Cool topics for chemistry research project?

I'm a grade 12 chemistry student, and I need to do a chemistry research project on anything to do with chemistry.


I have to write a 2000 word essay, and present an experiment in front of the class.





What would be a cool topic to do?? any ideas?

Cool topics for chemistry research project?
How about an experiment using gravimetric analysis? It's a fairly simple technique used in analytical chemistry at the college level (I studied it my junior year at Stanford). Your teacher will probably be impressed, and you'll learn some useful chemistry.





The basic concept behind gravimetric analysis is that you can determine how much analyte you have in a sample by reacting it with something, weighing the product, and then using stoichiometry to calculate how much analyte you would need to make the final product.





More specifically, lets say that you decided to measure the amount of salt in various brands of pickle brine. The first step of your experiment would be the sample preparation. I would recommend using filtration to remove solid matter from the brine. Next, you would add silver nitrate to the brine, which would form a silver chloride precipitate. Finally, you would weigh the silver chloride precipitate, and calculate the amount of choride ion originally in the solution based on the amount of product.





You would probably want to do at least three trials for each sample, and you would also want to have positive and negative controls. Also, for a really complete report you should calculate averages and standard deviations for each sample, and include uncertainty limits. I can send you a good source on statistics and calculation of uncertainty if you're interested.





I've only given a general sketch of the experiment here. If this sounds like something you'd like to do, email me at stevens_donald@yahoo.com and I can send you the procedure we used at Stanford.
Reply:for my grade 12 chemistry project i compared the methods for measuring the rate of a chemical reaction (hydrate of copper II chloride and aluminum, to be particular). the reaction is usually used in most chemistry classes, but if you bother going in depth with it, you can find out a million of interesting and unusual principles that teachers usually just don't bother going over.





also, it experimentally covers the "calculating the rate of reaction" outcome for chem 12.





one thing to keep in mind, if you finish the project early and decide you're bored, don't by any means attempt to create a supersaturated copper solution and then play with it because a whole lot of dark brownish-red mud will splatter all over you/your bench-mates/your teacher/white walls :o)