P5 Science - Variables & Fair Test
Name: _____________________ Class: Resilience __
Variables & Fair Test
Important Keywords:
- Variables - Unchanged Variable
- Changed Variable - Fair Tests
- Measured Variable
1. What Are Variables?
• A variable is anything that you can change in an experiment, such as:
- the size and type of container,
- the type of material,
the type of organism,
- the temperature,
the environment,
- the number of batteries,
- the amount of light.
B. What Is A Fair Test?
• A fair test ensures that the results of your experiment are only due to the variable
that you have chosen to change. Thus, ensuring that your experiment is a fair test is
very important
• For your experiment to be a fair test:
- you should change only the variable that you are testing,
- all the other variables should be kept the same.
• If you change only one variable at a time, you can be quite sure that the results of
the experiment were caused by that variable.
• If you change more than one variable, you would not know which of the variables is
the cause of the change that has occurred.
Example:
: You want to test whether temperature affects the growth rate of a seedling. To
make it a fair test:
- the only variable that you should change is the temperature. So, you should
have a few seedlings kept in places with different temperatures;
- everything else must be kept the same, such as the type of seedling, the size
of the seedling at the start of the experiment, the amount of light and the
amount of water given to each seedling.
In this way, you can be quite sure that the results of the experiment are due to the
change in the temperature that the seedlings are grown in.
• A test is unfair when more than one variable is changed in the experiment.
• When we control the variables, it means that we are changing only one variable
and keeping all the other variables the same.
