First things first, I wish to thank everyone for the kind words and support after the launch of my first post! You’re an amazing bunch of people. Yesterday, I ended up helping a great friend (who’s a firstie) to do their Bio lab report. I do appreciate the work of the teacher, however, the notes they had been given on how to do the lab report were probably something you could write an EE on. After that, I figured you guys might really need a practical guide on this. Yes, there is stuff on the internet that quotes the criteria and kind-of superficially tells you what they want to see, but nobody’s really telling you HOW to do it. Anyways, hope this helps!

This guide is most definitely applicable to IB Biology and Chemistry. I am less sure about Physics and ESS because I don’t take these subjects. A Math Standard Level IA on statistics can also be done on this, in which case you just have to calculate regression and deviation by hand and do statistical tests, but all the other parts are the same (for math your experiment can be simpler and doesn’t have to be science specific).

This is a very comprehensive guide and may seem overwhelming, but trust me – once you get going it’ll all be over soon. Don’t worry too much about it. Also, ask for help from your second years.

Coming up with a topic

When you still have time:

It’s way more fun to write about something that is genuinely interesting to you, so do aim to apply scientific research on one of your passions. This will also get you your personal engagement marks. Trust me, it is possible for any interest you may have. I did my Math IA on guitar strings, Chem IA on sea creatures and Bio IA on boxing. You just have to think a little bit out of the box.

What I wish I could have done when I still had to come up with topics, was to listen in classes, and when something actually interesting came up, to ask myself whether it’s possible to do your IA on that.

Simulations? Nope. Here’s why:

If you’ve really left it for the last minute, you may be tempted to write it on an online simulation. Be warned that it is actually the same amount of work, more confusing, and the personal engagement marks will be harder to hit. Better to do a simple experiment – even one with household equipment will work.

Databases? No experiment doesn’t mean less work.

Okay, if you’re at a point where you feel like there isn’t enough time to do an experiment, you might go the database route. This means finding data online and reporting something new about it. Make sure not to just report the data, but actually connect it to something new. This might be difficult to do, but reports often suggest further exploration ideas in their conclusions, so you might find some information there. Again, I would rather go an experiment route, that’s what the IB really wants to see.

What about comparative research:

Although it would be interesting for you to compare things in your study, such as Lemons and Oranges, your IA needs to have quantitative, not qualitative data. You may, however, do double the work and produce 2 sets of qualitative data for the two different qualities affected by some third variable. This will give you more to discuss but will require you to do exactly twice the amount of lab and graph work.

ps: Quantitative data is measured in numbers (mass, pH, length, …). Qualitative data is a descriptor (The egg broke/didn’t break, The car was yellow/green).

Coming up with a last-minute topic:

In your IA, you want to measure how changing X changes Y. That’s pretty much all there is to it. Now come up with a viable X and Y. One of them needs to be easily changeable and the other easily measurable. I’ve put some of these below for you to think about. Bear in mind that the less unique and interesting your study is, the more bullshitting you need to do.

Easily changeable variables:

Concentration, PH, Temperature, Reaction Time, Surface Area, Particle Size, Voltage, …

Easily measurable variables:

PH, Temperature change, Mass change, Gas produced, Absorbance, Conductivity, O2 produced, Current, Voltage, Heart Rate, Respiration Rate, …

I suggest you pick one of the two from the list above, or something easy that you have in mind that I forgot to put down. I do recommend being at least slightly creative in developing your topic because this will give you a little bit more to write about, and easier to hit the more subjective parts of the mark scheme. I’ll tell you how to finish developing your topic in the next section.

Background information and finalizing topic:

This is what differentiates an IA from an Extended Essay. You really don’t need to go too much in depth about your background info. This is more for you to have anything to talk about.

