What Should I Choose for My Year-Long Physics Project?

AI Thread Summary
A high school student is exploring project ideas for a year-long personal project, focusing on physics. The top idea is to study special relativity, aiming to create engaging lectures for classmates, but the student seeks a central question to guide the research. Another potential project involves writing a paper on the evolution of quantum mechanics and its impact on 20th-century physics and mathematics, although concerns about the topic's breadth and originality are noted. A less favored idea is researching the physics of acoustic guitars, inspired by personal interest. Suggestions from others include creating computer simulations using open-source physics tools, which could provide a practical application of physics concepts. The student is motivated and has a solid math background, and the project allows for significant independent work with monthly supervision. The discussion also humorously touches on the unconventional nature of some classmates' projects, such as brewing beer.
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This year in my school, we get to do huge project on whatever we want (literally, whatever we want- someone is brewing their own beer, someone is writing some songs, etc.). Of course, I want to do mine on something physics related, but I'm not quite sure what I should do...
Some ideas that I had (ranked by order of preference):
1) Do a project on special relativity. I would learn about it as much as I could, but the problem is that I need sort of a main question for my project- I don't think I can just learn about something and write a paper about it, I think I have to ask and eventually answer a big question. One idea I had was to learn about it a lot and then prepare one or two half-hour "lectures" for my classmates to give them an introduction to special relativity and an intuition for what it's about. However, I'm open to suggestions.

2) A paper on "The Evolution of Quantum Mechanics and its Influence on 20th Century Physics and Mathematics". I'm allowed to write a paper with a main topic and sort of question, and it can be maximum 5000 words. I think this topic would be really fun to write and research about. I don't know much about the impact of QM on other physics in the 20th century or math (if there is any impact). The problem is that this topic might be too broad, so if you think it's good but should be narrowed down, please let me know. Also, I'm not sure if this has been done too much by too many people, so that would be good to know as well- I don't want to do something too overdone.

3) This one I probably won't do, but it's still a maybe: Research the physics of acoustic guitars. This was my dad's idea because I play the guitar, but I don't know if it's good for a long-term project. It might be too advanced, or too basic (I really have no idea).


Extra information: This is a 10th grade high school project and we'll be getting approximately 9 months to work on it. It's called a Personal Project so I'll be doing all the work, but each student gets a supervisor (who could be a teacher or student who already did the project) who they meet with once a month. I work very hard, love physics, and have a decent math background (know algebra, trig, geometry, and differential and integral calculus of one variable).

If you have any other ideas for other projects I could do, criticisms of my project ideas, suggestions for my project ideas, or think that one of my ideas will work best, I'd love to hear your opinion.
Thanks
 
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how about doing a computer simulation of something using the open source physics toolkit (www.compadre.org/osp) and/or the processing.org software for graphuc artists.

You'd learn how to do physics simulations of real world things even if you don't yet know how to analyze the underlying differential equations.

It would be a lot of work but could pay off big. You could think about how to simulate sound in a guitar.

like this one a stradivari variant:

http://vimeo.com/42469151
 
That looks really cool, I'll look into that as well. Thanks :)
 
A tenth grader is brewing his own beer?
 
Hercuflea said:
A tenth grader is brewing his own beer?

Funny as this sounds, my son in 7th grade was buying and selling virtual shares of playboy stock for a class project making great gains until the teachers realized what it was and made him change it.
 
Hercuflea said:
A tenth grader is brewing his own beer?

That's what I thought. But apparently he's allowed to! He'll make a nutrition facts section and things like that, which convinced the teachers.
 
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