What is an independent variable in an experiment?

Answer 1

It's what you change to do your experiment. Say your doing an experiment like my friend Kristen Maxine Rogers is doing: Does air temperature affect how long soap bubbles last, her independent variable would be the different temperatures.

Answer 2

The independent variable is the factor that is being changed in an experiment. For example, if you were testing how growth is affected by the amount of water is given to a plant, then the amount of water would be the independent variable. Basically, an independent variable is the variable which an experiment is designed to test.

Answer 3

The independent variable is the main variable that you are manipulating in order to see if it has an effect on some other variable, the dependent variable, which you are measuring.

Example: In order to see if vitamin C helps you get better from being sick faster you would design an experiment.

Have one group of randomly sampled people come in to the lab and take vitamin c, have another group of randomly people come in to the lab and not take vitamin c (instead a placebo), and then you would observe if the first group got better faster than the second group due to the vitamin c.

The independent variable is vitamin c or no vitamin c, and the dependent variable is the rate at which people got better from their illnesses.

Just remember that the independent variable is the thing you are interested in actually studying the effect of, and the dependent variable is the consequence or measure of that thing. i.e your getting better faster may depend on whether you take vitamin c, i am interested in studying vitamin c then!

You see!

All the best

Answer 4

The independent variable is the item YOU change on purpose from one measurement to a next. The dependent variable is what you measure after you change the independent variable.