After owls eat, they throw up the undigested parts of their meals. these “pellets” contain the fur and skeletal parts of their prey. a student plans to look at an owl pellet to see which small vertebrates the owl ate. which set of materials should the student use?

it is to be noted that an alpha particle is an helium nucleus. so it contains 2 protons 2 neutrons and has a mass number of 4. when alpha decay particles are ejected from the nucleus it gets transformed into an atom which has atomic number less than 2 and a mass number less than 4.

an equation that could represent alpha decay is radium 226 decay of alpha particle forms radon 222.

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1. the question asks the most appropriate, which seems to rule out "all of the above." your choice appears to be the correct one.

2. the protocol described is good for identifying correlation, but not cause and effect. for cause/effect, you need to devise a protocol that will assign the treatment (or not) to groups that have essentially the same "demographics" with respect to all the other variables. your choice regarding control group seems appropriate. random assignment of treatment (choice d) may be appropriate also. (i think you can argue that b and d are just different descriptions of the same method.)

3. d will randomize the birds, but may not guarantee there are 10 in each group. e will do both, so seems the better choice.

comment on question 2

based on the problem statement, it seems clear that confident, attentive drivers are more likely to use daytime running lights. so, the protocol might need to be devised in such a way that the lights would be turned on or off without the driver's knowledge. (an attentive driver will figure it out.) assigning a confident, attentive driver to a group required to drive without running lights might mess with his/her confidence and attentiveness. you don't want your experiment to do that. (nor do you want the experiment to subject a driver to greater risk of accident as a consequence of driving without running lights.) experiments involving human safety are always problematic.