What the research report has to do

What the report is

• A research report, usually written over two to three weeks with resources supplied by your teacher.
• It is the only Level 2 Chemistry topic with no fixed content. What is fixed is the relationship you have to demonstrate.

The one sentence that decides the report

Research results alone are not enough.

• A report that explains the chemistry correctly and thoroughly and stops there is correct, and it stops there.
• The rest of the work is connecting that chemistry to the development of the technology.

The three verbs

Verb	What it produces
Account	An accurate description of the chemistry involved, with names, formulae and equations
Explain links	Statements of the form "because the chemistry is X, the technology could or had to be Y"
Evaluate	A judgement — which chemical factors mattered most, what trade-offs were made, what the chemistry prevented as well as enabled

• The test for the second verb is simple: does every major section of your report contain the word "because", connecting a chemical property to a design decision? If not, that section is still just an account.

What a "link" actually looks like

Take one chemical fact and follow it to a consequence for the technology.

• Not a link: "Titanium dioxide is used in sunscreen. It has a high refractive index."

• A link: "Titanium dioxide was chosen for sunscreens because it absorbs UV without being absorbed into skin, unlike organic filters — so it protects without any of the systemic exposure that made some organic filters controversial."

• An evaluation: "The choice of titanium dioxide over organic filters traded cosmetic acceptability for safety: the same particle size that scattered UV effectively also scattered visible light, leaving a white residue that consumers rejected. The technology only became commercially viable once nanoparticle TiO₂ could be manufactured, small enough to stop scattering visible light while still absorbing UV — so the chemistry of particle size, not the chemistry of UV absorption, was the limiting factor in the technology's adoption."

• Notice the evaluation does something the link does not: it identifies which chemical factor was the bottleneck, and says why the other one was not.

Using history

• An account of the historical development counts, and the history can reach back as far as you like — some of these technologies are thousands of years old.
• History is the shortest path to links, because each stage of a technology's history is a problem that chemistry solved.
• Structure it as a chain:
  • What was the problem?
  • What chemical knowledge or discovery addressed it?
  • What did that make possible that was not possible before?
  • What new problem did the solution create?

Using chemistry vocabulary, symbols and conventions

• A chemical technology has to be written up in chemistry — names, formulae and equations — not only as a description of the process.
• Every case study should contain:
  • Formulae of the key substances.
  • Balanced equations for the key reactions, with state symbols.
  • Correct terminology — functional group, catalyst, activation energy, oxidation, polymer, ionic, covalent.
• A report on a chemical technology with no equations in it has described what the plant does without ever saying what the chemistry is.