Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

I want to study fingerprints and if they are similar between siblings. Can you suggest how I would create a stem project to help me look at this but only have one variable to change and be able to measure it?

camg wrote:I want to study fingerprints and if they are similar between siblings. Can you suggest how I would create a stem project to help me look at this but only have one variable to change and be able to measure it?

Hi camg,

I assume that you're doing this wonderful project by ScienceBuddies: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ml#summary

which is awesome! If you wanted to find a way to manipulate an aspect of the experiment, then you can always look at the 'Make It Your Own Tab' on every project to find various options! One thing that you could try is changing which finger that you compare siblings' fingerprints with (for example, the thumbprints on the right hands of the siblings vs. those of the index fingers or pinkies)!

You could then make a hypothesis guessing which finger would have the least amount of differences between the siblings (keeping the fingers consistent, of course; you want to compare the thumb of the right hand of one sibling to the thumb of the right hand of the other).

Again, there are many more ideas on how to manipulate variables within the experiment here: https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... eityourown

Hope this helped,

JSK