Should I study IB Chemistry?
IB Chemistry is offered at Higher Level (HL) and Standard Level (SL). 80% of the course is assessed externally, and the remaining 20% is assessed internally. If you would like to further your studies in Medical, Biochemical, Pharmacy or Chemical Engineering related disciplines at university, it is highly recommended that you take Chemistry at HL. Please note that if you are applying to medical/biochemical related discipline at top universities, IB Biology is also required.
How CANA coaches students to achieve a 7 in IB Chemistry
Students often find the quantity of course content daunting and struggle with the difficulty of questions asked in their exams. At CANA, students are provided with organized notes, past papers, and CANA study guides/workbooks which are co-edited by senior IB examiners. These introduce concepts clearly and concisely with the intention to boost exam skills and help students tackle frequently asked questions. We also provide coaching on Chemistry IA, which makes up 20% of the IB Chemistry grade.
Our IB Chemistry tutors have a wealth of experience in guiding students through IB Chemistry and helping them achieve the best possible grade.
When students are tasked to write their first IA for IB Chemistry, it can be confusing to choose a direction and design their own experiments. After all, there are 11 topics to choose from! Here are some guidelines that may help you with selecting your topic, researching and conducting your experiments, and fulfilling your assessment requirements.
Choosing a suitable topic
Students on the IB Chemistry course will typically start their IAs in the summer between their first and second year. Although you can select any of the 11 core chemistry topics to discuss, you may not have studied the last few topics in class yet. This means that you will not be familiar with the knowledge required and must study the concepts in your own time. Understandably, far fewer students choose to do this! It depends on your own initiative and how passionate you are about the topic.
An interesting topic in chemistry is not the same as a good topic to choose for a chemistry IA. If we refer to the assessment requirements, data analysis counts for a large portion of your overall grade. It is therefore important for your experiment to be heavy on data collection - even if you find a fascinating chemistry topic that doesn’t require data collection, it might not be suitable for an IA.
Topic 2: Atomic structure, Topic 3: Periodicity, and Topic 4: Chemical bonding and structure are particularly difficult when it comes to data collection. Even though lots of data can be collected for some particular topics, the data accuracy is also very important. For this reason, we do not recommend Topic 5: Energetics, which is very popular among students. This is because the energy lost to the environment and surroundings during experiments is significant, so many students will end up with very inaccurate data, having to account for 20-30% heat energy lost. Inaccurate data affects the reliability of the results and causes a lower grade. Avoid experiments that have such a wide margin of error.
Most students choose Topic 6: Chemical kinetics. This is a recommended topic because there are lots of variables and factors to choose from and write about. The experiments also tend to be easier to conduct. Topic 7: Equilibrium and Topic 8: Acids and Bases are also good topics, though less popular. Topic 9: Redox processes is probably the second most popular topic, examining the electron transfer between cells. Topic 10: Organic Chemistry is a suitable topic, though it is typically studied in second year and students may need to self-study the concepts.
Overall, the most popular and recommended topics are:
- Topic 6: Chemical kinetics
- Topic 8: Acids and Bases
- Topic 9: Redox processes
- Topic 10: Organic Chemistry
What counts as a good research question?
Any good research question in a scientific investigation is specific and its answer is not immediately obvious. For example, if you choose to conduct research on the storage duration for vegetables, consider what is already obvious. Everyone knows that you shouldn’t store them for a long time, and many chemists know that they will release a harmful chemical - nitrites - which can cause health problems if you consume them.
So don’t just ask: How does the amount of nitrites in vegetables change over the duration of storage? The answer is that it obviously increases, and you don’t need to conduct an investigation to discover this obvious effect. Do ask: How many days of storing vegetables will result in toxic levels of nitrite absorption in humans? This question is much more compelling and specific, with clear links to real life relevance. The results of your investigation will tell you specifically how many days it is safe to store and consume vegetables, which is useful to everyone. You can even use articles and sources from the Hong Kong Food and Health Bureau to back up your experiment and make it more localised.
Of course, at the end of the day, you are doing the same topic and conducting the same experiments. However, a good research question is all about phrasing and presenting the topic in a more specific and fascinating way.
If you have a topic and question in mind, check out our article on top tips for Chemistry IAs.
After you have a good idea of the topic you want to pursue for your Chemistry IA, it is time to begin the process of ensuring the topic is truly suitable for you. Before a student dives into their actual experiments, they should consider the following steps to ensure the best possible chances for success:
- Research and sourcing
- Methodology
- Trial experiments
- Read over the IA requirements
Research and sourcing
The first step to check that your research question is suitable is to conduct background research. Look into the topic online or at the library to see if there are any secondary sources, journals, articles, or records of past experiments that support your topic. That way, you have sources to refer to so you don’t have to start with absolutely nothing.
