Question

the passage below describes an experiment. read the passage and think about the variables that are described. santiago grew ten mint plants on his back porch. he grew each plant in its own pot, and each pot was the same size and shape. santiago noticed that his plants did not grow many leaves, and he wanted to see if earthworms could help them grow more. to test this idea, santiago divided his ten plants into two equal groups. for one group, he added three earthworms to the soil in each pot. he did not add any earthworms to pots in the other group. two months later, santiago counted the number of leaves on each of the ten plants. he compared the number of leaves on the plants in each group. which of the following was a dependent variable in this experiment? hint: an independent variable is a variable whose effect you are investigating. a dependent variable is a variable that you measure. the number of earthworms the number of leaves

Explanation:

The experiment aims to see if earth - worms affect plant growth. The number of earth - worms is what Santiago manipulates (independent variable). He measures the number of leaves to determine the effect of earth - worms. So the number of leaves depends on the presence or absence of earth - worms.

Answer:

the number of leaves