The massive Deep Horizon oil spill of 2010 released enough crudeoil into the Gulf of Mexico to fill an entire swimming pool about 7thousand times.
How do we know the damage possibly caused by such a disaster? Wecould always plan an experiment..... If you worked for the Dept. ofFish and Game in the Gulf States, maybe you would...
You could take a part of the sea floor very nearby the site of thespill, say an area exactly 100 square meters, and count the numberof different species that you find. This would be a measure of"Biodiversity", which is generally a good indicator of ecosystemhealth - in general, the more Biodiversity, the healthier theecosystem.
Then you could sample an area of the seafloor exactly the samesize, but further away (say 1 km) from the spill site, and countthe number of species in that site. And then continue sampling thesame size area at 1 km intervals, until you reach an area manykilometers away from the spill site where you know the area wasrelatively undisturbed by the spill.
If you run this experiment,
1) What is the independent variable?
2) What is the dependent variable?
3) What is one very obvious control variable?
4) Why would you want to sample for biodiversity in each of thesites at the same time of day?
And....
5) What is a valid hypothesis that you could have for thisexperiment?
The massive Deep Horizon oil spill of 2010 released enough crudeoil into the Gulf of Mexico to fill an entire swimming pool about 7thousand times.
How do we know the damage possibly caused by such a disaster? Wecould always plan an experiment..... If you worked for the Dept. ofFish and Game in the Gulf States, maybe you would...
You could take a part of the sea floor very nearby the site of thespill, say an area exactly 100 square meters, and count the numberof different species that you find. This would be a measure of"Biodiversity", which is generally a good indicator of ecosystemhealth - in general, the more Biodiversity, the healthier theecosystem.
Then you could sample an area of the seafloor exactly the samesize, but further away (say 1 km) from the spill site, and countthe number of species in that site. And then continue sampling thesame size area at 1 km intervals, until you reach an area manykilometers away from the spill site where you know the area wasrelatively undisturbed by the spill.
If you run this experiment,
1) What is the independent variable?
2) What is the dependent variable?
3) What is one very obvious control variable?
4) Why would you want to sample for biodiversity in each of thesites at the same time of day?
And....
5) What is a valid hypothesis that you could have for thisexperiment?
