Questions tagged [homework-and-exercises]
Applies to meta questions about "homework"-tagged questions on the main site.
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How do I ask homework questions on Physics Stack Exchange?
What is the policy on asking homework questions on Physics Stack Exchange?
What kinds of questions are considered homework questions?
Are homework questions allowed?
What should I include in a ...
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My question was closed on Phys.SE. Can you recommend me another Internet site where my question might be on-topic?
My question was closed1 on Phys.SE. Can you recommend me another Internet site where my question might be on-topic?
Here we keep a list of other Internet sites that might help students2 of physics. ...
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Should we rename the homework tag as "problem-solving", or such?
The "homework" tag is often controversial among new users who complain that their question isn't from a homework assignment (so they get offended, so edit wars happen, and posts get blocked -- e.g., ...
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Why don't we just ban homework altogether?
This site gets a lot of low-quality homework questions. Since I ignored the homework tag a few months ago, my experience of the site has been much more pleasant.
The current homework policy is nice, ...
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Strict(er) adherence to homework guidelines?
Less a question and more of a heads-up.
Due to the Covid-19 crisis, most higher education institutions (that I know of) are moving to online examination. Many of these examinations count towards ...
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What can be done about the (current) ongoing flood of homework and very basic questions overwhelming our site?
Since quite some time, the amount of new incoming higher level questions is decaying and the number of very basic ones is increasing, but the current inflood of bad homeworks (the good ones I ...
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Should we rename the homework policy?
The homework policy is a constant source of confusion for new (and sometimes established) users.
We see this confusion, for example, when users respond to closures based on the homework policy by ...
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The $F=ma$ competition was February 18th, 2021
The $F=ma$ competition is the largest physics competition in the United States, and took place online the afternoon after this Meta question first appeared. It is a multiple choice exam with tricky ...
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Banning homework: vote and documentation
It was proposed recently on meta that, as part of a broader programme of increasing the site quality, we ban homework questions altogether. This proposal seems to have really quite strong support. On ...
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Bite-sizing homework
Well, meta posts about "homework" keep on coming, but we still don't seem to have a solution that sticks, so I'll give it another shot. For what it's worth I think the current system isn't so bad that ...
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Users that post every question in their homework/exams
Everybody who's been here for a while knows that the homework policy is not as advertised.
If the exercise is sufficiently interesting, and the OP is sufficiently polite, the question often stays ...
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Why is there a homework tag if the posts keep getting closed?
Almost every time I ask for a specific concept using an example in a book, my post keeps getting closed. I didn't want for an answer to the specific problem or get my answer checked, but only to ...
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How can we "make it easier for new users to succeed"?
tl/dr What specific policy changes or behavior changes do you think would lower the barrier to entry for new users represented by the current homework policy?
This essay is in response to a
recent ...
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A week of community closing: what should be disallowed homework?
In this answer it was suggested that it might be good for moderators to refrain from unilaterally closing homework (or homework-like) questions for a while, so that we can get a better sense of what ...
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Should Physics enable a "triage" review queue for homework-like questions?
One of the differences between Physics.SE and Stack Overflow is that SO has at least one review queue which we don't have: Triage. From the 2014 announcement comes this description:
We've been ...
robMod
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Graduate and above level questions aren't homework
I know, I know, it's yet another Meta post about our homework policy. Feel free to downvote and write abusive comments if you're heartily sick of posts about the homework policy.
If you're still with ...
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Replacing the homework policy 1: what existing questions should be on/off topic?
TL;DR: post examples of current questions which are edge cases for the new policy, look through the list, and
vote answers UP if you think they should be ON TOPIC
vote answers DOWN if you think they ...
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How can we improve participation on Physics.SE?
A lot of members have recently noticed a drop in the net question quality on this site. Many of us feel that this is fixable, so I'm trying to take steps in that direction.
Roughly, what we need to ...
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Bounty on "entrance exam" question
On the question Why is the center of a torch beam visible even through an opaque body like my finger?, the OP started a bounty stating
I really need this material to answer my entrance examination ...
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Generalizing the homework policy
In our last chat session two weeks ago (sorry for the delay), we had a discussion about updating the homework policy and homework close reason. I'm making this post to summarize that discussion and ...
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Why is this question not considered an off-topic homework problem?
This question currently has a bounty on it and is receiving a lot of attention. But to me it looks like a question that is normally closed for being off-topic. The question reads like a homework ...
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Should we re-word the homework-like close reason to better match how we actually deal with homework-like questions?
After an extended debate that lasted several years, our community
seems to have settled into a pretty consistent treatment of
homework-like questions. When such a question is closed, a banner
appears ...
robMod
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Replacing the homework policy 1b: what is our scope anyway?
Abstract: Analyzing the data from the last replace-the-homework-policy question was inconclusive. So back to the drawing board, or really back to our starting point: what kinds of questions do we ...
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Are homework questions becoming more common?
After hearing that homework questions are far too common one too many times, I decided to take the initiative and try to prove whether homework questions are now the primary new content of the site.
...
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Homework - the view from the chat session
During yesterday's Physics Chat we had an, erm, lively discussion about the evergreen subject of homework questions, and I think we reached as near a consensus as a motley crew of physics nerds is ...
