Need an idea for COURSEWORK research project

[blackcat]

so i need to do a project (ie. a research report) on something in physics
that is interesting. i need to be able to use maths to do calculations or
explanations or something with it, and it has to have quite a lot of
content. this is only high school level physics, so i can't do (or
understand) something really complicated for example.

i really don't want to do anything to do with electricity or magnetism.

any ideas?

 

[quantumdude]

Do you know calculus?

 

[berkeman]

The research and discoveries regarding the solar neutrino problem over the past couple of decades would make a great report at many levels. This is history that has happened during our lifetimes. It's basically a worrisome problem in Physics where calculations did not agree with the measured values, and better and better detectors were designed an built (very exotic detectors!), and finally a fundamental hypothesis was thought of, and the right detector data were gathered to show that the hypothesis was true. Great stuff. Here's a pointer to the NOVA episode about this historical progression. You can find other references with a directed google search based on the terms in the episode description:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neutrino/

 

[neurocomp2003]

spatial physics systems for molecular dynamics in protein folding.

a little bit of math/cs/phys/bio/chem.

 

[blackcat]

Yes I do know calculus.

thank you for both suggestions, I promise I will look into it and say what i think of it after I've chosen my project.

any more suggestions please keep coming.

 

[andrevdh]

Well, since you will need to spend a lot of time and effort on the project it is best to get involved in something that interest you, unless you are one of those rare creatures that finds virtually anything interesting. So what topics, activities do you like?