What defines a chemistry IA?

[TheEnthuGroup4Student]

Ok so as the title implies, I am confused as to exactly what defines a chemistry IA. Recently my Teacher has got me started thinking about EE topics, but because my EE plans are mostly for bio, i decided to reserve the EE Chem ideas for my IA instead.

What I am thinking of doing is measuring glutamate concentration in tomatoes after drying,  HOWEVER I also know this sounds very biology. I have asked many chem/bio and chem/physics students about the defining lines of chemistry and the most I have gotten is "if you titrate it its chemistry :P"

but obviously this is not the case. So I checked on the official chemistry IA website, and I found somebody doing and IA on the denaturing of egg white proteins...and that sounds much much more bio.

so I really need some extra clearly defining lines...so things like experimental techniques, content, crossovers

because when my teacher was explaining it, he mentioned this 'you will only be marked for chemistry components in the IA' so it further begs the question, what is considered chemistry components (other than equations and molocules)

[mrwengchemistry]

Hi TheEnthuGroup4Student,

I often have this problem as my students are usually Chem/Bio or Chem/Physics. I can't speak for IB Biology, but I imagine you will talk about the 'anatomy and physiology' of the plant processes. With IB Chemistry I would be looking at the chemistry of the glutamate molecule, the chemistry of how the reaction works, the accuracy (percent error) and precision (uncertaintly propagation) which is chemistry, and the chemical justifications. Chemistry would be the analytical approach so measuring any chemical is fine using analytical processess - titrations of course, but Beer's curve with concentration standards, the effect of concentration changes on the accuracy etc. I haven't had any problems with my student IAs taking this approach.

When I look at biology IAs, they can tend to lend themselves to broad imprecise results with a poor control of variables - almost as bad as research in the humanities, hence needing lots of samples and data that need statistical analysis. Chemistry and Physics are far more precise so use different data processing techniques.

Hope that helps.

Mr Weng.

Other helps and tips: http://mrweng.weebly.com/ib-chemistry-internal-assessment.html