What is meaning of isolated?

Answer 1

of Isolate, Placed or standing alone; detached; separated from others.

Answer 2

You are probably thinking of the term isolated variable. (Otherwise, isolated means the same thing in science as it does elsewhere.) In any given experiment, there are several factors which can vary, which are called variables. For example, let us say that you are doing an experiment about cooking rice. Rice can be cooked in water or in steam, that is one variable. The temperature of the water or steam can vary. The quantity of the water or steam can vary. The quantity of the rice can also vary. The type of rice can vary (long grain or short grain, for example). The length of cooking time can vary. The type of cooking pot can vary. You can also add salt to the water, or other additives as well (some people like chicken broth in their rice) or just use pure water. Even pure water could be a variable; there is a difference between tap water and distilled water or bottled water. One brand of bottled water is not exactly the same as another. Any of these variables can alter the outcome of the experiment. (I haven't said exactly what the experiment is intended to discover, but perhaps you want to determine if cooking rice in a different way will alter its nutritional value.) In order to isolate a variable, you just change that variable only, leaving all other variables the same. So, for example, you can compare the result of cooking in water or cooking in steam, but at exactly the same temperature, with the same cooking time, the same type of pot, the same variety of rice, etc. Or you can vary the temperature only, but leave all other variables the same. This isolates the variable so that you can see how a particular variable affects the result. If, in comparison, you were to alter two variables at once, for example by cooking both at a higher temperature and for a shorter period of time, you would then not know how to interpret the results, since those results might have been caused by the higher temperature, or they might have been caused by the shorter cooking time, and you have no way of knowing which it was.