Bio IA - tossing up between three ideas help

[Vsu]

I have three ideas for my Biology IA, and I was wondering if anyone could give an opinion on which one might be best or easier to conduct?

1. Investigation of the competitive inhibitor ONPG on the activity of the enzyme lactase in breaking down lactose, as measured by glucose concentration. IV = diff. concentrations of ONPG

2. Investigating the ability to retain water and moisture of different moisturisers on gelatine, as a model for human skin. I would spread the moisturiser on top of the gelatine (which are in petri dishes) and measure any changes in mass as indication of water evaporation. Moisturisers would be lotion, creams and ointments, with lotions having the greatest water quantity, and ointments being oil based. Or I was thinking instead of using moisturiser products themselves (since there's a bunch of ingredients, making it difficult to control), I was thinking of using only the main ingredients? Such as petroleum jelly, glycerin, water, some kind of oil (e.g. jojoba oil, coconut oil), control? Or maybe I could do different ratios of water to oil so that the IV can be continuous data? 

3. Investigating the effect of different SPF levels of sunscreen by shining a UV light onto bacteria. (originally wanted to do onion cells and calculate the mitotic index, but the teacher suggested bacteria might be simpler and less time-consuming/demanding)

Any opinions or help at all would be much appreciated! 

[Dreamilyy]

On 2/15/2018 at 12:14 PM, Vsu said:

I have three ideas for my Biology IA, and I was wondering if anyone could give an opinion on which one might be best or easier to conduct?

1. Investigation of the competitive inhibitor ONPG on the activity of the enzyme lactase in breaking down lactose, as measured by glucose concentration. IV = diff. concentrations of ONPG

2. Investigating the ability to retain water and moisture of different moisturisers on gelatine, as a model for human skin. I would spread the moisturiser on top of the gelatine (which are in petri dishes) and measure any changes in mass as indication of water evaporation. Moisturisers would be lotion, creams and ointments, with lotions having the greatest water quantity, and ointments being oil based. Or I was thinking instead of using moisturiser products themselves (since there's a bunch of ingredients, making it difficult to control), I was thinking of using only the main ingredients? Such as petroleum jelly, glycerin, water, some kind of oil (e.g. jojoba oil, coconut oil), control? Or maybe I could do different ratios of water to oil so that the IV can be continuous data? 

3. Investigating the effect of different SPF levels of sunscreen by shining a UV light onto bacteria. (originally wanted to do onion cells and calculate the mitotic index, but the teacher suggested bacteria might be simpler and less time-consuming/demanding)

Any opinions or help at all would be much appreciated! 

hi! did you end up doing any of these ias? i thought all of these ideas sounds so cool and would love to know more about how you conduct an experiment on them in specifics. thank you!