High School

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A student has several pet hermit crabs and wants to determine how they choose which shell to inhabit. He believes the crabs select their shells based on color and wants to design an experiment to test this hypothesis. Which of these steps should the student include in his experiment?

A. He should add shells that are different colors, but the same size and type, to the tank and observe which shells the hermit crabs choose.

B. He should observe hermit crabs in their natural environments and determine how shells help protect them from predators.

C. He should place the hermit crabs in different tanks and change the temperatures in the tanks to see if it affects their shell selection.

D. He should gather shells that are different sizes and different colors, place them in the tank with the hermit crabs, then observe which shells they choose.

Answer :

A. He should add shells that are different colors, but the same size and type, to the tank and observe which shells the hermit crabs choose.

Durning an experiment you need to keep everything the same but only change the certain things based on your theory.
Such as how the student wanted to see if the color attracted the crab. If he had changed the size and type of the shell then the crab would have chosen the bigger one as they tend to grow into larger shells.

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Rewritten by : Barada

Correct option is A. To determine if hermit crabs choose shells based on color, the student should add shells of different colors but the same size and type to the tank, as this single-variable approach ensures an accurate test of the color preference hypothesis.

Experimental Design for Hermit Crab Shell Selection

To test if hermit crabs choose shells based on color, the student should include the following step in the experiment: A. He should add shells that are different colors, but the same size and type, to the tank and observe which shells the hermit crabs choose. This step ensures that the only variable being tested is the color of the shells, which is essential for a controlled experiment. Other factors such as the shell size and type could influence the hermit crabs' choice, confounding the results related to color preference. Therefore, it is important to control for all other variables except the one being tested (color), to obtain accurate results. By observing the hermit crabs' shell selection, the student can gather data on whether color impacts their decision.

Options B and C introduce additional variables such as natural environment interactions and temperature changes, which are not relevant to the hypothesis being tested. Option D introduces the variable of shell size along with color, which could confound the results. Therefore, Option A is the most appropriate for testing the student's hypothesis about color preference in hermit crab shell selection.