What is the role of the responding variable in a controlled experiment?

What is the role of the responding variable in a controlled experiment?

• Answer:

  Different text books and different teachers may use different terms but the "response" is what you are going to use to determine if your experiment did what you thought it would do. Examples are often helpful. Let's say you are interested in microwave popcorn and you want to know how to get the most kernels to pop. You buy bags of different brands and you decide you will vary the microwave power and the time in the microwave. You can not answer the question unless you measure the number of kernels that pop under each set of experimental conditions. One other thing about doing experiments in the real world... As long as you are doing the experiment, you should consider what other other responses you could measure from the same experiment. For example, you might also want to taste the popcorn from each set of experimental conditions to determine if brand, microwave power, and microwave time have any impact on the way popcorn tastes.