Students are experimenting with a substance that they think can be added to soil to increase the number of
flowers a certain plant will make. They set up 20 pots of
soil, each planted with the same type of seed. They
divide the pots into two groups and add 15 drops of the
substance to pots in one group and only 10 drops to pots
in the other group. After the plants grow for four weeks,
the students count how many flowers each plant has
made
What does this experimental investigation lack?
a control group
an independent variable
a dependent variable
a procedure

A: Control Group

Explanation:

The control group is part of an expierment left untouched by anything that could possibly alter it, in the case of this question, the students have two groups of plants that have drops of liquid that could alter them, in order to see the growth, and to see if the liquid actually did anything, in order to do so, you would have to have a untouched plant, that shows what it looks like with out any alteration from researchers. So the answer would be control group.

1. the question asks the most appropriate, which seems to rule out "all of the above." your choice appears to be the correct one.

2. the protocol described is good for identifying correlation, but not cause and effect. for cause/effect, you need to devise a protocol that will assign the treatment (or not) to groups that have essentially the same "demographics" with respect to all the other variables. your choice regarding control group seems appropriate. random assignment of treatment (choice d) may be appropriate also. (i think you can argue that b and d are just different descriptions of the same method.)

3. d will randomize the birds, but may not guarantee there are 10 in each group. e will do both, so seems the better choice.

comment on question 2

based on the problem statement, it seems clear that confident, attentive drivers are more likely to use daytime running lights. so, the protocol might need to be devised in such a way that the lights would be turned on or off without the driver's knowledge. (an attentive driver will figure it out.) assigning a confident, attentive driver to a group required to drive without running lights might mess with his/her confidence and attentiveness. you don't want your experiment to do that. (nor do you want the experiment to subject a driver to greater risk of accident as a consequence of driving without running lights.) experiments involving human safety are always problematic.