Are Smiles contagious?

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elitanner
Posts: 1
Joined: Sun Feb 19, 2012 10:31 am
Occupation: Student: 8th grade
Project Question: Is Smiling contagious?
Project Due Date: February 21, 2012
Project Status: I am conducting my experiment

Are Smiles contagious?

Post by elitanner »

So for my science fair, I am planning on doing, are smiles contagious. So i walked around target and i smiled at people, and 33 people smiled back, but 17 didn't. So now i have to write a report, and it asks me to identify the independent variable and the dependent wariable. my dependent variable was whether they smiled back. But what is my independent variable :?: Also, do you have a cute name for this experiment :?:
THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!! :!: :!: :!: :!: :D
deleted-81235
Former Expert
Posts: 66
Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 3:06 pm
Occupation: Student: 12th grade
Project Question: n/a
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Project Status: Not applicable

Re: Are Smiles contagious?

Post by deleted-81235 »

Your independent variable would be what you changed in their environment. It is pretty simple, and I don't want to give it directly to you, so here's a link to a page on our site that will help you understand independent variables: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... bles.shtml.

If you still need help, just post your question here again. And some names could be "The Smiling Effect," "Smile," or "The Smiling Disease" (because of your investigation into if smiles are contagious.
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. You know that in nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never met anybody who wasn’t important before.”
— The Eleventh Doctor
deleted-71536
Former Expert
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Project Question: How do different animals adapt to their environment?
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Re: Are Smiles contagious?

Post by deleted-71536 »

Hi there,

You have an interesting project!

I was wondering whether you took note about the gender or age of the people you smiled at. If you did, you could see if kids were more likely to smile back compared to adults, or whether men or women would be more likely to smile back. If you did not, don't worry about it. But you could put the idea into your Discussion!

Did you walk past people without smiling (as a control)? Again, not a problem if you didn't. But you might hypothesize that more people smiled at you when you smiled at them, compared to the number of people who would have smiled at you if you did not smile first.

Let us know if you have more questions or are still wondering about your independent variable.

Heather
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