Mark Rober: Testing if Sharks Can Smell a Drop of Blood

View the video: “Testing if Sharks Can Smell a Drop of Blood” and answer the following questions.

Some Important Definitions:

An independent variable is the variable the experimenter controls. Basically, it is the component you choose to change
in an experiment. This variable is not dependent on any other variables.

A dependent variable is the measurement that changes in response to what you changed in the experiment.

The group/experiment that does not receive the treatment is called the control group. The control group provides a
baseline that lets us see if the treatment has an effect.

Experiment 1:

What was the question Mark Rober was trying to answer?

He tried figuring out if sharks prefer blood over other scents

Briefly explain the setup of experiment one. (what were the items used, controls, etc.)
They had surfboards with a different control on each one floating in a water. One was sea water, one was fish oil, one was
urine, and the last one was cow blood. Depending on which surfboard was checked out by the most sharks is the control
the sharks are most fond of.

What was the

 Independent variable?
The Variables such as the blood.
Dependent variable?
The sharks

In one sentence, summarize the results of the experiment.

The sharks preferred the blood over everything else.

Experiment 2:

What was the question Mark Rober was trying to answer?

He wanted to find out if the sharks preferred a small amount of blood or a large amount of blood. He also wanted to find
out if they preferred human blood more than cow blood

Briefly explain the setup of experiment one. (what were the items used, controls, etc.)
Mark Rober had 3 surfboards in the water this time. Two boards pumped out human blood while one was used as the
control and pumped out sea water. One of the boards that pumped human blood, pumped it slower while the other
pumped it out much faster.

What was the

 Independent variable?
The boards pumping out blood
 Dependent variable?
The sharks

In one sentence, summarize the results of the experiment.

None of the sharks checked out any of the boards.
Experiments often lead to even more questions. What is one question you could investigate in the future after watching this
video?

I would like to know why the sharks didn’t go for any of the boards pumping human blood but went for the board pumping
cow blood. A good future experiment would be to pump cow blood and human blood at equal speeds to see if they just
prefer cow blood.