Description of Experiment: Hypothesis Actual Hypothesis: If the majority of the pillbugs are on one side of the choice chamber, regardless of the conditions (wet or dry) of that area, then the rest of the bugs will move to that area. Null Hypothesis: The majority of the pillbugs being on one side of the choice chamber does NOT affect where the rest reside to. Alternative Hypothesis: If the majority of the pillbugs are on one side of the choice chamber, then the minority will control/convince the majority to come over to that side. Materials 10 Isopods (Pillbugs) Isopod choice chamber Paper towels Stop watch Graph paper Methodology We will put 9 out of the 10 bugs on the dry side of the choice chamber by hand, leaving one in the middle of the choice chamber to make a decision. If the bug walks over to the dry side, as opposed to the wet side, where the bugs are known to be attracted to those conditions, then it will give us the possible theory that pillbugs are communal animals, swayed more by majority rather than their familiar habitat. We will repeat the experiment multiple times to see how many of the bugs can be swayed by the majority, starting with 1, and ending the experiment with 4. Independent Variable: Bugs placed in dry habitat (starting with 9, ending with 6) Dependent Variable: Bugs that move over to the majority's habitat (starting …show more content…
Our hypothesis was proven because throughout our experiment the pill bugs continuously chose the side with more bugs on that side no matter the condition (wet/dry). I was unable to find any viable sources that stated that they have conducted an experiment with the same or similar hypothesis to what we had in our experiment and there are also no viable sources about pill bugs that said that they were in fact social. This makes our hypothesis unique in that as far as the internet goes, nobody has performed an experiment like