Morello L1

Experimental Design and the Characteristics of Life

Morello Bio

Poll

How do you feel about the content in today's lecture video?

• Super duper

• Pretty good

• Okay

• A little shaky

• What lecture video?

Let's test our knoweldge!

No, this is not an actual test

Background:

A mouse made its way into my house and ate a bunch of my peanut butter.  I caught it and the act, and it scurried away unusually quickly.  

Now I am curious: does eating peanut butter make mice run faster?

Multiple Choice

Before I conduct an experiment, I need to construct my hypothesis. How do I format a hypothesis?

• If (DV) then (IV)

• If (constants) then (control)

• If (IV) then (DV)

• If (bar graph) then (line graph)

Hypotheses should ALWAYS be formatted If (Independent Variable) THEN (Dependent Variable)

IV = the thing you control, the "cause"
DV = the thing that changes as a result, the "effect"

Multiple Select

All of that said: which of the following could be a hypothesis for an experiment about mice eating peanut butter and their running speed? (select ALL that could work!)

• If a mouse eats peanut butter, then it will run faster

• When a mouse eats food it may be faster

• If a mouse eats peanut butter then it will not see a difference in running speed

• If a mouse runs fast then it will eat peanut butter

A hypothesis must be structured correctly so that a reader can infer what is being controlled by the experimenter and what is being observed

Open Ended

As we study the effect of peanut butter consumption on mouse speed, we need to make sure that no outside factors are influencing our results. We do this by keeping other factors constant. What is one example of a constant that we may have when conducting this experiment?

Some constants we may have:

• Mouse age

• Mouse size

• Mouse diet

• Most recent feeding time before test

• Time of day

• Amount of water consumed

• Size and location of track mouse is measured on
  

Multiple Choice

What would our control group be?

• Mice who ate jelly instead of peanut butter

• Mice who got a small amount of peanut butter

• Mice who received no peanut butter