Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

]My son is doing a project on seed germination. He was given 10 black beans (soaked by teacher) then they put them in wet paper towel and into a ziploc bag and but them in an incubator set at 95 degrees F and another 10 were left in a ziploc at room temperature (70 degrees F). His group is testing the effect of temperature on the success of germination of the black bean.
How should he word his testable question.
Is the independent variable: temperature
Is the dependent variable: % or # of beans that germinated
Also he has a data table this is what is looks like:

Treatment
incubator Trial 1 2 of 10 beans germinated % that germinated 20%(2/10 x100)
Trial 2 0 of 10 beans germinated % that germinated 0%
Trial 3 0 of 10 beans germinated % that germinated )0%
Average % of beans that germinated in incubator 6% (20+0+0=20/3 =6%)

Beans at room
temperature Trial 1 3 of 10 beans germinated % that germinated 30%
Trial 2 2 of 10 beans germinated % that germinated 20%
Trial 3 1 of 10 beans germinated % that germinated 10%
Average % of beans that germinated at room temperature 20% (30%+20%+10%=60/3=20%)

can you please advise us on how to make the graph he is supposed to make a bar graph and a line graph
Thank you for your help

Hi!

For how to word the testable question, think about how your son would ask any question, say to a teacher. For example, "How does ______ affect _______?" Or, to make it a more specific question, "Does _______ affect _______?"

The independent variable is the one that you're changing or manipulating, while the dependent variable is the one that you measure (in other words, the one that you track for a potential change in response to your independent variable).

To make a bar graph of these data, he can just have two bars, where each bar shows the average percent of beans that germinated at each temperature.

On the other hand, I want to strongly emphasize that a line graph is not a good way to present these results, because it implies a relationship or link between the results that doesn't necessarily exist based on the experiment was done. However, if the teacher is specifically requiring that a line graph be shown: your son should graph temperature on the x-axis, and average germination rate on the y-axis.

Good luck!