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IB Biology SL IA- 2 ideas, and need some advice.


JKingaA

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Hi, I will carry out my experiment next week but I need some advice on whether or not the 2 ideas I'm about to present are either good or bad?

 

1) Visual and Auditory learning modes (neurobiology). This experiment would investigate if some people have much better retention when information is presented visually rather than verbally or vice versa. And if presenting information both visually and verbally increase retention above either mode alone. I was thinking about testing the memory of a few people visually, verbally and in a combination of some list of vocabularies, then average the results and figure out which test field had the highest score, as well as figuring out if gender has anything to do with this. 

 

2) The second idea was to find the amount of carbon dioxide produced during photosynthesis using different amounts of baking soda, in 3 different plants. Apparently, the experiment itself is too simplified so I would need to make it more challenging..I really am struggling to find a different way of using photosynthesis :dash:  are there any suggestions? 

 

Thanks a lot! 

 

 

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On your first idea: I think it would be pretty difficult to quantify the responses of your test subjects. In my opinion it would give it a little bit of a "science fair" tone and maybe preparing a scale to get quantitative data will turn out to be much harder than you thought.

 

2: Amount of CO2 prouced by photosynthesis? Uh, that is a little bit... paradoxic. Plants produce carbon dioxide when they carry out respiration, not photosynthesis. And photosythetic activity would probably drain all of the CO2 produced by respiration either way, so quantifying that would be very hard. In my experience, Biology SL does not require that much "give it your own twist", so investigating some simple factors that affect photosynthesis wouldn't go wrong. I sent off a design measuring rate of photosynthesis at different CO2 concentrations and it turned out pretty well.

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On your first idea: I think it would be pretty difficult to quantify the responses of your test subjects. In my opinion it would give it a little bit of a "science fair" tone and maybe preparing a scale to get quantitative data will turn out to be much harder than you thought.

 

2: Amount of CO2 prouced by photosynthesis? Uh, that is a little bit... paradoxic. Plants produce carbon dioxide when they carry out respiration, not photosynthesis. And photosythetic activity would probably drain all of the CO2 produced by respiration either way, so quantifying that would be very hard. In my experience, Biology SL does not require that much "give it your own twist", so investigating some simple factors that affect photosynthesis wouldn't go wrong. I sent off a design measuring rate of photosynthesis at different CO2 concentrations and it turned out pretty well.

 

I also thought the first idea wasn't ideal.. thank you so much! 

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