Question

the passage below describes an experiment. katy liked to make guacamole, but she could often find only unripe avocados at the grocery store. in biology class, she learned that ripe fruits produce a gas called ethylene that can cause other fruits to ripen. katy wondered whether storing ripe bananas with unripe avocados would make the avocados ripen faster. she prepared four paper bags with five unripe avocados in each bag. she added one ripe banana to two of the bags and no bananas to the remaining two. then, she sealed all four bags. after three days, she opened each bag and counted the number of ripe avocados. complete the sentence. in this experiment, the number of ripe bananas was an independent variable a dependent variable

Explanation:

An independent variable is what the experimenter changes or manipulates. Here, Katy decides whether to add ripe bananas (number of ripe bananas is either 0 or 1 per bag) to see its effect on avocado - ripening. The number of ripe avocados is the dependent variable as it may change based on the presence or absence of ripe bananas.

Answer:

an independent variable