I gave a partial answer to a homework questions here (now deleted; screenshots: question, answer) and was firmly told in comments that even partial answers to homework questions are not allowed. Is that correct ? As far as I can see, the guidelines on homework questions only prohibits complete answers.
Follow up question: if any answer at all to a homework question is inappropriate, why do we have a "homework-and-exercises" tag ?
This depends on the quality of the question, I should think. If it only consists of text that is obviously a dump from a homework assignment (or other similar set-piece, like a textbook exercise, say) with no attempt from the OP to engage with the material or ask a substantial question beyond "do my work for me plz" (even if it is tempered with something like this particular OP's comment "Tips only.. Not the solution", which effectively reads "do my wokr fr me plz, but only some of itplz"), then please do not answer.
Giving any answers to those questions simply encourages that user, and any others that see those answers, to post the type of no-effort help-vampire extremely-low-quality bottom-of-the-barrel questions that really harm the average level of questions on the site. If that's the type of site you want to post answers in, then there's plenty of such venues linked in this thread that will happily enlist your efforts to feed the help vampires. On this site, we don't want those questions, and we close them so that they don't get answers.
There is also a long-standing policy that if someone posts a full answer to a homework question (i.e. not just tips) then that does get summarily deleted (potentially only temporarily) by moderators. This is not what's happening with your answer: it is not getting deleted, and it is still currently standing. The only thing that you're getting is people in the comments politely asking you not to engage in behaviours which harm the site's quality.
As for your follow-up question: it is possible to ask on-topic homework questions; for a sampling, see this list of open upvoted homework-tagged threads - and compare it with the awful stuff you get by searching for closed, unanswered, negative-score homework-tagged questions. Most of the questions, by number, that we get which fit the homework-and-exercises tag description are off-topic, and they are closed and deleted as promptly as the review queue allows (usually within one or two days to closure, then deleted by the roomba at about the nine-day mark). The tag exists for the minority of such questions which are on-topic, and which do exist.
But please do not answer the off-topic ones.
Finally, note what ultimately happened to the question, as documented in this screenshot ─ it was removed by the roomba, under the following criterion:
- The system will automatically delete closed, unlocked questions with zero or negative score having no positively scored or accepted answers or pending reopen votes, that were closed for any reason other than duplicate nine or more days ago and haven't been edited in the past nine days. (
RemoveAbandonedClosed)
This type of cleanup can only happen if any answers have positive scores, so that downvotes on the answers are also a way to ensure that the system handles this type of off-topic question appropriately.
I, like I suspect most long time members of the site, have rather lost the will to live when it comes to discussion of the homework policy and my enthusiasm for reopening the issue is on the limited side. So let me turn your question back to you:
First let's look at the question you answered:
How can I determine, the height they meet, the time they meet and the velocities of each when they meet. Can anyone give me some tips? Thank you
An object thrown vertical upwards with initial Velocity of 40m/s and 2 seconds later, another object is thrown with the same Velocity.
My challenge to you is:
Do you want to see more questions like this?
because if you provide helpful answers you will see more questions like this.
My view is that questions like the above do not make the Physics SE a better place and they should not be answered, not even partially, because that just encourages posting of such questions. Your views may differ of course. All I would ask is that you consider the long term consequences of your answers.
I'm delighted to answer questions like this in a chat room, and indeed we have a chat room specifically intended for just this purpose. It's nice to feel helpful and nicer still when students come back and thank you for helping get them through their exams. So I'm not saying don't help with this sort of question. I'm just saying don't do it on the Physics SE site.
When we close homework-like questions, we sometimes invite the askers to rephrase them as conceptual questions.
I think that's good guidance for answers to homework-like questions, too. And your answer isn't an answer about kinematics or conservation of energy; your answer is some algebra. That's how confused beginners approach physics, but that's not what doing real physics is like.
A partial answer that explained conceptually how to attack that kind of problem would probably be welcome. But the asker of that question hasn't given any indication of what their conceptual problem is, so writing a targeted conceptual answer would be a serious challenge.
