Machine engineers are designing a new ice machine for use in restaurants. They notice that designs that use cubes containing higher volumes of water take longer to freeze. What are the explanatory variable and response variable for this relationship?

The explanatory variable is the factor being changed or used to explain a result: here, the volume of water in each ice cube. The response variable is the result that changes in response: the time it takes to freeze. Therefore, choice D correctly identifies volume of water as the explanatory variable and time to freeze as the response variable.

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