Chemistry subject report · November 2012

November 2012 extended essay reports Page 1 CHEMISTRY Overall grade boundaries Grade: E D C B A Mark range: 0 - 7 8 - 15 16 - 22 23 - 28 29 - 36 The range and suitability of the work submitted There was a wide range of achievement this session . Many of the essays were of a high standard but, as in the past, some scored less well for several different reasons. There was strong evidence that many of the satisfactory or better essays had been well supervised. In many of these cases a sensible research question, capable of being addressed in 4 0 hours and 4000 words, had been chosen and students addressed many of the specific criteria well. The two most common reasons for students failing to perform well were a poor choice of initial research question and failing to address the criteria properly. Candidate performance against each criterion Criterion A: research question A carefully worded and well -focused research question is the key to producing a high -scoring essay. The EE guide (first examinations 2009) lists seven assessment objectives on page 6. Six of the eleven assessment criteria are concerned with testing the first objective which is „planning and pursuing a research project with intellectual initiative and insight‟. Objective 1 can only be achieved (and hence good marks scored on man y of the criteria) if a suitable research question is chosen. As well as the usual vitamin C, aspirin , caffeine and biofuels topics examples of some of the good research questions which scored the maximum of two marks this session were:  An investigation of the effect of temperature during storage on the antioxidant effect of cloves in reducing auto-oxidation of sunflower oil.  How does the length of the carbon chain in an alcohol affect