Copy these questions to your paper, skipping 2 lines between each question. 1. What is the problem? 2. What is the hypothesis? 3. What are the basic steps in the experiment? 4. What is the independent variable? 5. What is the dependent variable? 6. What is the control? 7. What things should remain constant? 8. What is the key observation?

I was a popcorn eating freak. I loved the stuff. I could have ate popcorn from morning till night and still dreamt about it all night long. But as fate would have it I lived in the same house as a monster. Sure, I called her “Mother”, but she must have actually been some alien. She would insist that whenever popcorn was made that every last kernel had to be popped. I think she must not have had taste buds. Do you know what happens to popcorn when it is microwaved for that long? It burns! With as much as I love popcorn I hate burnt popcorn. The stench; the awful taste; the complete waste of all that was good. Living in the same house with this alien was going to drive me crazy. I could never enjoy a movie with popcorn, because I knew the moment I asked for popcorn I would end up with crisp black things in a bowl instead. Then one day a friend of mine offers some ray of hope. “The fresher the popcorn is, the more kernels will pop without burning.” Perhaps this could be the key to banish burnt popcorn from my life. Unfortunately my friend had no idea how to keep it fresh, so I though to myself “everything else stays fresh in the refrigerator, maybe it will keep the popcorn fresh.” So with the goal of keeping popcorn fresh, I set up an experiment. I bought a new box of microwave popcorn at the store, and as soon as I returned home I placed one bag of the popcorn into the refrigerator. Another bag was placed in the customary place on the counter, and then I waited one week. After a week of time, I popped both bags and counted the unpopped kernels. It did seem that placing the popcorn in the refrigerator had an affect on the number of unpopped kernels, but I’m not telling how this story ends.