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Bean and Pesticide Experiment for Biology EE Guidance


KishJ

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The research question I have chosen for my Extended Essay is "Do common commercial pesticides stunt the germination and growth time of Phaseolus vulgaris (the common bean)?"

I am planning on buying 5-10 bean seeds and testing different pesticides on each sample, and then measuring the rate of germination and the time it takes for the bean to grow stalks (having another sample with no pesticides as a control group, of course).

Firstly, I want to know if this question is narrow enough. Secondly, is my experimental process too simple for an EE? I think if I talk about the importance of beans in many parts of Africa and the world, and then talk about the biological processes that result in the germination and growth of a bean seed, I should be able to come pretty close to the word limit. At the end, if the pesticides didn't have a significant effect on the plants, I could talk about why this might be the case, and whether it is better to use pesticides or not. The only issue is that I wasted all of my summer break and got ghosted by a potential advisor, and with the deadline for my first draft being in October for my school, I would like to make sure that this experiment can be done in 1-2 months' time. Have any of you guys done this sort of an experiment before, and, if so, could you tell me how exactly I need to grow the beans to ensure accurate data, and also how to process the data in an appealing way for my EE?

I kinda feel disappointed in myself for coming up with such a middle-school-science-fair-kind of idea, so if you guys could suggest a way of elevating this to an IB level, I would be forever indebted to you.

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  • 1 year later...
On 8/1/2020 at 5:14 PM, KishJ said:

The research question I have chosen for my Extended Essay is "Do common commercial pesticides stunt the germination and growth time of Phaseolus vulgaris (the common bean)?"

I am planning on buying 5-10 bean seeds and testing different pesticides on each sample, and then measuring the rate of germination and the time it takes for the bean to grow stalks (having another sample with no pesticides as a control group, of course).

Firstly, I want to know if this question is narrow enough. Secondly, is my experimental process too simple for an EE? I think if I talk about the importance of beans in many parts of Africa and the world, and then talk about the biological processes that result in the germination and growth of a bean seed, I should be able to come pretty close to the word limit. At the end, if the pesticides didn't have a significant effect on the plants, I could talk about why this might be the case, and whether it is better to use pesticides or not. The only issue is that I wasted all of my summer break and got ghosted by a potential advisor, and with the deadline for my first draft being in October for my school, I would like to make sure that this experiment can be done in 1-2 months' time. Have any of you guys done this sort of an experiment before, and, if so, could you tell me how exactly I need to grow the beans to ensure accurate data, and also how to process the data in an appealing way for my EE?

I kinda feel disappointed in myself for coming up with such a middle-school-science-fair-kind of idea, so if you guys could suggest a way of elevating this to an IB level, I would be forever indebted to you.

Hey I’m thinking of doing something similar, I was wondering how everything worked out? Did you figure out how to process your data and was your topic enough to write about? Did you manage to find a way to elevate it? Please let me know, it would be a big help, thanks 

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8 hours ago, Chris1 said:

Hey I’m thinking of doing something similar, I was wondering how everything worked out? Did you figure out how to process your data and was your topic enough to write about? Did you manage to find a way to elevate it? Please let me know, it would be a big help, thanks 

Everything worked out better than I expected, I ended up getting a B on my essay. I probably could have gotten an A if I was a bit more thorough in my evaluation and conclusion section of my essay. I ended up changing my research question to instead be about something a little more specific to me

Direct message me if you would like some more info

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