• Question: What is a good topic to investigate for an EPQ that hasn't already been answered?

    Asked by 352genb22 to Barbara, Matt, Ravinder, Sophie, Tristan on 7 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Matthew Moore

      Matthew Moore answered on 7 Mar 2015:

      That’s a great question and it would really depend on somebodies particular interests beforehand! It would vary depending on whether someone was interested in bacteria which cause disease in plants or human disease or immune cell evolution etc. Equally research questions can be very specific ‘exactly how many mutations of the CFTR gene will result in cystic fibrosis?’ or broad, ‘what is the genetic basis of antibiotic resistance in bacteria?’ It also depends on the support and expertise available at your school.

      If I was going to design such a project I would design a microbiology one probably! Swabbing various surfaces around the school: bathroom door handles, gym changing room benches, cafeteria worktops, I would aim to find out what bacteria were present and where has the most!

      Something called the 16S gene, a gene all bacteria have can be inexpensively sequenced to determine which bacteria are present in your samples! Alternatively you could look for a specific bacteria and see where in the school you find it!

    • Photo: Barbara Shih

      Barbara Shih answered on 9 Mar 2015:

      It depends on what you’re interested in. I’m not sure what is the level of ‘science’ is required, but I believe research is about systematically address a question. Few silly ideas below and you might come up with something yourself:
      1)Iis it possible to use light sensitive glasses to assess UV index? You might be able to test it by timing how quickly the colour change and compare against websites that have detail on UV index, or test it at different times of the day.

      2) What kind of sponge cakes do people like the best? Search for a recipe, adjust amount of and fat, and ask people to rate the cakes. You can even do some physical characterisation like testing how dense or elastic the cakes are.

      3) What kind of Facebook messages do people like (not sure about the ethics of this; probably best sticking with twitter since messags are publicly available). You can classify Facebook messages into different catogeries, and then work on some stats to see what are the factors that might influence if people like or comment on a post. I think there are tools that allow you mass extract all data within a given time frame for Twitter.

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