[danceislife]

I have always been a huge fan of the biological side of the sciences, i've never been the biggest fan of chemistry as I had a really unfair teacher in grade 11 chem that has left me with a poor understanding of chemistry as a whole. My chemistry teacher for grade 12 this year is amazing and I've been learning so much, but with that being said he expects us to have an excellent understanding of the last three years of science courses as any teacher should. He has left us with a very heavily weighted project called "CHEMtalk". He wants us to make a 10min TEDtalk basically on any topic that relates to the grade 12 chemistry curriculum. People are getting very creative and have chosen topics like; alcohol, cosmetics, and even food. The problem i've had here is that everything I am interested in relates more to biology. My teacher said that we can talk about physiology/biochem and such but the majority of the presentation has to be chemistry or else we will be penalized. The presentation must be 10 minutes in length and has said that "your topic must reflect the expectations of a senior chemistry course". The topics I've chosen thus far have been... Catnip and The Epi Pen (epinephrine). The chemistry behind catnip was very minimal, and with explaining epinephrine and how adrenaline affects the human body I can't seem to get enough chemistry out of it. So I have come to this thread begging for some guidance.
I live in Ontario (Canada) and I am in grade 12 University level chemistry. This is the curriculum...

1. Organic Chemistry
2. Structures and Properties in the Quantum level
3. Energy and rate of reaction
4. Chemical systems and equilibrium
5. Electrochemistry

I NEED to be able to relate any fun topic to the curriculum. So any ideas? I do like the idea of presenting on epinephrine and how it helps those in anaphylactic shock and when the body is in distress from a heart attack or something. I keep on overlapping the biology side of things. What grade 12 concepts can I relate to any topic to present on??? To anyone wondering, at this point in the year we have covered structures and properties in the Quantum level, Electrochemistry, and have gotten through a majority of energy and rate of reaction. That is the knowledge I have thus far in grade 12 chem. I'm open to any topics as long as I can relate them to the curriculum. PLEASE HELP ME Thanks in advance

[Corribus]

Ok, first - biology is fundamentally just applied chemistry, so there's no reason to shy away from biological topics. You just need to focus on the chemical aspect of whatever biological topic you choose. Catnip and epinephrine are very specific and different topics. So why don't you step back for a second - rather than coming up with a topic off the bat, what interests you? I don't mean what's your favorite subject. I mean what interests you as a person? Chances are, there is some kind of chemistry behind it.  E.g., Like to play tennis? Tennis balls need rubber to bounce. There you go - what is rubber, what makes it bounce? What are different types of rubber, what are they used in, what are the chemical structures and how do they impact the material properties? Lot of material there to work with. If it's biology you want, try to think of a general topic first. Then you can use specific examples in your presentation.

[danceislife]

Ok, first - biology is fundamentally just applied chemistry, so there's no reason to shy away from biological topics. You just need to focus on the chemical aspect of whatever biological topic you choose. Catnip and epinephrine are very specific and different topics. So why don't you step back for a second - rather than coming up with a topic off the bat, what interests you? I don't mean what's your favorite subject. I mean what interests you as a person? Chances are, there is some kind of chemistry behind it.  E.g., Like to play tennis? Tennis balls need rubber to bounce. There you go - what is rubber, what makes it bounce? What are different types of rubber, what are they used in, what are the chemical structures and how do they impact the material properties? Lot of material there to work with. If it's biology you want, try to think of a general topic first. Then you can use specific examples in your presentation.

That is such an awesome way to break it down thank you so much! I think what is throwing me off is that I have to relate it to the curriculum. For example if I did the tennis ball example and how they bounce and the different types of rubber and such I would have no idea how to relate that back to the curriculum. Like you said I could discuss the chemical structures of the rubber and its impact on material properties... but in grade 12 we look at structures and properties at the quantum level. I don't think I could talk about rubber on the quantum level. But I honestly think the tennis ball topic is a great example of how to break it down. I really want to do something about epinephrine but I have grade 12 bio next semester. In order to understand epi at a grade 12 level it would be good to have knowledge about enzymes but I do not as I haven't taken bio yet.

Here are some topics that interest me (generally and what may have some chemistry to it)... Dance, psychology, music, medicine and its affect on the body, how bleach makes hair lighter, why sulphate free shampoos and conditioners are better for your hair, energy drinks, lava lamps, bass and its effect on sound when listening to music, shellac nails and why acetone is the only way to remove it, lulu lemon legging material. Random I know but anyway these topics could be related to things within the curriculum?

