Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

We are stumped on determining the variables for my sons projects. Can anyone help? “Can people tell the difference between genuine and phony smiles?” He told 3 jokes to 3 volunteers then took still images of their smiles after each joke and gave a survey to other volunteers to determine which smiles were real vs fake. We need to find the Independent, dependent and controlled variables
In this project https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ?from=Blog.

We are stumped on determining the variables for my sons projects. Can anyone help? “Can people tell the difference between genuine and phony smiles?” He told 3 jokes to 3 volunteers then took still images of their smiles after each joke and gave a survey to other volunteers to determine which smiles were real vs fake. We need to find the Independent, dependent and controlled variables
In this project https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ?from=Blog.

Hello and welcome to Science Buddies,

The Science Buddies Project Guide has a section on "Variables in Your Science Project". This is a good place to learn about the different types of variables. The are subsections with examples, samples, and a checklist.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... evariables

I am curious how your son is deciding which of his images show "real" and which show "fake" smiles?

Did your son follow the procedures in this Science Buddies project:

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... #procedure

That project describes how to set up the lab notebook. Following that will also help to determine which variables are independent, dependent, and controls.

Let us know if this helps!

Moderator note: Please keep all your posts on this thread together in the same topic! Thank you.

Thank you! In regards to your question the way that he was able to determine real and fake was he had 3 different types of jokes then told each subject to smile even if they didn’t find it funny. Subjects confirmed if their laugh induced smile was real or fake. He took still images of their smiles from the video footage, put it on a survey & asked 20 people to participate in determining real or fake.