Question

Beatrice, a middle school student, is visiting a very tall office building and notices that she feels heavier when the elevator car is traveling up and lighter when the elevator car is travelling down. After making these observations, Beatrice comes back to the building and stands on a bathroom scale that measures her weight as she travels up and down in the elevator. What is one variable Beatrice could change in her investigation? What might she figure out if this variable were changed?

Answer 1

Answer:

Beatrice could change the independent variable

Explanation:

Beatrice wants to assess the influence of a lift's movement on her body weight. In this experiment, we can say that Beatrice's independent variable is the movement of the elevator, while the dependent variable is her body weight.

As you may already know, the independent variable is the one that can be measured and that influences a result to happen, while the dependent variable is the one that is influenced for a result to happen.

If Beatrice modified the independent variable, she could have a better result in her experiment. This is because the "elevator movement" is a very vague concept which leaves your experiment imprecise, since this variable cannot be quantified. It could then change this variable to "the elevator's speed" or "the elevator's rise and fall time".