In this experiment, what would be the variables and the control group?

[paragonx9]

My experiment tests lead in current beaches to see if there actually is if there are dangerous levels lead even though there are regulations for it.

There are six holes, each 10 meters apart. Each hole is 6 inches deep. I have a lead testing kit to check if there is lead.

Thanks!

[Schrödinger's hat]

My experiment tests lead in current beaches to see if there actually is if there are dangerous levels lead even though there are regulations for it.

There are six holes, each 10 meters apart. Each hole is 6 inches deep. I have a lead testing kit to check if there is lead.

Thanks!

 

This is more of a data collection than an experiment.

 

With an experiment you are usually testing a hypothesis.

Something along the lines of 'is a correlated to b?'.

 

 

You could ask:

'Is the amount of lead present correlated to the reading on my meter?'

In that case your independent variable would be the amount of lead, and the dependent would be the reading on the meter.

A control group would be some un-tampered with samples of whatever you're adding lead to.

 

Presumable the device is already calibrated, so this probably won't be very useful.

 

Or you could ask:

'Is the level of lead in beach a higher than the level of lead in beach b?'

In this case you'd take a number samples from each beach and do some statistics to see if they are significantly different.

 

Or maybe something like:

'Are beaches near x location higher in lead than other beaches?'

In this case you'd need some beaches near location x, some distant.

A beach is not really something a single person can alter that much, so a control would be quite difficult (you can't easily prepare a set of beaches which are identical other than the absence of location x).

In effect the other beaches you measured to get your baseline would be the control.

If you suspected that there was some difference between the beaches you measured other than proximity to location x you might try and find a similar group of beaches (to see if the other differences are contributing factors).