Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello

I am doing my project on if cats have unique finger prints like humans. I am trying to figure out what my independent variable would be. I am using 6 cats for my experiment.

Hi!
Sounds like a cool project!
Would you mind giving us an idea of what your hypothesis, experiment plan, and question are in more detail?
The key factor in identifying your variables is making sure you have a good hypothesis that stems from a testable question. I'm having trouble helping you identify your independent variable based off of the info you gave me. A science fair project usually consists of something you are observing based off of something you are manipulating. From what you are saying, it doesn't seem like you are manipulating any variables in the project, such as type of cat, etc. It is difficult to tell.

Here is a link I think you will definitely benefit from:
https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... ience-fair

if you read through this, based off of your super cool idea about cat fingerprints, you'll be able to better develop your hunch into a testable science fair project, then we can help you more with variables

Let me know if this helps!

Stay nerdy!
lmp1341

Hi!

So the question I’m trying to answer is do cats have unique paw prints like humans have unique fingerprints. I’m going to ink all the cats paws and analyze them under a magnifying glass to see if they are different from each other. We have 6 cats of different ages that I was going to use as my test subjects.

From what you’re saying I feel like this project isn’t going to work but my teacher already approved it so I can’t change it now. Do you have any ideas to help me get started?

Alrighty!

No worries, we can make something work based on what you've got so far
So what you're going to have to do it find some sort of way to measure "uniqueness".
You can say, based off the characteristics of a paw print, what can measure whether they are the same?
You could make a table and count the number of swirls/patterns that are observed to be different for each cat that you test. Then, based off of these numbers, you can say that there are a lot of similarities (or they're almost identical) or there are barely any (or they're unique) and set a certain range of numbers to each to determine this. By putting numbers and charts into this experiment, it would help you go about the project in a more methodical manner, which will allow for less overall frustration when you're trying to come up with your project write up and conclusion. This will help put some data behind it. Let me know if you like this idea!

Good luck and feel free to ask more questions as you find them.

Stay nerdy,
lmp1341