Go to scholar.google.com Type in the topic you developed, or just your easily measurable/changeable variables Open about 5 studies that seem to not include too many confusing terms. Read the abstract (If you have time, otherwise read the first and last sentence of the abstract) If it was too confusing, asked for money, or didn’t seem like something you could do, close it and move on to the next one, until you find one you like. See what they did and apply it to develop your Research Question (use a different chemical/change temperature instead of pH, whatever works) Mention something about that study in the introduction, using a sentence in the lines of:

“A study conducted in … has demonstrated that … can affect … . Inspired by this,I have decided to look into how …”

You can mention the study again in your conclusion to support your own findings. I suggest you also put in some numbers when talking about these studies (“the study found that by increasing the temperature by 5 degrees, 17 of the little tomatoes turned brown”) You can easily cite stuff on CiteThisForMe. Keep track of all your sources from the beginning! Especially when you’re doing your EE.

Introduction

Your introduction is basically just mentioning what you are doing and why you are doing it. All you need to do is:

Talk about something that inspired you to do this study (could be the research you did, could just BS and say that you are extremely passionate in your topic or interested in the chemical you decided to use).

Clearly state a research question in bold like this?

…And end with why you think this IA is important: “This is an interesting study because it will give more insight onto how … affects … . This is of personal significance to me because … (I love pH sensors, idk?). You should then add a hypothesis (what you think will be the result – this can be written at the end to fit your data, but don’t tell anyone) and an explanation of why you think that will happen. This will require some research that you will do for your conclusion anyway, so we will come back to this in the end. Right now, just keep in mind to add a hypothesis later on.

Methodology

Usually, you divide your methodology into 4 parts: Variables, Apparatus, Reagents, Process. I’ll go over all of them in detail below:

Variables:

These got me confused for pretty much the first 4 months of doing the IB, but it makes sense once you do a few labs. I think it’s easiest to look at an example. Say that we are looking at the effect of changing the temperature of water on pH.

Independent variable: What you change (temperature)

Dependent variable: What changes because of the above. What you measure (pH)

Controlled variables: Stuff that you keep (or should keep but don’t really keep, they just are) constant throughout your trials. These usually involve things like: volume, concentration of …, Pressure, Room temperature, Resistance of wires (electrolysis), Pressure, Reaction time, Stirring time, … In short, think about the things that you could have changed but you didn’t. These are the controlled variables. The more you come up with, the better.

Apparatus:

This is a list of all the equipment that you used, usually written in bullet points. Make sure that when measuring time you say you used a stopwatch, even though we all know you used your phone. Naughty.

You should include the material, how many of them you used and the uncertainty (if it’s a measuring instrument). Example of a good list of apparatus:

Stopwatch (±0.5s)

2x 100ml glass beakers (±5ml)

Pasco pH sensor (±0.5) (pH has no units!)

Electronic balance (±0.005g) (fancy word for a scale)

Gloves & safety goggles.

To get the ± symbol on Microsoft Word, go to Insert – Symbol – More Symbols. Once you use it once, it’s in your recently used list, so you can access it faster. You can also copy it from here.

Uncertainty of measuring instrument:

For something that has bars (a ruler, a beaker, a thermometer, you know…anything with lines) the uncertainty is the value of 1 bar divided by two. For example, a normal ruler with centimeters and millimeters has an uncertainty of 0.5mm.

For something with an electronic display, like a scale, you just add a 5 to the end of how many significant figures it shows. For example, an electronic balance with a display like this one has an uncertainty of ±0.005g

Also, sometimes you have to add up/multiply different uncertainties, depending on how you manipulate your data, and there are certain rules on how to do so.

Reagents:

These are the chemicals that you are using. Make sure to include the mass or volume and concentration that you are using. These may change while you actually collect your data, so don’t worry too much about the numbers now. If you want to be extremely fancy, in case you are using a salt of the transition metals, you should probably write that it’s anhydrous (unless it isn’t, check the container).

A good list of reagents would look something like this:

Distilled water

5g anhydrous CuSO 4 , powdered

, powdered 5ml NaOH 5M solution (5M = 5moldm -3 )

) 5ml 30% Hydrochloric Acid

1m Copper wire, diameter 2mm

Process:

This is a step-by step description of what you did (or are going to do). Make it clear enough that everyone could be able to replicate exactly what you did. You may split this into different parts like set-up and data collection, but that is not necessary.

