I did A Lab in science where I had a Small hotwheels car and started and 6 books and made a ramp. I then timed how long it took the car to go 2 meters from the ramp. after each trial I added one more book to make the slope higher. The car stayed the same and the higher the slope/ramp, the faster it went.
I'm suppose to make a scatter plot of my data. Plotting the independant variable on the x-axis and the dependant variable on the y-axis, except I need a little help on deciding what the dependant and independant variables are.
Thanks:)
So for my lab would the independant variable be the height of the ramp and the depedant variable be the time it took the car to go 2 meters?
That's the way I see it.
To decide which variable is the independent variable and which is the dependent variable in your experiment, you need to consider the cause-and-effect relationship between them.
In this case, it seems like the independent variable is the height of the slope or the number of books you added to the ramp. This is because you intentionally varied this variable to observe how it affects the car's speed.
On the other hand, the dependent variable is the time it took for the car to travel 2 meters from the ramp. This variable depends on the height of the slope, as the higher the slope, the faster the car went, as you mentioned.
Therefore, for your scatter plot, you should plot the independent variable (height of the slope or number of books) on the x-axis and the dependent variable (time taken for the car to travel 2 meters) on the y-axis.
Each data point on the scatter plot would represent one trial, with the x-coordinate indicating the height of the slope and the y-coordinate indicating the corresponding time taken by the car.
Once you have all your data points plotted, you can analyze the scatter plot to observe any trends or relationships between the variables.