Read the following scenario. What is the independent variable? What is the dependent variable?

Question

A student conducted an experiment to determine if the amount of water added to a plant affected its growth. Amount of water added was measured in mL per day and plant growth was measured in cm.

Answer 1

An independent variable is a variable which is directly manipulated by the researcher, while the dependent variable is the variable which changes in response to changes in the independent variable. For example, if you wanted to look at the relationship between amount of exercise and muscle mass, exercise would be the independent variable which is manipulated to see the effects of different amounts of exercise, while muscle mass is the dependent variable because the muscle mass depends on the amount of the independent variable, exercise. To relate this to the original example, one can make the comparison of the amount of water being like exercise and the plant size being like muscle mass.

Answer 2

The independent variable should be the amount of water, because the height of the plant is not going to affect the amount of water. The dependent variable would be the height of the plant because it is relying on how much water is being added to it. However, it all depends on what is being tested.

Answer 3

For starters, what is an independent versus a dependent variable? An independent variable is that which you can manipulate. A Dependent variable is dependent on the Independent variable. This means that the changes you make to your independent variable will determine the effects on your dependent variable.

In this particular scenario, you can manipulate and change the amount of water added to the plant, so this will be your independent variable. The growth of the plant is dependent on the amount of water you add, this the amount of plant growth will be your dependent variable.