I’d have to say ‘no’ to both.
Some yes, some no.
Nope.
I don’t think the class has been specified. Would it help to figure it out?
Math?
History?
English?
Some kind of science?
That’s the one.
Since right and wrong answers can differ depending on the student, does it have to do with genetics?
Would the incident involve figuring out traits on the basis of dominant and recessive genes?
Nope.
Were the questions concerning the results of an experiment that each student performed? If so, did your daughter’s experiment produce unexpected results?
Yeah, now that I think about it, an assignment like that could go terribly wrong. It might bring some questions to light that someone wouldn’t want to answer…
Correct.
Did she “wordlessly showed the evidence that, no, she’d put in the work to get the right answer every time.” by repeating the experiment in front of the teacher?
Right.
OK, this looks mostly solved, now, at least the interesting parts. Do we still need to figure out the nature of the experiment? The reason why the experiment gave unexpected results for her?
Yeah, I guess (and kudos to you for it!), but I’d still find it interesting that a teacher would jump to the conclusion that she hadn’t done the work on the other nine questions based on her giving an unexpected answer on one — and even that one strikes me as kind of interesting: my daughter got a result that (a) no one else in the class did, and that (b) the teacher not only figured wouldn’t come up, but even dismissed out of hand?
But if I’m wrong about that, I’ll gladly supply the details instead of having folks guess at ‘em.
Was the experiment in…
Physics?
Chemistry?
Biology?
Measurement of something?
Astronomy?
Geology?
Computer science?
Psychology?
Physics.
Did the experiment involve (possibly more than one of these)…
Gravity?
Elastic forces?
Other contact forces?
Optics?
Electrical charges?
Magnets?
Electrical circuits?
Material science?
Radioactivity?
Was the class in…
Middle school?
High school?
College?
Did the experiment require equipment?
Did it require any equipment that might not be expected to be found at, say, Wal-Mart?
Was your daughter’s unexpected result due to differences in the equipment she was using?
Was it due to the way in which she was performing the experiment?
Magnets.
Nope.
I believe you could expect to find all of the required equipment at the nearest Wal-Mart, and, yeah, I guess “due to the way in which she was performing the experiment” would be a fair way of putting it.
Did the questions consist of testing which things a magnet would stick to?
Did the surprising question involve a magnet sticking to something it wasn’t expected to?
- In which case, did she stick the magnet to it in some other way?
Did the surprising question involve a magnet not sticking to something it was expected to?
- In which case, did she put the magnet up against the wrong part of something?
- Did she have the magnet turned around the wrong way?
Did the assignment require the students to follow a set of precisely laid-out instructions?
Or were the students allowed (or even expected) to make their own decisions at one or more points in the process?
If they could make decisions, did it result in your daughter doing something unexpected (that is, unexpected by the person who devised the assignment)?
Or was her result due to some ambiguity in the way the assignment was written?
Yes to the first and second; no to the third.
I’d have to say that the instructions were provided and followed, but left enough room for an unexpected decision — but I’m not sure it makes sense to say that “ambiguity” was the reason.