Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I am thinking about doing an experiment involving cone cells and afterimages. I plan to use several subjects and several different color objects to determine if the subjects see the same afterimage. I also plan to vary the time in staring at the color objects and also vary the distance from the color object. I'm a little confused when trying to formulate a hypothesis. I do believe that each subject will see the same color in the afterimage, but not sure how distance/time will affect the afterimage. Please help me come up with a valid hypothesis for my science fair project.

Hi!

What an interesting project idea!
A hypothesis basically is a testable prediction for your experiment - you may find better resources to help you on the Science Buddies site regarding formulating hypotheses. Just a little bit of advice - so before you formulate your hypothesis, you will want to identify your variables - right now, it looks like you're considering distance and time. You may want to research on the predicted effects of distance and time before you formulate your hypothesis - you can consider, would you have one hypothesis or two, one about distance and one about time? In my opinion, since a controlled experiment (when only one variable at a time is changed) is optimal, I'd have two hypotheses: one regarding how distance affects the afterimage, and one with time.
Please post back if you find any more help on the Science Buddies site/online regarding scientific principles, or if you have any more questions; I'd be happy to answer.

Hope this helps!

Hello I'd also like to welcome you to Science Buddies!

I think the topic of your experiement is very interesting. I encourage you to move forward with this experiment; but, I would also recommend that you set one controlled variable by either picking time or distance. This way your experiment can have a specific x-axis or independent variable (time or distance) and a specific y-axis or dependent variable (the after image). Like the previous expert said, an hypothesis is a prediction of how you think the experiement will turn out. You could start your hypothesis with an "if...then" statement. For example, you could say: "If a person looks at an image for a long period of time, then the afterimage will be more clear and concise." If you ever need more help on formunlating your hypothesis I suggest that you visit our Science Buddies Science Fair Project portion of our website:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

Thanks for asking Science Buddies for help!