Incidentally, just because a question is atomic doesn't mean it can't involve quite complex, high-level concepts. Consider the following question, from the field of general relativity: “What is the dr 2 term in the Robertson-Walker metric?” Answer: dr 2 /(1-kr^2). Now, unless you've studied general relativity that question probably seems quite opaque. It's a sophisticated, integrative question, assuming you know what the Robertson-Walker metric is, what dr 2 means, what k means, and so on. But conditional on that background knowledge, it's quite an atomic question and answer.