The oldest way ... the way we've been using as long as we've been
walking on the Earth ... has been to use plants. Plants sit out in the
sun all day, capturing its energy and using it to make chemical compounds.
Then we come along, cut the plants down, and eat them. Our bodies
rip the chemical compounds apart and suck the solar energy out of them,
and then we use the energy to walk around, sing, and play video games.
Another way to capture the sun's energy is to build a dam across a creek
or a river, so that the water can't flow past it. You see, it was the sun's
energy that evaporated the water from the ocean and lifted it high into
the sky, giving it a lot of potential energy. The rain falls on high ground,
up in the mountains, so the water still has most of that potential energy
as it drizzles down the river to the ocean. If we catch it on its way, we
can use some of that potential energy to turn wheels, grind our grain,
turn our hydroelectric turbines to get electrical energy ... all kinds of jobs.
A modern, recent new way to capture some of the sun's energy is to use
photovoltaic cells. Those are the flat blue things that you see on roofs
everywhere. When the sun shines on them, they convert some of its
energy into electrical energy. We use some of what they produce, and
we store the rest in giant batteries, to use when the sun is not there.
Answer:
D
Explanation:
She says that the object of the experiment is to see how far the string stretches given a mass attached to the string.
The only thing that is at issue is either the mass or the amount the string stretches.
Nothing else matters.
The dependent variable therefore is the amount the string stretches. So the last choice is the answer.
