helppppppppp......i have to do planning exercise for my bio curswurk..i need to plan an investigation to find the effect of temperature on the ripening of bananas, as measured by the conversion of starch to sugar.
i duno what r the dependent, independent and other variables which culd effect the result r... plzzzz help meeee Crying or Very sad Confused Confused Crying or Very sad Wink
Hi Cheeky,
This is an interesting topic!
To start, let's figure out what your variables are. The independent variable is the one that you change. The dependent variable (or "response variable") is the one that responds to that change. Typically, when you state your investigation, it reads as "the effect of [independent variable] on [dependent variable]." If you look at your description, this works well for your experiment.
As for other variables (besides temperature) that could affect your results, you'll need to do some research on bananas and fruit ripening.
For a general description of banana ripening, take a look at Chiquita's site:
http://www.chiquita.com/Discover/cbripen.asp
Here is a cool California State Science Fair project summary that looked at banana ripening (and took a lot of variables into account):
http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2004/Projects/J1621.pdf
One major variable you will need to consider is that bananas emit ethylene gas, which speeds up the ripening process. Check out this fun site about bananas to get started:
http://www.banana.com/howtobuy.html
I typed "ripening bananas" into Google, and got several interesting hits (including the ones above).
Good luck!
Heather
