Purpose

We were both interested in various aspects of chemistry and biology and wanted to explore these subjects outside of the classroom for our senior research project. Moreover, we both knew that we may want to conduct research in college, and so wanted this project to be very hands-on and provide us with research experience. We decided to work mainly in the lab to conduct experiments. We first read peer-reviewed scientific research papers, replicated their work, and analyzed their work to design our own experiments. Working as a team enabled us to bounce ideas off each other, manage the lab work, and collaborate on our final products. Under the guidance of Dr. Nguyen, we selected two experiments in different areas of research and created two different products:

We selected the first lab in order to physically construct something, learn proper lab technique, and validate the results with published  results. This lab also allowed us to refine an experiment, specifically optimizing a specific step. We chose the second lab for slightly different reasons. We wanted to see what it was like to work with live organisms and how they needed to be maintained and cared for throughout the course of the experiments. 

Biochemical: Alginate Hydrogels

We read about a simple way to prepare alginate hydrogel beads from Voo, et al. We submitted an original research paper to the Columbia Junior Science Journal, optimizing one step of the preparation process. Here's the abstract:

Biological: Daphnia

We wanted to learn how to care for live organisms in an experiment. We chose daphnia magna as a our model organism because they were relatively inexpensive and easy to care for and do experiments on with the equipment we had available in a high school lab. We read about how experiments are commonly done on daphnia that involve measuring their heart rate because a daphnia's heart is very visible under a microscope and also anatomically similar to that of a human. We decided to study how different substances, caffeine and ethanol, affect daphnia's heart rate. We found that caffeine increased their heart rate, while ethanol caused it to decrease, just as it does in humans, and compiled our findings into a research poster pictured below.

Video Reflection