My Scientific Scenario: Snow White and Her Apple Pies

By: Nana Carroll Okamoto

 

 

Scenario –

Snow White shares a home with seven dwarves. Every week she makes two apple pies for the household. Snow White creates her apple pies with apples, crust, flour and sugar. She hears from a bird that adding salt to the recipe would make it taste better. So, one day, Snow White created one apple pie (pie A) with her regular ingredients and the second pie (pie B) with salt added to the original ingredients. She feeds the dwarves with pie A on Wednesday and on Sunday she feeds them pie B. She asks for feedback on pie A, and they say that it tastes good like normal, and for pie B, they say that it tasted more flavourful. The percentage on positive feedback went up by 39%.

Questions –

1. What was the initial observation (problem)?
2. What was the control?
3. What was the independent variable?
4. What was the dependent variable?
5. What conclusion should be made about the investigation?
6. How could the experimental design be improved? (Minimum of 2 ideas)

 

Answers –

1. What was the initial observation (problem)?
   1. Does adding salt to the apple pie (that is baked without salt) improve the flavor?
2. What was the control?
   1. Every other ingredient in the pie
3. What was the independent variable?
   1. The salt added to the apple pie
4. What was the dependent variable?
   1. The dwarves’ feedback
5. What conclusion should be made about the investigation?
   1. That the bird’s hypothesis is supported and adding salt to Snow White’s original apple pie improves the flavor, due to the fact that the positive feedback on the dwarves’ part went up by 39%.
6. How could the experimental design be improved? (Minimum of 2 ideas)
   1. Making sure that other elements would not affect the dwarves’ opinion on flavor (such as their hunger that day, their overall health, perhaps being polite to Snow White)
   2. Repeated experiments should be performed to make certain that not one serving determines the conclusion absolutely.