The students acting as prisoners were showing signs of extreme distress.
Well, when something changes, you would not know which variable caused the change in the experiment.
Because otherwise you would not know what change caused the effect you noticed.
Because, if he changes several variables at the same time, he will not know which of them caused the result of the experiment to change. He would have to test again, changing one variable at a time.
A controlled experiment means that you try to keep all the variables that are involved in the experiment under control apart from the Dependent and the Independent variables to make sure that any results obtained from the experiment have been affected by the independent variable and not some other extraneous variable. It also ensures that the experiment would have high validity. That is, if the experiment has really measured what it was supposed to measure.
The students acting as prisoners were showing signs of extreme distress.
the social context
You need to control the variables because if you have two or more variables in an experiment you will never know which variable caused a change or not caused a change.
In an experiment, your control variable will not be caused to vary by the experiment. Think of 'cause and effect'. The independent variable is the cause, the result is the effect, and the dependent variable is the one that you leave to be changed by the experiment.
If you change more that one variable in an experiment, then when the result occurs, you won't know which variable caused the change.
Well, when something changes, you would not know which variable caused the change in the experiment.
The heavy, dense nucleus of the atom caused the alpha particles to bounce back in Rutherford's experiment.
Complications of this procedure caused researchers to develop means of widening the vessel using a minimally sized device
Because the scientific method means thinking of a hypothesis and proving a cause and effect in nature. If there is no control, then you can not prove the hypothesis of the cause and effect because you can not prove that your experiment caused the effect. If you have a theory that pepsi causes grass to grow, and with no control you manage to show that your lawn grew grass, how could you ever say that it was the pepsi that caused the growth unless your next door neighboors's yard died during the same time?
The variable that stays the same in an experiment is called the control variable. It is kept constant throughout the experiment to ensure that any changes observed are due to the manipulated variable (independent variable) and not caused by other factors.
The Scientific Method: observation, hypothesis, experiment, verification, peer review.
Dr.Goldberger did an experiment to see what caused pellagra