Astudent wanted to know the most effective way to grow bacteria in a lab. he conducted a descriptive investigation instead of an experimental investigation. what is a limitation of his investigation? a descriptive investigation cannot show a cause-and-effect relationship between bacteria growth and possible factors affecting growth. a descriptive investigation is always more expensive than an experimental investigation. a descriptive investigation usually does not involve much data collection to support a hypothesis. a descriptive investigation provides little prior knowledge or background information about bacteria growth.

A descriptive investigation cannot show a cause-and-effect relationship between bacteria growth and possible factors affecting growth.

Explanation: in this type of investigation, a lot of information is collected, but the student doesn't make any experiment to evaluate the effect of different factors in the growth of bacteria. Also, in an experimental investigation he could show the effect of different factors separately and combined in order to prove which one is affecting the most the bacteria growth or if some factors interfere with others. In a experiment he can measure the ideal conditions for bacteria and more specifically for the specie he picked.

Descriptive investigation can explain theoretically some effects but it doesn't evaluate the variation of the factors and it's impact on the bacteria.