Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I was wondering what the control steps were for this science project as I need to hand in the test and control steps soon. Also, I only have less than four days left until it's due and I haven't started, anything I should do?

Thanks

Hi Doris,

I assume that you are referring to this project "Attack of the Killer Cabbage Clones" (https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ml#summary). Technically, controls can refer to anything you keep the same between all of your experimental samples, but most of the time it is used to refer to an experimental control. However, this project is literally more of a "project" than an experiment, because it is not testing a hypothesis, so all of your samples are being treated the exact same way. You could make this more of an experiment and make it your own by hypothesizing that "X will increase the number of clones," for example, you might hypothesize that lack of sunlight would decrease the number of clones. In this case, you would perform the experiment as described on half of your samples (your control group) and for the other half of the samples you would do everything exactly the same but put them in the dark (or under a towel), making them your experimental group. Does that make sense?

That said, you say that you only have four days left until your project is due, and this project takes on average 6-10 days (according to the summary page), so if you don't have time to complete it, you may want to look for another project to do that can be completed in the short time that you have.

Hope this helps,
JMP

Hi, thanks for replying. I was also wondering which part of the cabbage should grow, bottom, middle or top?

Hello there,

It seems to be past your project due date, but here is a great link about variables in science experiments from Science Buddies: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... evariables. I think it will come in handy when you take on future science projects and want to figure out which are your independent and dependent variables!

Connie