Trying to understand Scientific Method.... Help

I'm sorry, I'm really not understanding Scientific Method, so I was hoping if y'all (the amazing and always brilliant Yahoo!Answers community) could help me if I gave y'all a random hypothesis. (Bear with me, I'm just creating this.)

Hypothesis: "If a bowling ball and pen are dropped at the same time from the same level, the bowling ball with reach the ground first."

From there, what would be the controlled variables in my experiment? What would be the manipulated variable? What would be the responding variable?

I'm sorry, I'm just not understanding!

A hypothesis is just a prediction of what will happen. So lets say you predict that plants grow better with a particular fertilizer. The independent variable is the one you manipulate (fertilizer). the dependent variable is the one that is effected by the independent variable (plant growth). You want to measure the effect that your independent variable has on your dependent variable. You also want a control sample to compare that effect against. If you keep all conditions the same on your dependent sample and your control sample except for the exposure of your independent variable on the dependent sample, that's when you have a controlled experiment. If there are no confounding variables present (i.e. no differences other than the effect of the independent variable on the dependent variable) it is considered to contribute to the validity of your experiment. So if you want to measure the effects of the fertilizer on some plant samples, you would also have some plant samples that get no fertilizer but all other conditions are kept constant across both samples.

In your example you're manipulating (independent variable) the weight of the objects you've chosen. The dependent (responding) variable is the time it takes them to hit the ground.

OK, it might help to look at *ahem* (and here you have to imagine about 90 db worth of reverb and the echoing voice of James Earl Jones) THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD! Actually, it's really simple. Step 1. You see something. Step 2. You say I wonder [how/why/what/who/whatever]..? Step 3. You think of possible answers, and Step 4. You weed out the answers that don't work until you're left with the one(s) that do.