Question

[BWS.02]One student did an experiment to find if fertilizer can make plants grow taller. The steps of the experiment are listed below.

Take three pots of different sizes.
Fill the pots completely with the same type of soil.
Plant tomato seeds in the pots of soil.
Add different amounts of fertilizer to the three pots.
Keep the pots in the sunlight.
Add the same amount of water to the pots every day.
Measure the heights of the plants after regular intervals.
The results of the experiment were not valid. Which of these statements best describes a flaw in the experiment?
A. The amount of fertilizer was not the controlled variable.
B. The amount of soil in the pots was not the controlled variable.
C. The increase in height of plants was the dependent variable.
D. The increase in height of plants was the independent variable.

Answer 1

Well you have to know what the independent and dependent variables are

In this case, the student is trying to see how fertilizer affects plant height

So the independent variable is the fertilizer (this is the only thing allowed to change)

The first step indicates that the plants have different sized pots, for every experiment, you always want to have all things the same except what you are testing