Are my IA topics doable? Advice?

[bosuegbu]

I'm a senior, 2 weeks into my last semester of high school and I am just now trying to seriously figure out what I'm going to do about this math IA. My teacher is technically an AP teacher and his students haven't gotten great marks in the past on the ia, so I'm not expecting any more than a 15, especially considering the extent of my procrastination. So here's the topics I'm thinking about:

- Something having to do with shooting a basketball at a certain angle and related rates (don't really know exactly how to incorporate related rates but yeah)

- Using optimization to find out how to bake the greatest amount of bread using the least amount of dough and allowing it to rise (again, don't know how specifically to incorporate optimization into this)

- Modelling the cooling of coffee with an equation, and calculating the amount of time it takes to cool to certain temperatures (regression)

Please help me I'm pretty desperate right now for some guidance; thank you!!! (:

[kw0573]

It seems you want to do something calculus-related. You are not obliged to have data in the exploration but you can. Math IA is about demonstrating your math problem solving and/or analytical skills, as opposed to replicate a textbook solution. All three are good but the basketball is the weakest: it is a physics problem and is not very math-heavy. I like the coffee one the best because the data is easy to collect (and there is a model on it). You should still keep looking for more ideas. If you do end up doing regression, remember IB is not assessing how well you can punch in numbers into a formula but rather your justification of any formulae used and your thought process.