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 are also given a question about the story that requires an understanding of the relationship described in the background paragraph and the story. You need to come up with an answer to the given question; the answer will be a span from either the question or the story. In order to correctly answer the given question, you need to understand the relationship mentioned in the background paragraph and should be able to use it to understand that in the story. Your answer can not consist of any word that is not mentioned in any of these: the background paragraph, the story, or the question. You can directly copy and paste a span from the story or the question while answering the given question.
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Question: Background Paragraph: Chemical reactions follow the laws of thermodynamics. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can be changed from one form to another, but it cannot be created or destroyed. This law is also known as the Law of Conservation of Energy. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states the energy available after a chemical reaction is always less than that at the beginning of a reaction. This is also commonly referred to as entropy. Entropy can be described as the degree of disorder in a system . That is, as energy is transferred from one form to another, some of the energy is lost as heat, and the amount of available energy decreases. As the energy decreases, the disorder in the system increases, and, by definition, the entropy increases. Ice melting provides an example in which entropy increases. Entropy essentially is a measure of the tendency of a process, such as a chemical reaction, to proceed in a particular direction. 
Story: Marcus is in a lab working on an experiment. He combines two chemicals to see if they react and the solution starts to boil. He notices that the air above the chemicals reacting has greatly increased in heat. 
Question: Will the disorder of a system increase or decrease as entropy increases?

Answer: increase.


Question: Background Paragraph: As Figure above shows, the distance between particles is much smaller for the solid and liquid states than for the gas state. In the solid state, particles are fixed in place, while particles are more free to move in the liquid and gas states. The particles in the solid and liquid states “stick together,” but in the gas state, they move freely about the container. In general, it requires energy to separate individual particles. If we want to make a solid adopt a liquid form, we can add energy in the form of heat, increasing the temperature of the substance. Conversely, if we want to convert a substance from a gas to a liquid or from a liquid to a solid, we remove energy from the system and decrease the temperature. Pressure also plays an important role in changes of state, which will be discussed later on. We will study these difference in greater detail in the chapter States of Matter. 
Story: Thomas and Alexander are freshman students in an introductory chemistry laboratory course at their local college. In this week's experiment, both Thomas and Alexander will be starting their experiments with liquid water. They both follow different experimental protocols, and at the end of the experiment Thomas discovers ice in his reaction flask, while Alexander discovers steam in his reaction flask. 
Question: Which person must have increased the temperature of their reaction?

Answer: Alexander.


Question: Background Paragraph: In common everyday speech, speed of sound refers to the speed of sound waves in air. However, the speed of sound varies from substance to substance: sound travels most slowly in gases; it travels faster in liquids; and faster still in solids. For example, (as noted above), sound travels at 343 m/s in air; it travels at 1,480 m/s in water (4.3 times as fast as in air); and at 5,120 m/s in iron (about 15 times as fast as in air). In an exceptionally stiff material such as diamond, sound travels at 12,000 metres per second (27,000 mph);[1] (about 35 times as fast as in air) which is around the maximum speed that sound will travel under normal conditions. 
Story: A popular radio station was playing the classic rock songs. There was a radio in a car with a lot of obstacles between the station. There was a fire with a lot of smoke, a river, and a mountain. The man driving the car had a great time listening to the classics. 
Question: Where was the radio signal traveling the fastest: river or mountain?

Answer:
mountain.