Which is the dependent and independent variable?
The dependent variable is the one whose value depends on (get it?) the values of all the other variables, which are the independent variables. As the value of Force depends on Mass and Acceleration, which do you think is the dependent variable? All the others are independent variables. We can make each of our independent variables any value we please. We could say, for example, the Mass equals 1 million and a half kg. In symbols, that would be M = 10E6 + .5 kg. A silly number to be sure, but we could say that. More than likely we’d let M = 1 kg to make the rest of the math easier. Now, for a given M… for a given M… we can let a, the other independent variable be a whole series of values. Thus, for a given M, we can graph out Force F ~ Acceleration a, where the ~ means proportional to. F is proportional to a, in other words F vs.a or, this is important, F = Ma, where the mass M is the constant of proportionality. Typically we put the dependent variable values along the Y axis and th
