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Science Extended Essay - Do you have to do an experiment?


Bobbie

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Hi, 

 

I'm in DP1 and our EE was launched today. However, we got contradicting information; one of our science teacher has said that we don't have to do an experiment (work in the lab) when our Extended Essay is related to a science topic, just that we are allowed to. During the launch however, we were told by another teacher that when your Extended Essay is related to a science topic, you must do a lab-work. I was wondering if one of you has any concluding answer to this, since I assume that it should be pretty much the same for every IB-school, but I might be wrong, in which case my excuses since this topic won't be of any help for anyone in that case. 

 

 

Regards, 

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Hi, 

 

I'm in DP1 and our EE was launched today. However, we got contradicting information; one of our science teacher has said that we don't have to do an experiment (work in the lab) when our Extended Essay is related to a science topic, just that we are allowed to. During the launch however, we were told by another teacher that when your Extended Essay is related to a science topic, you must do a lab-work. I was wondering if one of you has any concluding answer to this, since I assume that it should be pretty much the same for every IB-school, but I might be wrong, in which case my excuses since this topic won't be of any help for anyone in that case. 

 

 

Regards, 

Ok so you definitely need to do an experiment on a science EE to score high. The research ones never score well :P 

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You don't have to do a lab experiment, it can be a thought experiment or a work based on other papers. But your topic and research question have to be really good with a strong justification of why you're not performing any experiments. For example if your EE is on cosmology or theoretical phyysics then it's natural that it will be based on literature rather than your experiments. But if your EE is in mechanics and your justification is that you didn't have access to the right apparatus, then the question is: why did you choose this topic in the first place? (in this case both the topic has to be very advanced and your motivation has to be very solid) 

So you can do your EE without an experiment but it will be much harder to score well in it.

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It isn't a requirement to pass - but it's essentially a requirement to do well. That doesn't mean that you have to set up a physical experiment in a lab (astrophysics EEs spring to mind as an exception) but you still should be collecting and analysing your own data. If it's a topic where you can construct your own apparatus, even better - they like to see personal engagement.

 

That being said, you need a strong theoretical grounding too - try to explain your data as a confirmation (or slight deviation from, with this accounted for) of a strong mathematical hypothesis derived from theory. There was a Physics EE at my school last year that was predicted an A and got a C due to almost entirely lacking in actual theoretical grounding. It wasn't bad, but it was mostly unfounded analysis of data.

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