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: There are many examples in the chemical world of changes in entropy. Phase transitions are one obvious example. When a substance makes a transition from the liquid state to the gaseous state, the particles have many more possible arrangements, because they are no longer confined to a specified volume in which they are close to each other; gas particles can move freely throughout their container. Vaporization represents an increase in entropy. In the opposite direction, a liquid loses entropy when it freezes to a solid. Because solids have very ordered structures, there are fewer possible arrangements of particles that would result in the properties associated with a solid.
Story: Rob was in his chemistry lab, experimenting with different states of matter. He had a liquid substance that he labeled as state A. He then transformed half of the liquid substance to gaseous state. He labeled it as state B. Finally, he froze the remaining half of the liquid to solid state. He labeled it as state C.

SOLUTION: Which does not represent a decrease in etropy, state A or state C?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: The epidermis also contains melanocytes , which are cells that produce melanin. Melanin is the brownish pigment that gives skin much of its color. Everyone has about the same number of melanocytes, but the melanocytes of people with darker skin produce more melanin. The amount of melanin produced is determined by heredity and exposure to UV light, which increases melanin output. Exposure to UV light also stimulates the skin to produce vitamin D . Because melanin blocks UV light from penetrating the skin, people with darker skin may be at greater risk of vitamin D deficiency.
Story: John is learning more about different cultures and people around the world. He noticed that people have different skin colors. To learn more about the science behind skin colors he categorized the skin colors into two broad groups, case D and case L. Case D is represented by darker skin and case L is represented by lighter skin.

SOLUTION: In which case melanocytes would produce less melanin, case D or case L?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Energy is passed up a food chain or web from lower to higher trophic levels. However, only about 10 percent of the energy at one level is passed up the next level. This is represented by the ecological pyramid in Figure below . The other 90 percent of energy at each trophic level is used for metabolic processes or given off to the environment as heat. This loss of energy explains why there are rarely more than four trophic levels in a food chain or web. There isn't enough energy left to support additional levels. It also explains why ecosystems need a constant input of energy.
Story: An island in the Pacific ocean has a strange an compact ecosystem. There are only 4 species of living organism on it. There are plants, Insects, birds, cats. Because of this there is a very specific food chain on this island. Any new species added to it has cause the population of all other species to decrease. This is because when a new species is added it causes the others to not have enough food as they all feed on each other. The insects eat the plants, the birds eat the insects and the cats eat the birds. When a species of wolf that eats the cats was added the plants began to die off because the wolves outlived the cats so the plants could not get the energy in time to regrow before the insects would eat them. Because of this the insects would die, then the birds then the cats. because the energy source for each species was being consumed faster than it could be produced.

SOLUTION:
Will adding a new species to the island cause the available energy to increase or decrease?