Question

the message 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.
identify the independent variable and dependent variable in this experiment.
options: the number of ripe avocados, the number of ripe bananas

Explanation:

• Independent variable: What's manipulated (here, adding ripe bananas or not, so the number of ripe bananas).
• Dependent variable: What's measured (the number of ripe avocados, as it depends on banana presence).

Answer:

Independent variable: the number of ripe bananas
Dependent variable: the number of ripe avocados