Second Year Coursework

Second Year Coursework B - Your Own Investigation

1. Find an Investigation:

Choosing the right investigation for you requires careful thought. You might already have an idea for an investigation but it is still well worth keeping an open mind and looking for inspiration on-line.

Try out the Topic-Wizard on the Science Buddies website and see what ideas it generates for you.
Try a Google search for 'science fair projects'.
Ask your teacher for ideas that could link with your interests.

2. Make a Short-list:

Now that you have a few ideas it is time to do a bit more background research.

List at least three topics that you would like to investigate and put them in order; 1st, 2nd and 3rd favourite.
Find out, (possibly from your teacher), if there is any special equipment that you might need.
Ask whether your ideas for investigation can be tested; finding out how far a mouse can fall without hurting itself or what plants look like when they grow in Space may be fascinating but won't be allowed or be possible.
If you manage to rule out all of your first three choices go back to step 1 and start again.

3. Do some more Background Research

What work has been done on this before?

Type in the idea for your project in Ask.com as a question and see what it throws up.
Try some of the keywords in Wikipedia and see where that takes you.
Ask your teacher.
Look in the library.

Most importantly for this section, keep a record of the URLs of the sites you visit and details of people you ask and books you read. You will need this to show evidence of research.

4. State the Problem or Task you are Investigating

It may seem obvious, but unless you write down what you are going to investigate it is very easy to get sidetracked and end up going in a completely different direction.

Write a short title, (you can change it later), that starts off ' I am going to carry out an investigation to find out...'
Decide on what you are going to measure
Decide on what equipment you might need
Discuss your work with your teacher.
Make a list and hand it to your teacher. Don't turn up to do experimental work and expect your teacher to have all the equipment you want to use unless you have asked first.

5. Do a Risk Assessment

Safety is important and you must fill in a risk assessment form and pass it to your teacher before you can start doing any practical work. To make sure you have thought of everything now is a good time to:

Write out a method
Draw diagram of your experiment