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: Generally, nearsightedness first occurs in school-age children. There is some evidence that myopia is inherited. If one or both of your parents need glasses, there is an increased chance that you will too. Individuals who spend a lot of time reading, working or playing at a computer, or doing other close visual work may also be more likely to develop nearsightedness. Because the eye continues to grow during childhood, myopia typically progresses until about age 20. However, nearsightedness may also develop in adults due to visual stress or health conditions such as diabetes. A common sign of nearsightedness is difficulty seeing distant objects like a movie screen or the TV, or the whiteboard or chalkboard in school.
Story: Two coworkers are sitting in the large break room eating lunch and watching the news on TV when they see an advertisement for glasses. John, upon seeing the ad, comments that he really should go and get a new pair since he is nearsighted and hasn't gotten a new pair of glasses in a couple years. Rick says he is glad that he doesn't need to wear glasses because it seems like such a pain to have to always have something on your face. John nods in agreement and then both men turn to see a woman at the other side of the break room waving at them and trying to get their attention.

SOLUTION: Is John more or less likely than Rick to correctly identify the woman?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Pressures are given in a multitude of units. We've already discussed Pascals, and we know that another unit for pressure is the atmosphere (1 atm = 101.3 x 10 5 Pa). The third commonly used pressure unit is the torr (symbol Torr). 760 torr is 1 atm, but 1 torr is also the increase in pressure necessary to cause liquid mercury to rise by 1 mm. For that reason, torr is also commonly referred to as "millimeters mercury." Another pressure unit commonly used in our everyday world is psi, or pounds per square inch, though neither psi nor torr are SI units.
Story: Mike is studying for his physics exam. He realizes that the best way to learn physics is to solve problems. To that end, he needs to to convert pressure of objects from one unit to another. In one problem, four scenarios are given for the same object, scenario A, scenario B, scenario C, and scenario D. In scenario A the pressure is given in Pascals. In scenario B the pressure is given in the atm. In scenario C the pressure is given in torr. Lastly, in scenario D the pressure is given in psi.

SOLUTION: In which scenario SI unit is not used, scenario C or scenario D?

PROBLEM: Background Paragraph: Iron is first oxidized to iron(II) ions by oxygen. In the second step, the iron(II) ions are further oxidized and combine with water and oxygen gas to produce a hydrated form of iron(III) oxide known as rust. Rusting is one of many example of corrosion. Corrosion is the deterioration of metals by redox processes. Corrosion causes enormous amounts of damage to buildings, bridges, ships, cars, and other objects. It has been estimated that corrosion costs the U.S. economy over 100 billion dollars each year. A great amount of time and effort is spent to try to limit or prevent corrosion.
Story: Jordan is conducting an experiment to see how Iron rusts. He first takes Iron Bar A and puts it out on his porch on a rainy day. Then he puts Iron bar B in an airtight bag and removes all of the oxygen and air to vacuum seal it. After some time passes the bar he left outside is completely covered in rust. He removes the bar in the vacuum sealed bag and to his surprise it has no rust at all. Because there was no oxygen and water in the air tight bag, iron bar B has no rust at all. Iron bar A was exposed to a lot of water and oxygen and there for it rusted completely.

SOLUTION:
Given a new piece of iron, will leaving it outside or sealing it in a bag cause it to rust?