What are the variables in an experiment?

When you do any science project you are in effect making a series of science experiments to define and prove a hypothesis. In this series of experiments that you do you will deal with a number of variables. Simply put a variable is something that changes its value during the process of the experiment.

However things are not quite as simple in a experiment so we will define a number of variables.  Essentially there are four different types of variables. The first would be the Independent variable. This is something that is changed during the conduct of the experiment. The next one would be the Dependent variable. This would be something that responds to the Independent variable during the experiment.

Next we have the Constant Variable. As the name suggests this is something that is kept the same throughout the series of experiments that you conduct. And then there is the Control. This is not exactly a variable but a similar test where the independent variable is left unchanged to provide a comparison to the remaining experiments. Think of it as a kind of guage to measure all the other experiments against.

As you can see defining the variables in your science fair project can make all the difference to your hypothesis. So be careful how you proceed with your records.