{"id":2606,"date":"2008-05-15T09:17:03","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T09:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/15\/dorky-poll-trick-questions\/"},"modified":"2008-05-15T09:17:03","modified_gmt":"2008-05-15T09:17:03","slug":"dorky-poll-trick-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2008\/05\/15\/dorky-poll-trick-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"Dorky Poll: Trick Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m giving an exam this morning (magnetic fields, circuits, magnetic forces on charges), which is always a carnival of boredom– happily, I have papers to grade during the test, which will keep me busy. Sadly, this is not a final exam, as Female Science Professor<\/a> and others are making or grading right now– we still have three more weeks of class. Joy.<\/p>\n

Anyway, this seems like a good time and topic for a Dorky Poll. So, bouncing off the FSP post, let me ask:<\/p>\n

\n

What’s your favorite trick question from an exam?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This could be an exam you’ve taken, or one you’ve given. All that’s required is that there be some sort of “trick” to the answer. You don’t need to give the answer, either, if you don’t want to– just post it in the comments, and let people guess.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Personally, I haven’t come up with a great many “trick” questions, but maybe that’s just because they don’t seem like tricks to me. I did have a mechanics question once that asked for the kinetic energy of a field-goal attempt at the peak of its flight, which got a dozen or so students to reflexively write down “0” without thinking about it. I usually put some variant of “Which falls faster, a heavy object or a light one?” on finals in intro mechanics, too, and it’s depressing how many students get tripped up by that one.<\/p>\n

I’ve also been known to deliberately give quizzes where every answer is “B,” just to mess with students’ heads. I get this from my father, who used to give occasional true-false tests where all the answers were “True.”<\/p>\n

My favorite “trick” question, though, comes from a colleague, who wrote a multiple choice question for an exam that was something like “A small 1kg lead sphere is at one end of a 1m long massless rod centered at the origin, while a large spherical collection of feathers with a total mass of 1kg is at the other. Where is the center of mass of the system located?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m giving an exam this morning (magnetic fields, circuits, magnetic forces on charges), which is always a carnival of boredom– happily, I have papers to grade during the test, which will keep me busy. Sadly, this is not a final exam, as Female Science Professor and others are making or grading right now– we still… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Trick Questions<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2606\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}