Extended Essay

While working on my Extended Essay, I realised how important it is to be precise while doing the experiment. As long as my Extended Essay experiments implied working with manual polarimeters, tools with very uncertain measurements, I had to be extremely precise in when I prepared samples for the investigation to minimize the impact of errors.

Also, I struggled with submitting my drafts on time and I have discovered that I lack concentration and focus while writing a paper. I just could not put my ideas on paper. Therefore I am working on how to make my writing more productive now.

Finally, the last thing I was surprised about while working on my Extended Essay is how much room there is for the independent work of a student. While writing the Extended Essay, I learnt how to choose a proper topic for the work and how to design an experiment. Once I have a case when I lacked some of the reactants I needed so I had to work with technicians on how to deliver a new reactant. I learnt how to organise a mutual work by myself and take action leading a group of people whose work I depend on.

The topic of my EE is “How does temperature affect the rate of racemization?”. I have chosen this topic because I am interested in processes of changing rate of racemization in optically active substances due to different factors such as temperature and acidity. It was revealed that reaction of racemisation occurs in certain amino acids which are contained in bone structural proteins of vertebrates. As every stereospecific amino acid gets racemised with a certain rate, it allows scientists to identify the age of specimen of teeth or bones found in archaeological excavations or taken from living individuals. This fact pushed me into the research question.

The method I chose for finding the rate of racemization of an optically active compound includes using polarimeter and water bath. One of the most useful sources was Philip Harris technical support notes for use. The adapted method was shown to my EE supervisor and approved by her. This made me confident in starting my work.