Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello,

for my science experiment I wanted to make a DIY gel electrophoresis kit and test how food dyes will separate when I run it through, however I need a variable to manipulate as well as a a dependent, a control group, and a experimental group. I'm not exactly sure what my hypnosis would be and would appreciate help brainstorming some ideas to make this experiment more interesting, thank you

It sounds like you've already decided your independent variable, or thing you are changing, is type of food dye in each gel, or single well in a gel. You mentioned separation is what you hope to observe, so your dependent variable would be something like band distance after running for x minutes, or time it takes to travel x cm. You use the word 'separate' which people use to mean 'creation of more than one distinct band' but if you are using only one dye, it will make one band (or possibly none). You could do something simple like show each dye band in its own well and then show that when you mix them they separate from each other or not. You would also want to look at the chemical structure of the dyes you plan to use to make some more interesting predictions: for example the charge of the molecule will determine its direction. Hope this helps
--P