Name:______________________________ Hr:_____________ Date:____________

Scientific Method: Controls and Variables

The Superhero Edition Write a definition for each: Control Variable Independent Variable Dependent Variable Read the following five passages and answer the corresponding questions. Remember to use complete sentences! Hyper-Criminal Juice Dr. Doom thinks that a special juice will make people quicker. He creates two groups of 60 henchmen each and assigns each group to rob as many banks as they could in a week. Both groups were given something to drink. Group A is given the special juice to drink while they work. Group B is given a juice that is not the special juice. Both groups were told that they were getting the special Hyper-Criminal juice. After a week, Dr. Doom counts how many banks each group has robbed. Group A robbed 31 banks, Group B robbed 43 banks. Henchmen in both groups reported that they felt like they were working faster because of the juice. 1. Which henchmen were in the control group? 2. What is the independent variable? 3. What is the dependent variable? 4. What should Dr. Dooms' conclusion be? 5. Why do you think that people in group B reported that they felt like the juice helped even though it was not the special juice (besides being scared of Dr. Doom)? Clean Shower After fighting a recent wave of extra-dimensional aliens, Storm (Ororo Munroe) notices that her shower is covered in a strange green slime. Her friend Beast tells her that used machine oil will get rid of the green slime. Storm decides to check this out by spraying half of the shower with used machine oil. She sprays the other half of the shower with water. After 3 days of "treatment" there is no change in the appearance of the green slime on either side of the shower. 6. What was the problem Storm wanted to investigate? 7. What is the independent variable? 8. What is the dependent variable? 9. What should Storm's conclusion be?

Name:______________________________ Hr:_____________ Date:____________ The Invisible Womans Mice The Invisible Woman (Sue Storm) is an amazing biologist in addition to being a rough-and-tumble superhero. In trying to find what caused Captain America to turn into a super-soldier, she developed two formulas she thought would increase the strength of mice. In order to test her hypothesis, The Invisible Woman injected groups of 20 mice each. One group got just water injected while the other three were injected with the formulas developed by The Invisible Woman. Her test consisted of a heavy block of wood that blocked the mouse from reaching its food. The results of her experiment are below. The number represents how many mice were able to move the wooden block. 10. What is the independent variable? Trial Water Serum Serum Serum #1 #2 #3 1 2 3 11. What is the dependent variable? 12. What should The Invisible Womans conclusion be? 13. Are the results reliable? Why or why not? 4 6 8 7 13 10 12 11 14 10 12 9

Super Cable Batman and Robin need new cables for their bat-ascenders! Batman found some nano-fiber cable through a defense department contractor. The specifications for it claim that Super Cable can hold loads that are one and a half times as heavy as loads held by their current cable of the same width. Batman and Robin made up twenty lengths of cable. Half of the lengths were made with Super Cable, while the other half were made with the same amount of their current cable. Batman and Robin used weights to measure how much each length of cable would hold before breaking. The results below are recorded in the table below. Mass Held (number of kilograms held) Normal Super Sample Cable Cable 1 1000 1500 2 500 1200 3 1600 1200 4 1400 2000 5 1100 2400 6 1200 1400 7 1100 1600 8 1500 2000 9 1500 1500 10 600 1300

Name:______________________________ Hr:_____________ Date:____________ 14. What did the Super Cable specs claim? 15. What is the independent variable? 16. What is the dependent variable? 17. Look at the results in the chart. a. Calculate the average mass each cable holds. Super Cable = ______ kg b. What should their conclusion be? 18. Are the results reliable? Why or why not? Normal Cable = ________ kg