How long this has to be depends entirely on what your experiment is like, and there may be only 5 steps, but this could also take a whole page, especially if you are determining the amount of some chemical through titration or stoichiometry or whatever. Simple bullet points are, once again, enough for this part.

Adding a picture or a sketch of your setup is also a smart idea since it will make the IA more personal. A photograph also provides evidence that you actually did your research, not that they’d check but it’s nice to feel confident yourself. Don’t forget to refer to these in your text, and to annotate them like in my example. I have shown both a sketch and a photo example below:

Data collection

The next thing you have to do is your experiment. This is a stressful part of the study, because your experiment may sometimes not actually work, in which case you should try and make adjustments to your topic or just choose a new topic. When you discover that there is no clear relationship between the variables, there is usually not too much to talk about or evaluate. But let’s hope for the best.

How much data do I collect?

The rule of thumb is that you obtain 25 measurements, 5 trials for each of five different values that you have selected to be your independent variable (You may choose more, but 5 is enough). In your IA, you will add your data collected in a table like this one:

Averages and Standard Deviations:

As you can see, I have also added the averages for the trials and the standard deviation. You use the average to get the data points for your graph, and the deviations for your vertical error bars. I will talk more on error bars later on. These are both obtained very easily in Microsoft Excel:

Average: type =average( into the function box. Highlight the row you want the average for. Press enter. You can then apply the same function to the other rows by dragging down with that tiny black box on the bottom right:

Standard deviation: same thing, except you type =stdev( and pick your data. Remember not to highlight the averages, I think it makes a difference but I’m not sure.

Also, remember that you should show all of your results approximated to three significant figures. It is smart to also mention this above your table. You can reduce the number of sig-figs on Excel itself by clicking on that thingamajig over there:

Now that you’ve got your data table, we will move on to the super-enjoyable part of your IA: Graphs, Evaluation, and Conclusion. These are probably why you ended up here, so I do hope I can be helpful enough in this part.

The Graph… Dun Dun Dunnn

The part where your graph is usually called either Data Presentation or Data Processing.

First and foremost: you have to use Excel. I tried using Google Sheets and it just doesn’t work like it should. Trust me on this one. You can do everything else on Google, but not this.

I definitely recommend checking out Stephanie Alcantara’s Youtube videos, because they may help you get through this part better than my explanations will. Some people don’t like to watch videos, though, so I’ll still try and do my best at explaining.

What should a graph look like?

Below I’ve put two graphs based on the same data. One of these is a good graph and contains all the elements that you need. The other makes me want to curl up into a ball and hide. Try and guess which is which:

The graph you see on the left is pretty much what you start out with in Excel. I will now continue to explain how to get from that graph to a true beauty like the one I made.

I want to point out that I am using an older version of Excel so some of these things are in a different place. I will probably find someone to help me point out how you need to do it for the new version.

Selecting the data:

To make a graph, you will want to start out by inserting a scatter plot. To do this, go to Insert, select Scatter, and choose the option with no line connecting the data points.

You will now be given a completely white box with nothing inside. This is like your life before the IB takes over – nice, simple and calm. Let us now disrupt this silence and right click on it, and choose “select data“. Then you will want to “Add” a legend entry. You can leave the name for the series blank. For your series X and Y values, you will highlight the columns that are your independent variable and average values respectively.

Adding error bars: (Skip this if you’re doing a Math IA)

When you look at the graph example that I put above, you can notice that my data points are surrounded by these weird thingies that make it look like a big plus sign. These are your error bars, and they tell you in what range your data is most likely to deviate within. All you really need to know is that you need to have them and that the automatic options on Excel suck.

Here’s exactly what you need to do:

Select the option to add error bars from Chart tools – Layout

Add either the percentage ones or the standard error ones (yes, it looks ugly now, but we will fix them. This just lets us work on the horizontal and vertical ones separately)

Double click on the horizontal error bars and select a Fixed Value. This value is the uncertainty of the measuring instrument for your Independent Variable

This value is the of the measuring instrument for your Independent Variable Double click on the vertical error bars and select Custom value – Specify Value. For both the negative and positive error values, you should highlight the column with your Standard Deviation.

