The purpose of this experiment is to determine what happens to
common household items that are discarded and placed in a
landfill. In nature, physical, chemical, and biological factors
act upon our waste and work together in the process of
decomposition. This experiment will determine what action
organisms in the soil have on garbage. Before you begin, make an
educated guess about the outcome of this experiment based on
your knowledge of composting and decomposition. This educated
guess, or prediction, is your hypothesis. A hypothesis should
explain these things: A hypothesis should be brief, specific,
and measurable. It must be something you can test through
observation. Your experiment will prove or disprove whether your
hypothesis is correct. Here is one possible hypothesis for this
experiment: "Household garbage covered with soil will decay
faster than garbage not covered with soil." In this case, the
variable you will change is the presence or absence of soil, and
the variable you will measure is the dif