what is control in a science experiment?

Question

plz dont use too sientific words

Answer 1

in most experiments you want to see how changing one thing effects something else. Like how changing how hot your stove is changes how long it takes to heat up a can of soup. When you do this you need to make sure that NOTHING else changes except the temperature of your stove. If you put more soup in one time then there is more soup to heat up, and it will take longer to heat up. This effects the time it takes to heat up the soup. So control is making sure that only 1 thing changes, everything else is controlled.

Answer 2

Even more briefly:

In science (and drug testing, and a whole bunch of things) you often want to see just what a particular thing does.

Of course, if you are investigating the effects of pepper it doesn't help you to learn that an egg cracked onto the kitchen counter will dry out and rot if you sprinkle pepper on it if you don't also know that the egg will dry out and rot just the same without pepper on it.

That's what controls are for:  to see what happens when you DON'T do the thing you're investigating, and thus see just what effects are due just to the change.