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The role of good mechanics problems
Today I saw that this question Applying energy and momentum conservation to the problem of pulling a bent carpet at a constant speed about pulling a bent carpet was closed for being a homework ...
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Getting a better understanding of how and why off-topic homework-like questions get answered before they can be closed
Background
This is a follow-up to What happened with the experiment to lower the vote-to-close threshold?. (See that thread, and the initial proposal here, for background.) The experiment is currently ...
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Can we include homework guidance in the How to Ask sidebar?
This question is a follow-up to this question about what some of us feel is a large spike in low-level homework questions.
I propose we include a specific link to our canonical homework meta question ...
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Does banning homework do long-term harm for only short-term gain?
When I first saw Why don't we just ban homework altogether? my initial reaction was "hell yeah!". As I've thought about the issue more though, I wonder if banning homework will do Physics.SE more ...
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Is "check-my-work" defined to be off-topic in the site's help? (Should it be?)
On a recent question, there was some discussion in the comments about "homework-like" and "check-my-work". With regard to the latter, the OP pointed out that "check-my-work&...
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Why was my recent answer deleted, and was it really an appropriate action?
I recently asked and answered a question on the main site: What are the Energy eigenstates for a modified quantum harmonic oscillator?
First of all, this question ended up being re-tagged as homework,...
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How should we deal with academic dishonesty?
Finals are going on for many, and we've had quite a few instances where a student posts a question from a take-home final exam (or something similar).
How ought we deal with this? Should we close ...
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Some doubts about the coherence between rules and practice
Observing the behavior of many community members about closing votes, I feel more and more doubtful about the coherence between the rules written in the help center and the practice. The last example ...
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Can we encourage the "research-level" meta tag? What about a "popular" tag?
I have been reading a bit of the meta discussion going on about the question quality here at the Physics StackExchange (SE). Especially in the wake of the demise of the TheoreticalPhysics SE, there ...
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Towards a canonical homework question
Note that the site's current policy on homework questions is found at
How do I ask homework questions on Physics Stack Exchange?
which will always have the current version of the policy.
Many ...
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What does this community mean by students?
So the title says all. What is the meaning of a student of Physics as per this community? I ask this because there are students at many levels: 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th graders, undergraduates, ...
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Should this "homework-like" question about the AKLT Hamiltonian be reopened, or remain deleted?
It's been suggested via a flag that this question, which was deleted by Community after being closed for ten days, has value to other users asking similar questions.
I personally don't understand the ...
robMod
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Examples of good homework questions
I want to start this meta question as place where people can put links to well asked homework-like questions.
The point is that if not so good questions are asked then we will have a meta question ...
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Should we allow questions asking the mathematical solution to physics problems?
An example question:
Solution for the Finite 2D Potential Well - Rotational Symmetry
It is being voted to close as off-topic. Reading the comments, that seems to be because it the physics is ...
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What are good examples of narrowing a homework question down to a conceptual question?
It is obvious that Physics SE community aren't here to solve specific physics problems. Homework policy, however, states that a question can be narrowed down to a conceptual question. To reinforce ...
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Has the PSE philosophy about homework-style exercises and check-my-work problems changed since 2012?
The Community recycling algorithm recently brought this homework-style question asked in 2012 to the Top Questions list. It's interesting to me that
It's clearly an elementary homework-style problem ...
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The homework close reason contradicts itself
The first two sentences of the Homework close reason are:
Homework-like questions and check-my-work questions are considered off-topic here, particularly when asking about specific computations ...
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Answering "Homework-Like" Questions With Hints
It occurred to me today that I don't know what a good approach is for providing hints to homework-like questions.
I cannot find any clear policy on how this should work. The example that brought it ...
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What is the meaning of **effort** that Phys.SE wants in homework questions?
Always do I have seen most of the homework tagged questions are hold, with a close reason to show minimal effort. I thought Phys.SE wanted the asker to show his attempt. But recently, I got amazed ...
user36790
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Can we please stop applying the homework tag (and policy) to very advanced questions?
This question is inspired by Colin McFauls very reasonable classification of questions tagged as homework due to the very broad notion of the term "homework-like" currently applied at Physics SE, ...
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How to ask a practice book question and apology?
I wanted to know how to ask the question from my practice book
I add the homework tag and obviously I myself want to know only the concept part and I also give information about what I did and how I ...
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Should we suggest that authors of complete solutions to homework-like questions delete them?
This week I've seen several complete solutions posted to homework-like questions.
One author asked if he should delete his answer. I'm inclined to answer yes, he should delete it, but I'm putting ...
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I am not a student and my questions are not "homework". I am a hobbyist. Do I need to tag these as homework questions?
I solve physics problems from a textbook that I enjoy. However, I am not a student and my questions are not "homework". I am a hobbyist. Do I need to tag these as homework questions? (I was ...
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redirecting off-topic homework-and-exercises questions to appropriate sites
Proposal
When homework-and-exercises questions are voted off topic and put on hold then the OP should be directed to the Meta Question which offers a choice of alternative sites.
To put this ...
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Why was my question about the Devil's problem deemed a homework question?
My recent question was manually removed from Hot Network Questions and later closed as a homework question, but it eludes me why.
According to the FAQ on homework questions, the definition of ...
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