Another benefit of researching in advance is that you can check to see if your experiment has been done many times before. If students conduct a very common experiment, it’s actually difficult to get good marks! For example, many students will do “How does temperature affect the amount of vitamin C in [a chosen food]? This is unfortunately a bad question, because even an average layperson who doesn’t study chemistry might know that the higher the temperature, the less vitamin C there will be. An average chemist would certainly know that heating increases the rate of oxidation and removes vitamin C from foods. This research question would not need additional experiments, and is therefore not an appealing topic.
Conversely, if you find absolutely no articles supporting your experiment, it is also difficult to get high marks. There are no sources to give your IA a background of research, and nothing to back up your points.
The best option is to find a middle ground. Avoid the most popular topics, but make sure that yours is still well-known enough to have secondary sources and articles to support it.
Lastly, remember to find reliable sources. Articles and data from chemistry and scientific journals are acceptable, whether online or in print. Publications from academic institutions and universities are also accepted. Avoid using information from discussion forums or non-official websites - these are not reliable sources and not accepted as a reference.
Methodology
After conducting sufficient background research, you will need to design the experiment itself. Looking back at your previous research, did you see any methods in similar experiments that you want to replicate? What did they use to detect their results? What comparable factors and variables are there? You can take inspiration from the work of previous scientists, and use their ideas to design your own experiment.
For example, if you decide to look at the question: “How many days of storing vegetables will result in toxic levels of nitrite absorption in humans?” hopefully there won’t be an article that already examines the exact same question! However, you may find existing articles on how to detect nitrites in foods, or test for their amounts. Perhaps there will be an existing article warning about the nitrite amounts in veggies if they are stored for too long. All these articles will be helpful and relatable to your experiment.
Or, you may find an experiment that examines nitrite levels in spinach, and realise that your own research question can be more specific about the vegetable used. You may then alter your question to: “How many days of storing bok choy will result in toxic levels of nitrite absorption in humans after consumption?” In your title, you need to be very clear about the parameters of what you’re investigating.
When you are looking for a methodology, there are typically a range of ways you can use to detect results. No matter what you choose, remember that primary data is preferable to secondary data. We do not recommend that you only use secondary data. It is hard to get good marks when you use an experiment that someone else already conducted and just used it to deduce your own conclusions. After all, it’s very likely that they have already drawn a conclusion from their data, and it is almost impossible to come up with anything new from the same set of results. Unless you really see something unique, using secondary data only is basically copying someone else.
The easiest and most typical thing to do is collect our own primary data, which can earn marks in the data analysis portion of your lab report too. Let’s look back at the nitrite levels in the bok choy experiment. For example, there may be three methods to detect nitrite levels that you have found online. Method 1 is titration, method 2 is using an HPLC machine, and method 3 is using Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy. You must compare these methodologies and assess which one is the most suitable for your investigation. Consider the following: how accurate is each method? Does my school have the supplies and equipment for this method? Are the chemicals I use toxic - and should I consider green chemistry for this experiment? Evaluate each method carefully.
Trial experiments
After all this research and finding a methodology, it is a good idea to do some trial experiments and see if your results fit your expectations. Here, you will also determine measurements and range, such as: How many grams? How many days? What concentration of my chemicals do I want to use? For example, how should we measure time in the nitrites and bok choy experiment? We could set the timer to look at changes every 5 minutes, every hour, or every day, etc. But based on real life likelihood, setting by days is the most sensible - people don’t worry by the hour about leaving their vegetables out.
If our default setting for this experiment is by days, then it is also sensible to consider whether we want to collect data on days 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. or on days 1, 2, 4, 6, 10, etc. Whichever format you use depends on whether the data changes greatly and quickly over time. If the data will stay the same from today to the day after tomorrow, then there is no point collecting daily. But if there is significant change between each day, then the time period should be set at daily, because it is meaningful and bears results.
Experiments requiring data collection need a trial to double check if the settings and parameters, the amounts and methods used etc. are good for finding meaningful results. If you find that they are not, you will need to make modifications to your experiment to make the results more obvious. The trial period can lead to better data and methodology, which makes a better final report!
Read over the IA requirements
One last thing before you go forth and experiment. We recommend that you read over the IA requirements to get a general idea of what is expected from your lab report. Refer to the downloadable printout for the assessment guidelines with CANA’s additional comments to aid you. On the left is the original mark scheme, and on the right is our advice on how to interpret and achieve each of those aims.
[Download: Practical work and internal assessment]