You should now have a graph with your error bars in place. We must now add a Trendline to our graph. For a Math SL Internal Assessment, you must calculate the linear regression line by hand, for which I can make a tutorial later on.

Trendline: (For a math IA, you have to do the calculations yourself)

To describe your data, you must add a Trendline. After adding it, double click so you can make some enhancements to it. You can also change the color and stuff but we’ll skip that for now.

Making the graph look nice:

So you did all the stuff above, but the graph still looks ugly huh? Do the following few steps so that nobody could ever swipe left on your beautiful beautiful graph!

Add Major and Minor gridlines

Add a Graph Title and Axis labels (incl. uncertainty and units)

Make the graph relatively square-shaped

Sometimes the graph automatically expands when you make it forecast, so that it looks extremely bad. To fix this, you should double-click on the horizontal axis and set your minimum and maximum values as fixed. Try out different ones to see what works.

By now you should have a pretty good graph going on, but don’t forget to label it underneath. Make sure you’re specific enough. Do not go with something like:

Graph 1: Data collection results

Instead, try something like:

Graph 1: Effect of the number of puppies on how happy I am

Ok, the most laborious part of your IA is already over… If you’ve done everything right, you’re going to hit all the technical marks. We now move on to the core of any IB assignment: efficient bullshitting.

Evaluation

You’ve now reached the part of your IA, where you’re supposed to start analyzing your methodology. This can sometimes be interesting when you have stuff to talk about. Unfortunately, most of you probably don’t, but that’s ok. In your Evaluation you attempt to answer the following questions:

Possible errors? (Talk about that one data point that doesn’t quite fit, and invent a reason for why… (The fifth data point does not fit the trend as well as the others. This is probably because of the high uncertainty of my measuring method.)

Limitations to your study? (Basically the things you could have done but you didn’t. I’m guessing that in most IA-s you can talk about how the time between data collection was not kept constant, which may be a cause for error.

Talk about error bars and the R-squared value as if you’re judging a good wine: The error bars for my study were relatively small and intersect with the trendline for each of my data points, suggesting quite a splendid fit. My r-squared value of 0.89 also supports this.

You can also talk about how one might extend this study. This usually involves plugging in a sentence like this one: It would be interesting to also look into how this process works at a different … . This could be done by changing the … with a … and measuring it with a … .

Let’s be honest – this part is annoying, but only at first though. It takes a little bit of time for you to get it right and know exactly what the IB wants from you, so keep practicing – you’ll get a lot of it! The Evaluation is usually one long paragraph when it comes to an IA. When you mention all of the above things, you should do fine.

Conclusion

The way I like to think about the conclusion is kind of like answering the following question:

How does your IA contribute to the world’s scientific community?

We all know you don’t really care about that and nobody else does, but doing this roleplay really helps get you your personal engagement marks. Your conclusion usually consists of these elements:

Say again, what you studied – your Research Question

What were your results – describe the trend in your graph, involving numbers

This demonstrates that … can have an effect on …

Adding in a real-world-application of your study. My results show that cooking at a higher temperature can actually result in a more acidic blueberry pie.

Citations

Don’t forget your citations guys! I once wrote a paper for Theater HL that was probably the most effort I’ve ever put into anything. I didn’t get the grade I wanted just because I messed up with the citations!

What you need to do is just copy-paste your sources into a citation website like this one, and they’ll give you the proper citation (Zotero is also an effective app/Chrome plugin for this). Make sure to include In-text citations. For your IA, you will probably have one or two, for when you mention that other study that was conducted by that other guy. Just put the guy’s name in brackets after your point ends (Guysname).

I don’t know why, but teachers don’t really like it when you cite Wikipedia. Try and find any other website that says the same thing – for example by looking at the works cited below the Wiki article. Same applies for Khan Academy videos. These two, are, however extremely useful tools for your IB life, and I still encourage you to use them!

Citing pictures is a pain and can cause copyright issues. This is why you should aim to photograph or draw any visual aid in your IA yourself , if you need any. Much easier than dealing with citing something off Google.

And you’re done with your IA! Don’t forget page numbers.

Hope I was able to help out.