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Reaching a Topic
Reaching a Topic
I would like to be able to say that I had always known what I wanted to research, but that would be inaccurate to reality.
Originally, I was set on focusing on a science related topic. I had a couple of ideas for potential research topics in the beginning of the school year that were developed over the summer as an assignment. The first idea being how the pain tolerance of an individual is influenced by their conscience idea of how much pain they should be able to bear, similar to a placebo affect, with the second being focused on how bamboo can be genetically modified to absorb more CO2. The first idea became discredited as a potential research idea as it involved hurting people to receive data, something difficult to safely navigate and receive approval on, especially in a high school setting. In regards to the second topic, it quickly became apparent that as a high school student, it would be impossible to genetically modify bamboo, so I briefly explored using another researchers already modified bamboo and focusing on changing the growing medium that the plant would develop in. Though this new idea seemed extremely interesting, the more it was seriously considered, the more the topic became overly complex and beyond my experience, causing the topic to become unfeasible forcing a new topic to be explored.
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As the AP class continued, I found interest in researching a completely different field of research other than physical sciences, psychology. This new topic was designed to help understand patterns behind why people tend to be more discriminating toward LGTBQ+ people, and was something I seriously considered researching for the year. At this point in time, as far as I knew, this was my research, a question based anonymous survey designed to identify common demographic backgrounds of people who show discriminatory tendencies towards people of the LGTBQ+ community. For weeks I carried on with the idea that this was my final idea, and while it was something that needed to be researched, something didn't seem to feel right. It wasn't until in our class people began to present their own research topics that I realized what it was. I wanted to do something with physical science, I just couldn't seem to find what that was.
Now looking for a science related topic, I stumbled across an article by a professor at the University of Arkansas regarding COVID-19 and the use of air filters to decrease transmittance rates. Though the research associated with this topic wasn't what I originally had in mind when thinking about a new topic that was science oriented, further exploration of what the research would entail, and the immense societal impact it would have, won me over, causing my final research idea to be, how does the placement of a Corsi/Rosenthal Air Cleaner around a classroom impact the potential transmittance rate of COVID-19 within a period of 92 minutes?
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