Use the following information to answer the following question: you wake up one morning feeling slightly under the weather. a close family member enthusiastically suggests that you take some echinacea, an herb commonly used as a cold remedy. you then decide to design an experiment to test echinacea and see if this claim is true. you think, "if taken at the beginning of a cold, echinacea will reduce cold symptoms." you decide to test the effects of echinacea on 100 people who are experiencing similar cold symptoms. which of the following groups would represent an appropriate control in your experiment?

100 sick people given tablets similar to Echinacea but with no herb

To test if a substance will have a certain effect we always need to have a group control. That group control should have the same size as the group that's going to take the drug, in this case, one hundred people. Another important thing  that makes a group control is having them not take any treatment. Lastly, the control group should be representative of the same population, the "sick population"  to serve as comparison to the treatment group.

Confused on question what should we be answering

Environmental science studies the interactions between the physical, chemical, and biological components of the environment, including their effects on all types of organisms. earth science (also known as geoscience), is an inclusive term for all sciences related to earth (geology, meteorology, oceanogr maphy, etc).  although environmental and earth science cover essentially the same material, environmental science places greater emphasis on the biological realm, while earth science places greater emphasis on the physical realm.    environmental and earth science study the interactions of four major systems or “spheres” (figure 8.6).  the  geosphere  consists of the core, mantle and crust of the earth.the  atmosphere  contains all of the earth’s air and is divided into troposphere, stratosphere, mesosphere, thermosphere and ionosphere.the  hydrosphere  contains all of the solid, liquid and gaseous water on earth, extending from the depths of the sea to the upper reaches of the troposphere where water is found.  ninety-seven percent of the hydrosphere is found in salty oceans, and the remainder is found as vapor or droplets in the atmosphere and as liquid in ground water, lakes, rivers, glaciers and snowfields.  the  biosphere  is the collection of all earth’s life forms, distributed in major life zones known as biomes:   tundra, boreal forest, temperate deciduous forest, temperate grassland, desert, savannah, tropical rainforest, chaparral, freshwater, and marine.although the four systems have their unique identities, there is substantial interaction between them.  environmental scientists study the effects of events in one sphere on the other spheres. for example, a volcanic eruption in the geosphere may cause profound direct and indirect effects on the hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere as follows: example 1 (volcano)    on may 18, 1980, mount saint helens, in the state of washington, erupted.  this event altered the surrounding environment, and provided scientists with an opportunity to study the effects of volcanic eruptions on the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere.  such studies are vital because volcanic eruptions will continue to occur, and will have increasing impact on humans as people continue to settle lands closer to dormant volcanoes. the following are but a few of the myriad of interactions resulting from a volcanic