Name:______________________________ Period:_____________ Date:____________
Scientific Method: Controls and Variables (The Star Wars Edition)
Write a definition for each:
Control –
Variable –
Independent Variable –
Dependent Variable –
Read the following passages and answer the corresponding questions. Use complete sentences!
Jabba’s Shimmy-Drink
Jabba the Hutt thinks that a special Shimmy-drink will make women able to
dance longer than the four hours they normally can for him. He splits his
dancers into two groups of 20 each and assigns each group to dance for him
for as long as they could. Both groups were given something to drink. Group
A is given the special drink to drink while they dance. Group B is given a
drink that is not the special drink. Both groups were told that they were getting
the special Shimmy-drink. After a week, Jabba’s Major-domo measured how
long each group of dancers was able to perform. Group A danced for 4.5
hours, Group B 3.75 hours. Dancers in both groups reported that they felt like
they were dancing longer because of the drink.
1. Which dancers were in the control group?
2. What is the independent variable?
3. What is the dependent variable?
4. What should Jabbas' conclusion be?
5. Why do you think that people in group B reported that they felt like the drink helped even though
it was not the special drink (besides being scared of Jabba)?
Cleaning the Death Star
After dealing with a group of bounty hunters, Grand Moff Tarkin notices that the some of the
meeting rooms in the Death Star have a horrible smell. His head scientists tell him that gas
from the planet Yavin will get rid of the smell. Tarkin decides to test this out by spraying half
of the meeting rooms with Yavin gas. He sprays the other half of the rooms with water.
After 3 days of treatment there is no change in the smell of the rooms.
6. What was the problem Tarkin wanted to investigate?
7. What is the independent variable?
8. What is the dependent variable?
9. What should Tarkin's conclusion be?
Name:______________________________ Period:_____________ Date:____________
Carbon-Freezing
Lando Calrissian is a bit of a science buff in addition to being a gambler, general,
and city administrator. Lando felt that carbon freezing could be used to save the
lives of terminally ill patients (instead of to make art for crime-lords). In order to
test his hypothesis, Lando froze groups of 20 mice each at different rates. One
group got frozen in 2.5 seconds, the second in 5 seconds, the third in 10 seconds,
and the final group in 15 seconds. The mice were then unfrozen and checked to see
if they had lived. The results of his experiments are below. The number represents
how many mice were able to live through freezing.
10. What is the independent variable?
11. What is the dependent variable?
Trial
1
2
3
2.5
seconds
5
seconds
10
seconds
15
seconds
14
11
12
9
13
11
7
11
8
2
5
1
12. What should Lando Calrissian’s conclusion be?
13. Is this a valid test for Lando’s hypothesis?
Why or why not?
Astromech Droids
Princess Padmé Amidala has been put in charge of the committee to develop
new astromech droid units to aid pilots for the Republic. Padmé found some
new R5 units which the builder claims can access data one and a half times as
fast as any R2 unit. Princess Padmé had the contractor build 10 examples of
the R5 units while she collected 10 R2 units. Padmé then timed the units to
determine how fast they could download a specific amount of information.
The results below are recorded in the table below.
14. What did the R5 specs claim?
15. What is the independent variable?
16. What is the dependent variable?
17. Look at the results in the chart.
a. Calculate the average speed each droid accesses data.
R5= ______ ms
R2 = ________ ms
b. What should her conclusion be?
18. Are the results reliable? Why or why not?
Data Accessed
(time in milliseconds)
Trial
R2 unit R5 unit
1
10
17
2
7
14
3
15
19
4
14
20
5
11
24
6
12
14
7
11
16
8
9
20
9
9
15
10
6
20