Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

These are the procedures, but what is the dependent variable and independent?


• Crack an egg but make sure just to keep the egg whites
• Once you’ve cracked them put them on a microwave safe plate
• Leave the plate aside, if your microwave has a rotating platform remove it
• Now put the plate inside and heat for about 10 seconds
• Use the oven mitt to take it out if it’s too hot
• Once it’s out notice the melted spots
• Measure the distance between each melted spot
• Take notes and record observations
• Turn the microwave around, or maybe even inside the of it, you will find a sticker
• On the sticker find where it says Hertz (Hz)
• Using the number of Hertz multiply it by the distance between the melting spots and multiply that by 2
• Record your answer and graph it
• Remember to repeat your experiment at least 3 times

please help ive got to finish this now!!!

Hello. Before we can answer your question, we need to know more about your experiment. Unfortunately, it is not possible to tell from the procedures alone.

What is the topic?
What is your hypothesis?

Hello and welcome to the forums.

It looks like you're doing the "Measuring the Speed of Light in a Microwave Oven" experiment https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure. Is this right?

If so, this is really more of a demonstration project than a science project. While the difficulty level is marked as "medium", it may not be an appropriate experiment for a middle school student. This also explains why you're having trouble with the variables, as there aren't really any variables in a demonstration.

If I had to choose, I would say the independent variable is the frequency of the microwaves and the dependent variable is the wavelength (or distance between hot spots.) If you wanted to make this into more of an experiment, you would want to run this experiment in multiple microwave ovens all with different frequencies (may hard to find.)

Keith