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Joan guesses that adding fertilizer to a group of tomato plants will make the plants grow larger. She adds fertilizer to twenty plants and doesn't add fertilizer to twenty other plants. Which of these terms best describes the twenty unfertilized plants?

User Eistrati
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Answer:

The twenty unfertilized plants could be described as the control group or the comparison group.

Step-by-step explanation:

Generally, a control group is a group of subjects that is not exposed to the experimental treatment or intervention being studied. The purpose of a control group is to provide a baseline or comparison for the experimental group. The experimental group in this scenario would be the twenty plants that received fertilizer. The control group, the twenty unfertilized plants, serves as a reference point to assess the effect of the fertilizer on the growth of the plants. This allows the experimenter to determine if the fertilizer is the cause of any observed differences in plant growth between the two groups.

User Rob Allsopp
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