Human beings can normally hear sounds with a frequency between about 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. Sounds with frequencies below 20 hertz are called infrasound . Sounds with frequencies above 20,000 hertz are called ultrasound . Some other animals can hear sounds in the ultrasound range. For example, dogs can hear sounds with frequencies as high as 50,000 Hz. You may have seen special whistles that dogs but not people can hear. The whistles produce a sound with a frequency too high for the human ear to detect. Other animals can hear even higher-frequency sounds. Bats, for example, can hear sounds with frequencies higher than 100,000 Hz. 
Story: David wants to categorize animals according to the sound waves they can hear. Eventually, he was able to categorize them in three different groups, group A, group B, and group C. He placed the animals that can only hear ifrasound in group A. Then he placed the animals that are only able to hear the same frequency of sound waves as humans do in group B. The last group of animals were able to hear only ultrasound. He placed them in group C.

SOLUTION:
Which group would be able to hear higher frequency, group A or group B?