Looking for Bio IA ideas

[Cydney Kane]

I'm a Bio HL student and I'm really stuck trying to come up with an idea for my second Bio IA. For my first one, I investigated whether a subject's dominant hand had a quicker reaction time than their non-dominant hand using the ruler drop method. I really hate experiments using plants and stuff, and I'd prefer one that was using humans. I'm terrible with labs and I really struggle with understanding complicated procedures. I'd appreciate any ideas!Thanks!

[Sandwich]

The easiest but yet best labs are done with non-living things, in my experience... topics like enzymes are very simple to understand, easy to investigate on a laboratory bench and don't have all the variability and ethics problems of plants, people and bacteria. I suggest you get out your textbook and flick through the enzymes section for inspiration (we can't actually give you IA ideas as such - after all the design is up to you and you get marked on it - but general direction). Enzymes, osmosis, photosynthesis... classic and easy things to investigate.

Labs using people are bad labs. Eez a fact. You can do hardly anything interesting that's not unethical and there are so many variables to account for that the quality of the data obtained is poor - and your write-up with also consequently be poor and a massive list of all the things you could not control. Also the understanding aspect is very complex. Are you going to describe the neural circuit of how the eye transmits information to the brain, through the spinal cord and down into the motor neurones via co-ordinatory mechanisms to the hand in order to grab the ruler? Do you understand it enough to propose reasons why it might be different between different people? I definitely don't. Honestly, dispensing with experiments involving humans is (in my opinion) an act which will save you time and effort whilst getting you better marks.