Question

Professor Boredom has noticed that students keep falling asleep during his lectures. He thinks that keeping the lights in the lecture hall on at their brightest level will help to keep students awake. He decides to give the same lecture to three groups of people. He holds one class session with bright lights, one class session with normal lighting, and one class session with dim lights. Professor Boredom has a teaching assistant count the number of sleepers at the end of each class.
What is Professor Boredom's hypothesis in this example?
A) Bright lights will keep more students awake in class than dimmer lights.
B) Lighting will have no effect on students' wakefulness.
C) Sleepy students prefer dimmer lights during class time than alert students.
D) Alert students prefer dimmer lights during class time than sleepy students.

Answer 1

Answer:

A) Bright lights will keep more students awake in class than dimmer lights.

Explanation:

Professor Boredom's hypothesis in this example is that bright lights will keep more students awake in class than dimmer lights. In this example, Professor Boredom is blaming sleepy students on lights. Lights are the independent variable that he can manipulate to find the number of sleepy students. The number of "sleepy students after the lecture" is according to Professor Boredom, the dependent variable that responds to the independent variable the "amount of light".