Reflections on Cat-1 Project

Doing a Cat-1 project for the 1st time was not easy. There were many things to do, all of which I found to be strangers. It all started out with my mentor's recommendation this the whole project: Effects of pH on Antioxidant  Capacity. Initially, I had totally no clue what it was about. The lab procedures were extremely difficult for me to understand. The rationale behind each procedure was also something that I had no clue about. For example, I had no idea why is a UV-Vis Spectrometer related to this chemistry project. It took me quite some time for me to understand the whole rational behind it --  In order to figure out how much has the antioxidants reacted, we have to measure the light intensity since the ABTS(simulation of free radicals) would become colorless after reaction with the antioxidants.

It was also difficult to come up with the powerpoint for the various judging. Initially, we were not familiar with the different science terms that had to be used, and thus had to keep on editing the powerpoint in order to achieve one that was suitable for our presentation. Another challenge that we faced, was to put our results into graphs, and include things like standard-deviation, something that we totally had no clue what it was. The next challenge that we have faced, was to analyse and come up with a conclusion. This was especially hard with our preliminary results, as there was totally no trend. But as we did more and more sets of experiments for the semi-finals judging, trends started to be seen. However, there were 2 totally different sets of results that we had gotten. Thus coming up with a conclusion was much harder. After we had approached our mentor, we then realized that it was possible to conclude that there were 2 kinds of trends, and a re-test had to be done to confirm our results. Which we did, since we were into the finals! :D The results that were gotten were somewhat the same, which demoralized us quite a little, since there was no conclusive results. Nonetheless, we managed to qualify for a 'A' grade, achieving 6 marks in the finals.

This Cat-1 project, has taught me various important lessons. This includes never giving up when faced with results that were not optimal, or at least not encouraging. And it allowed me to get more familiar with more scientific terms. Last but not least, the whole experience of it, and the friendship that was strengthen throughout the year :D