{"paper":{"title":"Use of a genetic algorithm to find solutions to introductory physics problems","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":[],"primary_cat":"cs.NE","authors_text":"Justin Kopcinski, Tom Bensky","submitted_at":"2025-08-07T01:36:38Z","abstract_excerpt":"In this work, we show how a genetic algorithm (GA) can be used to find step-by-step solutions to introductory physics problems. Our perspective is that the underlying task for this is one of finding a sequence of equations that will lead to the needed answer. Here a GA is used to find an appropriate equation sequence by minimizing a fitness function that measures the difference between the number of unknowns versus knowns in a set of equations. Information about knowns comes from the GA posing questions to the student about what quantities exist in the text of their problem. The questions are "},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2508.10920","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2508.10920/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}