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Ok cool. So your experimental condition would be soil type then. I assume you have to do some type of write-up of your experiment when you're done. For that you should say something like we are testing the affect of soil type on plant growth and development. You should also indicate what the control soil is vs the experimental soil. The control soil will be the "normal" one, and the experimental soil will be the one that seems a little different or weird.
How do you define "what type of soil the plants like the most"? When you're designing an experiment you should be very precise in your language bc it's easy to misinterpret data if a scientist is using ambiguous language. That's actually one of the reasons that I think we have so many issues with science communication and perception in our country!
What differences are you looking for in the plants? You mentioned stem color earlier. What other data will you be taking to assess differences in plants and what do you think they could mean for the plant? For example, if you see one plant is taller than the other, then you could theorize that the soil in the taller plant helps it to grow.
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she did a great walkthrough of designing scientific questions and experiments
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This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1502892.
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