Monday, December 12, 2011

What is a control group in a scientific experiment?

and what is the difference between the control group and the experimental group?|||say you want to find out if people fall down more when they drink alcohol.





experimental group: you give them booze and ask them to walk


control group: you give them water and ask them to walk





in short: a control group is the group that is not being affected by what you are testing, they serve as a comparison point. in this case, they are used so you can compare how often drunk people fall to how often sober people fall.|||For example, the effectiveness of a drug is being tested. The control group does not recieve the drug. They are the "normal" group. The experimental group does recieve the drug. The experimental group is compared to the control group to determine if the drug has an effect.|||A control group experiences no change, the experimental group experiences change.


In this example:


You ahve three plants to see what affects plant growth the most:


One plant experiences normal amounts of water and light


One gets no water


one gets no light





the normal is the control

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