An industrial designer wants to determine if the new design for a piece of office equipment will result in fewer errors. the designer sets up a machine with the old design in one room and a machine with the new design in a second room. he counts how many errors are made using each of the two machines. in this study, the number of errors that are made would

the dependent variable.      

Explanation:

Dependent variable: In a scientific or psychological experiment, the term dependent variable is defined as the variable in an experiment in which the experimenter is interested in. The dependent variable in an experiment is the variable that is being affected by the independent variable, any changes in the independent variable will lead to having a direct effect on the dependent variable.

In other words, the dependent variable in an experiment is the variable that is being tested or measured.

In the question above, the number of errors that are made would be the dependent variable.

the earth’s crust is broken into separate pieces called tectonic plates (fig. 7.14). recall that the crust is the solid, rocky, outer shell of the planet. it is composed of two distinctly different types of material: the less-dense continental crust and the more-dense oceanic crust. both types of crust rest atop solid, upper mantle material. the upper mantle, in turn, floats on a denser layer of lower mantle that is much like thick molten tar.

each tectonic plate is free-floating and can move independently. earthquakes and volcanoes are the direct result of the movement of tectonic plates at fault lines. the term fault is used to describe the boundary between tectonic plates. most of the earthquakes and volcanoes around the pacific ocean basin—a pattern known as the “ring of fire”—are due to the movement of tectonic plates in this region. other observable results of short-term plate movement include the gradual widening of the great rift lakes in eastern africa and the rising of the himalayan mountain range. the motion of plates can be described in four general patterns:

collision: when two continental plates are shoved together

subduction: when one plate plunges beneath another (fig. 7.15)

spreading: when two plates are pushed apart (fig. 7.15)

transform faulting: when two plates slide past each other (fig. 7.15)