Thread: Extended Essay help?

Hello, I'm new here.

So uh, I have a question. I'm doing an extended essay [IB thing] on Chemistry. Right now, I'm looking at Chromatography - but there is no real 'topic' for me to look at. I thought of doing an analysis on ink dyes from different countries, but it was rejected. Can anyone help me with some suggestions on topics? Thank you very much.

I'm not quite following. Are you looking for literature about chromatography, or inspiration for an assay you could run ?

Um, an inspiration.

Well, chromatography is still a wide area.
One thing we did before is testing the vanilla in ice-cream.

basically there is 3 types of vanillin. natural vanillin, synthetic vanillin with a structure identical to the natural one and ethylated vanillin which tastes stonger.

You prep some ice cream and run it along with both types of vanillin and you can see which vanillin was used.
If substances such as benzaldehyde or vanillic acid are in the mixture, the vanillin originated from vanilla-beans, since those are not present in synthetic vanilla.

There is really a ton of stuff you can do with chromatography. It would be nicer if you gave us an idea of the level education you are currently in. Are we talking highschool? College? University ?

Um, high school levels.

We're expected to find something that is easy enough that we can do in school, but something with enough depth that we can expand upon - which is why I'm not sure what should I be picking.

I gave my supervisor a list of possible questions, and he reccomended I should try to think more about using paper chromatography with leaves - which I felt like is -still- a broad topic - what am I supposed to be looking for in leaves that can be varied depending on a controllable factor - such as position, amount of water, etc?

Perhaps you could try to do something with chlorophyl. I'm not sure how it is on TLC but in other chromatography areas you can detect different types of chlorophyl. Perhaps calculate a ratio between the two and see if that ratio is the same for each plant. (by taking leaves from say 3 plants).