SEE IF THIS MAKES CENTS ' HOW LONG WILL MARRIAGE BE A FUNERAL? LOL.. Scientific control For other uses, see Control. This page has some issues Take identical growing plants and give fertilizer to half of them. If there are differences between the fertilized plant group and the unfertilized "control" group, these differences may be due to the fertilizer. A scientific control is an experiment or observation designed to minimize the effects of variables other than the single independent variable. This increases the reliability of the results, often through a comparison between control measurements and the other measurements. Scientific controls are a part of the scientific method. For example, during drug testing, scientists will try to control two groups to keep them as identical as possible, then allow one group to try the drug. Another example might be testing plant fertilizer by giving it to only half the plants in a garden: the plants that receive no fertilizer are the control group, because they establish the baseline level of growth that the fertilizer-treated plants will be compared against. Without a control group, the experiment cannot determine whether the fertilizer-treated plants grow more than they would have if untreated. Ideally, all variables in an experiment will be controlled (accounted for by the control measurements) and none will be uncontrolled. In such an experiment, if all the controls work as expected, it is possible to conclude that the experiment is working as intended and that the results of the experiment are due to the effect of the variable being tested. That is, scientific controls allow an investigator to make a claim like "Two situations were identical until factor X occurred. Since factor X is the only difference between the two situations, the new outcome was caused by factor X." Controlled experiments Types of control See also References Read in another language Last modified 20 days ago MobileDesktop Text is available under CC BY-SA 3.0; additional terms may apply. Terms of UsePrivacy
Posted on: Sun, 23 Jun 2013 14:06:58 +0000