extended essay Chemsitry EE in Medicines OR in Forensics

[ibnewB]

I have an idea to do an extended essay in chemistry along the lines of comparing western medicines to herbal treatments but was wondering whether this would be possible, and how I would do so. However, I also think that doing one regarding forensic chemistry would be pretty interesting, and seemingly original, due to lack of information on this topic as one for an EE. I'm looking to do something original, so are there any parts of chemistry uncommonly investigated that would be interesting to do so?

I also do Maths HL, English, Physics, Spanish and Economics HL, so would you guys have any ideas for an EE regarding those subjects?

Thanks for your ideas!!!

 

[kw0573]

You seem to suggest that it is not good to do unoriginal topics, and I do not completely agree. First, and obviously, plagiarism will be punished so no one should simply copy others' procedure and analysis. You will not be awarded "extra marks" or have the criteria lowered in some sense for simply doing topics rarely attempted. For example, you will not get good marks for "synthesis of TNT in the mmol scale in SATP" just because nobody else has done it. There are other criteria of counting originality other than "being the first to do it". A common way is to find as many existing procedure as possible, CITE THEM, and modify to suit your needs. It would be unwise to find experimentation online, and decides to not cite it fearing that will lower your personal engagement grades. Bad idea, that would be dumb. Clearly you didn't imply all this but I just want to get that out there.

So my point is "original" is not equivalent to "uncommon". Often the best group 4 EEs come from good preparation, which come from extensive background research. It would also be weird to suggest a topic to you and call it original. I would recommend against medicine because that seems to imply biological focus and there is some constraints to fully explain the behaviour chemically. But for example if you can ground your research in chemistry terms, such as equilibrium, rates, redox reactions, organic reactions then it would be ok. Of course, if you are comfortable, you can write a Biology EE. I am not familiar with forensics chemistry. Usually in organic chemistry for example, spectrometry and spectroscopy are used to identify compounds; most of the machines necessary in these kinds of analysis are not feasible for secondary institutions. In Chemistry HL you may encounter a few testings for presence of organic functional groups. In a high school lab, some chemical id techniques include manipulating metal activity series to separate ions, titrate unknown acid and determine pKa, measuring density (maybe) and melting points and solubility. If necessary, maybe you can try to obtain permission from a local university to use their facilities. 

Think of your daily life, what kind of problems / scenarios have you been curious about that could potentially turn into an EE? For example my Math EE started from a page on earthquakes in a textbook.