Saturday, August 21, 2010

Define the controls, dependent variable, and independent variable of a scientific experiment?

Let me use an example to explain the terms. Say you wanted to study how a fertilizer affected the growth of a plant. If you just added fertilizer to all the plants, how would you know if it made a difference in how tall they grew? You only know this if there are some plants that don't get fertilizer so you have something with which you can compare the growth rate of the plants that are fertilized. So the plants that don't get the ';treatment'; are your control - in this example, this would be the plants that don't get the fertilizer.





The independent variable is what you've changed to cause something different to happen - in this case, the use (or dose if you use more than one amount) of the fertilizer. The dependent variable is the the ';result'; of the change you've made - in this case, the growth rate, or height.





Just remember that the independent is the ';cause'; and the dependent is the ';effect';. The control is the group that doesn't have any change, so you can compare.Define the controls, dependent variable, and independent variable of a scientific experiment?
a control is a group within an experiment that is not experimented on... this forms your base guidelines for comparison later. an independent variable is a variable that is manipulated to cause a change. the dependant variable is what happens in response to the change in the independent variable.. i hope this makes sense but if not here's a link





http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent鈥?/a>Define the controls, dependent variable, and independent variable of a scientific experiment?
control variables are those that are input to the control system, dependent are those that are observed to change in response to the independent variables while the independent variables are those that are manipulated in the experiment..

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