[Corribus]

That is such an awesome way to break it down thank you so much! I think what is throwing me off is that I have to relate it to the curriculum. For example if I did the tennis ball example and how they bounce and the different types of rubber and such I would have no idea how to relate that back to the curriculum. Like you said I could discuss the chemical structures of the rubber and its impact on material properties... but in grade 12 we look at structures and properties at the quantum level.

Well, in your opening post you mention organic chemistry as part of the curriculum. There's a lot of organic chemistry in manufacturing polymers. I am not sure exactly what is meant by "at the quantum level". (I mean, you said there's someone doing a food topic - and I think food is a great way to go; everyone loves food - how is quantum chemistry being related to food? Ultimately all bonding is derived from quantum mechanical principles, but we don't necessarily need to invoke those principles specifically to understand macroscale chemistry.)

Here are some topics that interest me (generally and what may have some chemistry to it)... Dance, psychology, music, medicine and its affect on the body, how bleach makes hair lighter, why sulphate free shampoos and conditioners are better for your hair, energy drinks, lava lamps, bass and its effect on sound when listening to music, shellac nails and why acetone is the only way to remove it, lulu lemon legging material. Random I know but anyway these topics could be related to things within the curriculum?

Dance and music are probably more related to physics than chemistry. But any kind of physical activity has chemical effects on the body. Related biochemical topics could include endorphins, lactate production, cellular respiration, the chemistry behind how muscles work (that's a great topic actually: myosins, myoglobin, etc; lot of physical chemistry there). A talk that focuses on the chemistry but relates it to something you enjoy (like dance) would be engaging.

Medicine - that's almost too broad a topic. What aspects of it are you interested in? Is there a specific disease that's important/personal to you? You could focus on the biochemical mechanism of pathology and the chemistry behind any modern pharmaceutical treatments.

Hair dye is an interesting one. What pigments are responsible for hair color, and why does a bleach work? There's a lot of quantum topics you could touch on related to pigmentation and light absorption.

Sulfates in shampoos and conditioners... not sure about that one specifically, but you could certainly broaden it to talk about general ingredients in shampoos and conditioners. Surfactants are a great topic for a chemistry presentation, and have a lot to do with kinetics, surface energy, organic chemistry, and so forth.

Energy drinks. The first thing that comes to mind is caffeine. Obvious ways you could go with that one.

Music, I'm not sure how that would relate to chemistry, honestly.

Shellac nails - I don't know if there's enough meat there for a whole presentation.

Lulu lemon legging material... haha, what is that? Anyway, textiles are basically polymers. There's a lot of ways you could go with that topic. Not sure what they are made of, but let's pretend they were made of spandex. Spandex is a copolymer designed to have extremely elastic properties... kind of like a rubber. There's a lot of materials chemistry you could go into, in fact very relatable to tennis balls. I could easily see an interesting presentation on different types of fabrics, what kind of synthetic and natural polymers they are made of, and how that translates into function. Why are cottons "breatheable"? Why does spandex stretch? Why are nylons made of... nylon? Ultimately it all boils down to chemical structure of the polymers they are made with.

Hope that stoked your imagination! The important thing will be to pick a topic. Any topic in chemistry can somehow be related to physical chemistry principles: energy, bonding, kinetics. You can figure out those relations later, but first pick a topic that has potential and is interesting to you. I think a lot of the ones you mentioned could be used.

[Yggdrasil]

If you're really interested in epinephrine, you could do a presentation on the adrenergic receptors, the proteins that bind to and sense epinephrine.  These receptors belong to an important class of molecules called G-protein coupled receptors, and the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for studies of these proteins.  Discussing how these proteins work involves talking about chemical systems, equilibrium, and thermodynamics (e.g. discussing, for example, the Kd or binding constant of a receptor).

Another good biology topic would be to describe how an action potential works.  This (especially with regard to discussions about calculating membrane potentials) touches on the topics of equilibrium and electrochemistry.

Describing how vision works (e.g. at the level of rhodopsin and retinal) is another biology-related topic that touches on some important principles in chemistry.  Bonus points if you can explain why light in the visible region of the electromagnetic spectrum can be sensed in this way, but not light of much lower frequencies (e.g. microwaves or radio waves) or much higher frequencies (e.g. x-rays or gamma rays).

If you're interested in catnip, explaining how to extract the active molecule from catnip (especially, how all of the steps work and why are they necessary) would be a great topic to pick for organic chemistry as it is very similar to what one might perform in college-level introductory organic chemistry labs.