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Is this topic complex enough for an IA?


Rey

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Hi everyone!

We are doing our 10 hour labs at school next week. Despite the fact that we have never gotten an example essay or gotten any help with developing our topics and research question and we only have one class left until then... Our teacher barely speaks English - and I'm not quite competent in his language - and he seems to have problems understanding both the syllabus and us, students. So, we're pretty much on our own here.

The topic I came up with is thermodynamics, more specifically measuring the specific heat capacity of some water based fluid. I know it's not very original, but it is something that, hopefully, even I won't screw up. What I'm planning to do is measuring the specific heat capacity of water, to see how that turns out with the local water and my equipment, then adding some sugar to it, and measure the specific heat capacity of the solution, then add more sugar, then measure that, etc...

However, I'm not sure if this topic is complex enough to fill an IA... Is it? I am not looking for the best marks here, I'm only an SL student and I'm planning to do humanities at uni. But Physics is my weakest subject, so I'd like to get all the marks I can for my IA. Thanks for your help! :D

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  • 1 month later...

It's not a bad idea. I would assume that the specific heat capacity (shc) of solution would depend on both shc of water and of the sugar. Therefore it may be better to use a solute whose specific heat capacity you know or can measure easily, and compare between solution shc with those of just pure water or pure sugar (or another solute). 

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