If OpenStax University Physics proves successful, all solutions to all homework problems and most quizzes will eventually become public knowledge. While we can only hope to delay the onset of that event, we can accommodate by replacing traditional homework by quizzes in which certain questions are made public. Eventually the bank of quiz questions will become so large that memorizing formulas to solve problems will become an ineffective strategy. A good place to begin is the odd problems in the textbook.

The LaTeX/Python configuration of quizbank is such that the LaTeX bank contains only answers, not the equations used to generate those answers.

This project asks students to write the Python code that generates the answers, and for that reason, the Python code needs to be kept "hidden" on private servers and laptops. It can be assigned to students with little or know knowledge of Python. Access to LaTex in the MiKTeX environment is useful but not absolutely essential.

The following instructions pertain to files that can be found in:

• https://bitbucket.org/Guy_vandegrift/qbwiki/src/master/numerical-apples/

• https://bitbucket.org/Guy_vandegrift/qbwiki/src/master/OSUP-1-5-unfinished/

• https://bitbucket.org/Guy_vandegrift/qbwiki/src/master/OSUP-1-6-unfinished/

If you wish to help out, download an unfinished question and use Python to fix it. Send me your Python code and I will do the rest. Send corrected Python file to: guy.vandegrift@wright.edu

Instructions

1. You need access to Python 3 and a text editor like IDLE.

2. Open qbwiki/numerical-apples/apples.py and run code to make sure your Python system is working properly.

3. Save a copy of the code because you will might modify it in a way that requires that you return to the original version of apples.py.

4. Scroll down to the bottom of the apples.py to see the 7 steps required to create a question.

5. Step 1 allows you to modify the strings "author", "attribution", and "about". Modify these strings and see if you the code still works.

6. If Python successfully runs apples.py, you will see two files with the same content: apples.tex requires LaTeX, and apples.txt can be opened with any text editor. Use one of those documents to verify that your changes were made to Step 1.

There are 3 projects to choose from:

1. (simplest): Play with steps 3, 5, and 6 and see if you can write a simple Python code that prints out an answer.

2. (also simple): Open a Python code in OSUP-1-5-unfinished and modify it to create a problem. Do this by first solving the problem at step 5 and see if you can recover the answer. Then, modify the QuesVar arguments in step 3 to generate a sequence of different questions (all identical except for numerical values.)

3. (advanced): Somebody needs to write to modify the Python template code to print out questions to a text file so that those without access to LaTeX can develop numerical questions more easily.