Varibales

[tannercg]

I am helping my 5th grader with a project we picked from this site called Sweating the Score. I am not sure what the varables would be. Would sex and age groups be? Would I list them or have her write a paragraph?

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

I think you are doing this project, which is perfect for a 5th grader:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... p013.shtml

You are right to be concerned about the variables, because this will make your project a unique one. You want to run a controlled experiment, and measure the heart rate of subjects before and after they play the games (testing 3 times is recommended). You could choose gender (compare boys and girls of the same age), or age (children vs adults), or you could compare a group of all girls or all boys of the same age group with different games. You want to keep all conditions the same, except for your one independent variable. The results (heart rate) are your dependent variable.

It will be helpful if you refer to the Science Buddies website guide for doing a project, and start from the beginning, with background reading. You want to develop the topic and ask a question that can be answered with your experiment:

http://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... ndex.shtml

Please let us know if you have any other questions.

Donna Hardy