Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My question is what are the variables (specifically the control group) of the project above? We are trying to determine what we are going to compare our results to, and humans seem to have quite a substantial amount of error.

Hello, and welcome to Science Buddies! This sounds like a fun and interesting project!

So, let's talk about different experimental processes first.

There is the scientific method, which explores a question usually centered around cause and effect relationships and tests a hypothesis. This usually requires defining variables and control groups.

Second, there is the engineering design process. Designing and building a device to solve a problem follows this process. It is different from the scientific method process, and you can read more about it here.
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/engineer ... teps.shtml

In the engineering design process, you don't necessarily define variables. Read up on this process and see if this fits your goals with your experiment. If you have further questions after reading, certainly write back.

Good luck!