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: The Mercator projection is best within 15 degrees north or south of the equator. Landmasses or countries outside that zone get stretched out of shape. The further the feature is from the equator, the more out of shape it is stretched. For example, if you look at Greenland on a globe, you see it is a relatively small country near the North Pole. Yet, on a Mercator projection, Greenland looks almost as big the United States. Because Greenland is closer to the pole, the continent's shape and size are greatly increased. The United States is closer to its true dimensions.
Story: Bob is looking at a map with Mercator projection to help him with his geography class. He noticed that Ecuador is within fifteen degrees north or south of the equator, but Norway is farther north of the equator. Bob starts to see how a country's location on a map affects how they look.

SOLUTION: If they were equal in size on a globe, which country would look bigger on a map, Equador or Norway?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Hepatitis B is a contagious virus that affects the liver, infection can last from a few weeks to a serious lifelong illness. Two different types of infection exist for this disease, "acute" and "chronic." Acute Hepatitis B is a short term illness that occurs within 6 months of exposure, Chronic Hepatitis B is long term and happens when the virus remains in the body. The younger the child is, the greater their chance of developing a chronic infection and this risk goes down as the child gets older. Approximately 90% of infected infants will develop a chronic infection.[3].
Story: A 4th grade classroom photo was held today. They all gathered by age. Eloy was the youngest, followed by Gail, and Josef was the oldest. They looked wonderful that day.

SOLUTION: Who has a greater chance of developing a chronic infection: Gail or Eloy?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Water stratification is when water masses with different properties - salinity (halocline), oxygenation (chemocline), density (pycnocline), temperature (thermocline) - form layers that act as barriers to water mixing which could lead to anoxia or euxinia.[1] These layers are normally arranged according to density, with the least dense water masses sitting above the more dense layers.

Water stratification also creates barriers to nutrient mixing between layers. This can affect the primary production in an area by limiting photosynthetic processes. When nutrients from the benthos cannot travel up into the photic zone, phytoplankton may be limited by nutrient availability. Lower primary production also leads to lower net productivity in waters.[2].
Story: The marine biologists studied two areas of the Black Sea. Area A, situated at the mouth of the Danube River, which presented high levels of water stratification, because of the fresh water discharged by the river; and area B, situated 35 miles south, where the water was less stratified and more oxygenated.

SOLUTION:
Which of the two areas had less dense water?