You need to control variables in an experiment so as to make sure that only the variable you are testing and changing is the one affecting the results of your experiment. For example, in an experiment to find the effect of light intensity on the rate of photosynthesis of plant, you'll change light by putting a plant in sun and another in dark but you must not change carbon dioxide level for both plants so by that you have controlled other variables in the experiment(variables which must be the same always in the experiment).
When performing an experiment it is very important to have a control set. It is important to have a control set because it ensures that the experiment can be repeated as many times as necessary.
To understand this you need to remember that the independent variable is a condition that you can change, and the dependent variable is the outcome that you see. If you have two independent variables, and you change both during an experiment, how are you going to tell which one caused the change to the outcome? So, you only change one independent variable at a time.
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so that it doesn't go out of control
It's important to control your experiment so that you can be sure the results are due to the experimental variable (independent variable) and not something else.