Individual Investigation Guidance

General information.

Emphasis is placed in the investigation, on the need for the information colleted to be reliable and accurate. It is vital that at each stage, all work is checked so that this is the case and actions taken are justified and explained, from the plan through to the analysis.

Writing a Plan.

·         Begin with a statement of aims. What do you specifically want to find out? What expressions, values and units will you need to find? Follow this with an introduction, discussing how you will organise your plan.

·         Chemical theory needs to be included to support your work and to show that you know what you are doing and why. This theory must be linked to the actual investigation that you are doing, i.e. use your reactants, formulae and equations when possible when giving examples. There should be plenty of…” so in my investigation I will…”, so that general theory supports and is relevant to your investigation. It should also support why you are doing particular experiments.

·         The chemical theory included should come from more than one unit in the A2 course, i.e. more than one topic of chemistry. Ask your teachers if you are unsure of this. A good idea would be to list the chemical ideas used in your plan in the form of a table, to prove the range of theory is wide enough.

·         There needs to be a detailed section of the practical work to be carried out. The practical work should include the investigation of at least 3 factors, variables in your investigation, employing a range of techniques. That is, one method used in a variety of situations or more than one method of investigating a particular variable in your experiment.

·         The practical work you plan to do should be justified – why are you doing what you are doing? You should explain why you are using the volumes and concentrations you are using. If you do not know because you came by the information in a textbook, say that you plan to carry out preliminaries to check that these chosen quantities are sensible. Calculating the errors involved in the equipment is a good way to justify your choices.

·         Explain the number of experiments you plan to do and justify your choices in terms of accuracy and reliability. You will need to show the quantities you intend to make up and all of the concentrations you will be using, so the best way to present this information is in the form of a table. Remember to include detail in the units, number and range of experiments

·         It is not expected that you know exactly how well the experiments will go and modifications to concentrations and volumes is expected, so don’t worry too much at this stage about this. State in your plan that you will be making modifications to adapt reaction times and conditions when necessary and will justify and explain them in a separate section.

·         A relevant risk assessment is vital to your continuing with the investigation. Make a separate section for this. It should include the hazards and the necessary precautions needed for carrying out the investigation at the concentrations you are using.

·         There needs to be a reference section, which is properly linked to specific parts of the text. The references should be in sufficient detail for anyone to look up. A system of numbers works well here.

·         Above all, the plan should be set out so that it is easy to follow, with plenty of headings and sections. Diagrams are very helpful in the theory and practical sections. When you think you have completed the plan, do a final check to see if you have justified all of your choices of chemicals, procedures, apparatus, methods of following reactions, number of repeats intended and the variables you are changing.

·         Be prepared to do a separate modifications section, stating how and why certain aspects of you experiments may have changed.