Myr Z Posted July 6, 2016 Report Share Posted July 6, 2016 (edited) I'm a biology HL student and my IA is on the effect of temperature on lactase activity. I finished my experiment successfully and I have started writing the actual IA, but I am concerned about the research question. My research question is the following: How does exposing lactase to different temperatures affect its activity as a catalyst of lactose breakdown in regular whole milk, measured by change in glucose concentration? I feel like it is very long, but my teacher disagrees and wants me to add more information in it, like the temperature range, the exact kind of milk (fat % included), and the device I used to measure glucose concentration (I used a blood glucose Glucometer). What should I do? I know people will say to trust my teacher, but nobody at my school trusts him and he's not the best Biology teacher. Please help. Edited July 12, 2016 by Myr Z Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Oscarthecat3 Posted July 12, 2016 Report Share Posted July 12, 2016 Hi, I agree with your teacher; but i can understand your concern. Bio IA's are different to EE's, in EE's the RQ (research question) has to be broad; but in BIO it should be really specific. So as long as you aren't changing the fat% or type of milk and, you are just changing temp. I would follow your teachers advice. If you don't trust your bio teacher 100%, maybe refer your RQ with another bio teacher, i'm sure they'd be happy to offer some help . Hope this helps. When you're writing your IA, some of the things on this site can be quite useful . https://ib-biology-roundtable.wikispaces.com 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myr Z Posted July 12, 2016 Author Report Share Posted July 12, 2016 15 minutes ago, Oscarthecat3 said: Hi, I agree with your teacher; but i can understand your concern. Bio IA's are different to EE's, in EE's the RQ (research question) has to be broad; but in BIO it should be really specific. So as long as you aren't changing the fat% or type of milk and, you are just changing temp. I would follow your teachers advice. If you don't trust your bio teacher 100%, maybe refer your RQ with another bio teacher, i'm sure they'd be happy to offer some help . Hope this helps. When you're writing your IA, some of the things on this site can be quite useful . https://ib-biology-roundtable.wikispaces.com Thank you so much for replying! Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
cvillau Posted July 18, 2016 Report Share Posted July 18, 2016 Hi! I came across your question and I just wanted to tell you that it is a really easy topic for a HL Biology Student. It's something you study when you talk about biomolecules, proteins and enzymes and something that doesn't have much exploration to do, because you already know what is going to happen: the the third structure of the protein is going to breakdown as you rise the temperature because the protein will denature. 1 Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Myr Z Posted July 18, 2016 Author Report Share Posted July 18, 2016 cvillau, what would you suggest to do in order to make it more of an HL IA? My biology teacher really isn't good (he's the only one at my school and he's new) and he told me that this topic is perfectly fine. He denied many harder topics I suggested before letting me do this one. Just so you get an idea of how bad he is, he has a chemistry degree and cannot answer even the simplest chemistry question. So, yeah... Reply Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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