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: When you add sugar to a cold drink, you may stir it to help the sugar dissolve. If you don’t stir, the sugar may eventually dissolve, but it will take much longer. Stirring is one of several factors that affect how fast a solute dissolves in a solvent. Temperature is another factor. A solid solute dissolves faster at a higher temperature. For example, sugar dissolves faster in hot tea than in ice tea. A third factor that affects the rate of dissolving is the surface area of the solute. For example, if you put granulated sugar in a glass of ice tea, it will dissolve more quickly than the same amount of sugar in a cube. That’s because granulated sugar has much more surface area than a cube of sugar. You can see videos of all three factors at these URLs. 
Story: Justin and Alejandro are conducting a chemical experiment involving sodium hydroxide. A key part of the reaction is ensuring that the sodium hydroxide is dissolved in water before adding the other materials. Justin adds the sodium hydroxide to reaction A, and begins stirring the mixture with a spoon. Alejandro also adds sodium hydroxide to his reaction, reaction B, but doesn't stir it because he is lazy.

SOLUTION: Whose sodium hydroxide, Justin's or Alejandro's, will dissolve faster?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: For example, if a solid pellet of NaOH is placed into a chamber of HCl gas, a relatively slow acid-base reaction will occur between gaseous HCl molecules and hydroxide ions on the surface of the pellet. If we were to grind the pellet into smaller pieces, it would greatly increase the total surface area, and therefore the overall reaction rate. Once ground up, many hydroxide ions that were on the interior of the pellet, where they were not exposed to any HCl molecules, will now be on the surface, where the necessary collisions can occur. 
Story: In his chemistry lab David is experimenting with how NaOH and HCl gas reacts with each other. He conducted two experiments, experiment A and experiment B. In experiment A he used solid pellets of NaOH, but in experiment B he used ground NaOH. He was surprised to see the difference it made in his experiment.

SOLUTION: In which experiment hydroxide would have greater surface area, experiment A or experiment B?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Existing data on the role of immigration on residential segregation trends in the US suggest that foreign-born Hispanics, Asians and blacks often have higher rates of segregation than do native-born individuals from these groups. Segregation of immigrants is associated with their low-income status, language barriers, and support networks in these enclaves. Research on assimilation shows that while new immigrants settle in homogenous ethnic communities, segregation of immigrants declines as they gain socioeconomic status and move away from these communities, integrating with the native-born. 
Story: Carl is looking to relocate his family to a new area. He has a a couple of options to move to, and would like to remain in a predominantly Hispanic area. Fresno is one option and has a lower socioeconomic status than Billings, which comparatively has a higher one.

SOLUTION:
Which city should Carl most likely avoid?