ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Web-based experiments

Okay, imagine you're playing with some toys at home and you want to figure out which toy is the best. You could just try them all out yourself, but what if you want to see if other kids think the same thing as you? That's where web-based experiments come in!

A web-based experiment is when scientists or researchers use the internet to ask people to do something or answer questions in order to learn something new. It's like playing a game or filling out a survey online, but the information you give helps the scientists learn about how people think or act in different situations.

So, let's say a scientist wants to know if people are better at remembering things if they see them in color. They could create an online experiment where they show people a bunch of pictures either in color or black and white, and ask them to remember as many as they can. Then they can see if people remembered more from one group or the other.

The cool thing about web-based experiments is that they can reach a lot of people from all over the world really easily. Instead of having to find kids to play with your toys in your town, you can ask kids from lots of different countries to help you with your experiment.

These experiments can help scientists learn new things and make discoveries that can help people in the future. So the next time you click on a link to take a survey or play a game online, you might actually be helping scientists learn something important!