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Maths EE Tweaking the topic/research question


Yousaf05

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Greetings People,

 

I would appreciate some help with my Maths EE that I am just beginning to start. I have sort of built upon a topic and my advisor says it can be evaluated using deep mathematics integration and would be nice choice. I personally have a passion for Maths and Physics so I thought of doing something that combines both the subject areas.

 

I am thinking of mathematically proving man running at speed of light under certain or limited circumstances inside a particle accelerator. I am currently reading up on Special Relativity in advance. My advisor has told me to learn calculus all by myself to have a greater complicated mathematical approach but an understanding good enough to explain it to a 5 year old (quoting Einstein).

 

I am in Maths SL (Year 1) at the moment as I changed my school to a boarding school with IB for the first time and it's been hard at start so the HL Maths teacher advised me to change to SL which would be better considering my conditions. I plan to take HL Physics next year though. 

Please give some advice on my topic/research question as in terms of how should I make it specific and/or if it's a good enough topic to be evaluated mathematically!

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Hi,

 

First of all, an EE in maths - wow! You're one of the rare people who choose this. Anyways, I see you've taken math SL. Why? I know IB doesn't mention this, but doing your EE in a subject you've taken at HL makes it that much easier. I'm not discouraging you to do your EE in math, but you'll have to learn more things yourself (unless your teacher is really really helpful, in which case you're really lucky). Also, its really tough to score high in math EE. Just stating the statistics. But since you decided on this subject, you must already know that.

 

I didn't take the topic of relativity in physics so I don't know how/where you can apply math here, but you need to have a proper topic. What you have right now is just an idea as to what you want to do. That's okay since you've just started, but you need to think about what aspects of MATH you'll be using. You'll also need to take care that you don't diverge from the topic and start discussing phy. If there's a lot of physics in your essay, then you'll lose a couple marks for that, so make sure you don't do that.

 

To get a better topic, you should be more clear on what you're gonna include in your EE. Like form a rough layout of the content. Make your topic focused and totally related to your essay. If you're unsure whether your topic is focused or not, (after you've written a draft) read your analysis and see if you can directly deduce your RQ from that. If not, you need to improvise. Hope this helped! ^.^

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I personally recommend the Yale OpenCourse playlist lectures 12 through 15 on relativity / lorenz transformation http://oyc.yale.edu/physics/phys-200/lecture-12 of the Physics 200 playlist. 

Some issues with this as a math EE topic
1a) From the videos you can see for special relativity there's basically no integrals. I am not sure about general relativity. Special relativity talks about a four-vector so I guess you can focus on that. 

1b) Hence vectors might be something you want to focus on instead of calculus. I suggest the minimum: components visualization, magnitude of a vector, unit vectors, addition/subtraction from components or pictorially, scalar multiplication, dot product (from components and from angle), cross product.
2) I guess it might be too late to switch around your courses but everyone struggles at HL Math initially. 
3) Don't take it too literally that 5 year olds can understand it. Just explain it well enough so your peers can understand everything. For the criteria you should make sure you are using proper vocabulary and clear arguments. 
4) It's very easy to make the mistake of focusing on the physics rather than the math. If you want to write a physics EE, which I am less familiar with, you have to focus a bit more on physics phenomena (eg Conservation of energy/momentum, inertia, etc).

5) Remember that they are not scoring EEs differently between SL or HLs. The EE can also only be marked in a single subject (except for World Studies subject). 

And as with all EEs, read the criteria carefully before you start http://www.ibsurvival.com/files/file/311-09-onwards-ee-guide/. I did that half way but I was just in time to make a well-enough plan to score points as priority over talk about really complicated math. Yes I did learn a lot from doing my EE, but having read the criteria beforehand I knew what to focus on. 

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Thank you both very much on the great advice! I will focus and apply more time to it as soon as my break starts and the weekend arrives! Yeah my advisor gave me a book about relativity which explains it pretty neatly and I have a math tutor who is sort of like a tutor for the family as my brother and sister were also his students! He's amazing at maths and helps me greatly so I can learn maths from him! 

Yeah about the keeping on trial with mathematical explanation, I would need to focus more on that as that is pretty essential for a Math EE. I often dwell into Physics at time. Anyways, thank you both very much for the detailed advice and explanation!

I will update this post as I proceed through my RQ and drafts. Will ask you guys for help along the way if I face a problem! Thank you! 
The reason I went for a Maths EE is because it's my favourite subject and I am up for any challenge when maths or physics is the case! So my advisor told me you'll do good in maths component as long as you are passionate about the subjects! 

Appreciate the help. Will stay in touch...

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  • 2 months later...

Hey Guys! 

So since my initial start I have developed my RQ a lot and have 10+ resources such as books, journals, research papers and articles. Now my RQ is; If gaining infinite energy is possibly and imaginary rest mass exists, how can we mathematically prove the existence of faster than light particles?.

But I recently talked to our school's librarian (she keeps everyone on timeline with EEs), and then we discussed about the math content of the essay. Now what I am trying to do is pretty similar to what already has been done before. The mathematical proof for Tachyons without violating the principles of special relativity. I am worried about the plagiarism content here, while I will be properly citing all the resources and authors for their contributions such as Einstein, Lorenz and Feinberg but the math I'll be doing will mostly be the same as whoever provided proof for Tachyons using math. Now if I just cite everybody's math then there's no math from my side. But even if I do maths just by myself without looking at their work I I'll get plagiarism content tag as Math is similar. 

 

So any help here guys? How does plagiarism checker work with Math related EEs. Thanks!

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You can make comments on the math you've discussed instead of merely presenting them. Do reference all your sources used. There seem to be no direct downside to not having original (in the sense of self-derived) math other than possibly lower marks in "Holistic judgment". Some indirect impacts include that you may not express the idea clearly if you do not understand the topic well. IB encourages and rewards those who do put a lot of original content into the essay, so a well-documented synthesis of others' ideas seem to be earning less benefits rather getting a 0 or losing marks. 

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I am trying to make it as original as possible. I even came up with my own method of deriving the equations but apparently similar things have been already done and I found those later when collecting research papers. I will surely do the math myself but in the commenting section, I will refer to the other mathematicians that have attempted using the same procedure. I will be talking to my advisor again today about this thing as I feel like I might be leaning more towards Physics as whenever I explain something in math, I am using physics phenomenon that would not be violated and would allow for such change in the mathematical model. (this is all in my day to day thoughts, as I havent started the actual paper).

I am attaching my planner here. Note when I say "Use someone's Paper/Article", I mean for reference system.

Also I am concerned with how complicated does the IB want maths in the math EE to be? Here I am using imaginary numbers, 3D and 4D vectors, and a few other minor topics. Just out of curiosity, as your small info says EE in maths. What was your RQ? 

EE Planner Revised.pdf

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