Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello Science Buddies,

I am doing the project: Dealing with Diabetes: The Road to Developing an Artificial Pancreas. I need to know what the independent/dependent variables, control variables, and control group are. For my school, science fair projects are required to be experimental and to have variables. I would really appreciate it if you could help me with this project.

Thank you!
(Please reply ASAP)

HI sciencegeek,


Here is a great response from Sybee on another post:

"The artificial pancreas that is built in this project is a demonstration. It shows you the principle of how the real pancreas works--by sensing the glucose in the blood and secreting insulin to promote its uptake into cells. This is different from a hypothesis-driven project where you make a prediction that something is true and then you test the hypothesis by doing experiments. With a demonstration there are no variables because you are not setting up an experiment to measure a quantity. Anything you might measure with the 'pancreas' would be irrelevant because it is not a real pancreas.

I would suggest that you go to the Scibuddies project ideas wizard, https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science-f ... deas.shtml, and find a project where you can propose a hypothesis and test it by experiment. This is the way science is done and you will learn to use the scientific method and statistics in a project where the outcome is unknown. That's what makes it interesting!"


Once you select a project, identifying the variables is one of the common questions we see on this forum. So common, we wrote a section about it in the Project Guide. Have a look here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ndex.shtml

And then let me know if you still have trouble with the identification of your variables. I am happy to talk through it with you, but you might be able to identify them yourself if I start you off in the Project Guide.

Let me know if you have more questions.

Tonya