1. Identify the independent variable, dependent variable, constants, and control (if present).
Identify the hypothesis for the experiment. If the hypothesis is not stated, write one.
Write an appropriate title and hypothesis.
State at least two ways to improve the experiment described in the scenario.
Gloria wanted to find out if the color of food would affect whether kindergarten children would select it for lunch. She put food coloring into 5 identical bowls of mashed potatoes. The colors were plain, red, green, yellow, and blue. Each child chose a scoop of potatoes of the color of their choice. Gloria did this experiment using 100 students. She recorded the number of students that chose each color.

2. Ecology: Ecosystems and Change

3. What changes have you seen in the environment as you’ve grown up?
What do you think caused those changes?
What do you want to know about ecological change and its causes?

4. ECOLOGY is the study of how organisms interact with each other and the environment.

5. What is an ecosystem?
What type of changes could affect an ecosystem? In what ways?
Is ecological change good or bad – or neither?

6. A community of various organisms interacting with each other within a particular environment is known as an ECOSYSTEM.
A COMMUNITY is multiple species (populations) living in the same area
A POPULATION is a group of individuals of the same species that live in the same general area and can reproduce
An ecosystem is SUSTAINABLE if it can support its diversity and ecological processes through time
(sustainable = able to be maintained)

7. BIODIVERSITY is the degree of variation of life
BIODIVERSITY is the degree of variation of life. It is a measure of the variety of organisms present in an ecosystems.
It can refer to genetic variation, ecosystem variation, or species variation (number of species) within an area, biome, or planet.

8. How does change affect ecosystems?