Comparing two methods for quantifying mercury

[FlyByNight]

Ignore this information. Two of my threads were merged. If you would like to comment on this topic, please do so via PM. The new topic of discussion is the Mercury topic discussed in post four.

Hey guys;

My idea for my EE right now consists of testing for polyethylene terephthalate (the material the bottles are made of) in bottled water. My thinking is that I will measure how much of that has leeched into the water the bottle contains, and draw conclusions based upon those results. Is this arguable? If I must change my topic, I would like to stick with water purity as my topic, as I have done a good deal of research into it. I have access to instrumentation that would allow for testing of metals and organic materials (ie an atomic absorptance spectrometer, a GC/MS, and a LC/MS).

Any advice?

Thanks,

Peter

Edited September 1, 2009 by FlyByNight

[deissi]

Right now your topic isn't very analytical. IB wants "to what extent" questions, your question simply finds out that this much plastic dissolves into the water but you can't really go further with the subject, especially because you will have to stick to the realm of chemistry (i.e. no health hazard discussion etc.). Perhaps you could investigate something that effects the rate of plastic dissolving into the water, something like how the mineral content of the water affects it. You could hypothesize that the purer the water, the less plastic will be dissolved into the water or something along those lines.

[FlyByNight]

So with your hypothesis, you think that something in the solution would affect the rate of the plastic leeching? So, I would test for the amount of plastic and the amount of minerals and see if there is positive correlation?

[FlyByNight]

Hey guys,

Is this arguable: comparing the results given from electro-chemical method of quantifying mercury (in water) with results from an atomic absorbance spectrometer? I would come up with a couple solutions with various concentrations, and run them through both methods. Something like "to what extent is electrochemistry more accurate than emission spectra?" Is that arguable?

Thanks,

Peter

[sweetnsimple786]

Edit: It can be found here: http://www.ibsurvival.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=109

I'm not familiar with the equipment, but emission and absorption are different, even if they are inverse-ish. I guess clarify what you're arguing and be more specific. In your RQ, all you'd need to add is "in quantifying the concentration of liquid mercury in water" to the end of your question or something like that. Yeah, it's arguable as long as the answer isn't blatant. If there's a well-established answer to what you're researching, and you're not really contributing, then the topic's kinda dead. Make sure you thoroughly discuss what you're doing so that while the machinery is doing the analysis for you, the examiner knows that you understand what's going on. You're not just reading the output and going from there--you're actually doing some of the calculations or something. The EE guide does a pretty decent job of explaining things, so take a look at it if you haven't.

Edit: It can be found here: http://www.ibsurvival.com/index.php?app=downloads&showfile=109

Edited September 7, 2009 by sweetnsimple786