Student Research

 What do we mean by Science Research on this site?

There may be a number of high school students out there who believe "science research" is what you do in typical science class lab activities. Perhaps you time how long it takes for a marble to roll across a table to determine its speed, or you put together certain mixtures of chemicals to produce specific types of chemical reactions and observe phase and color changes, or do dissections of earthworms to see with you own eyes how the organism is put together. All of these types of labs are important for learning about experimental procedures and methods, how to collect and record data, working on basic analysis methods of data, and so on. And at the time these activities may be new to you, the student, so that you are 'discovering' some phenomenon in the activity, and that is great!

But what this site is all about is a different type of discovery - a discovery in the stricter sense of the word. In science class, you will do things where the answers have been discovered years ago and are well known and are part of the course curriculum. Here, we want you to be able to find topics and ideas and questions that are truly unknown to the world.

We want you to be able to create your own research project where you may literally make a new discovery for whatever system in which you are interested!

This is the science research we are concerned about in SOS!

And our main resource will be our CABS site, which helps any student or teacher find original research topics and questions that can be pursued in typical high school labs or even at a student's home!

 What are the Big 3 of Science Research?

                           
Most people think of the scientific method taught in middle school and high school classes when it comes to the process of science. And hopefully this means most people realize that the key to science is experimentation. Scientists don't believe things just because we think some idea sounds like it should be correct - instead, we need to obtain physical evidence and observations that the idea could be the correct description of Nature. Ultimately physical experiments are needed to lead to scientific advancement. 

High school research can be in any of the 'Big 3' of science! In fact, when it comes to computational work, which is dominated by coding and computer simulations, AI is a new tool that can help students learn how to code (primarily in Python), and provide draft simulation code for nearly any physical system one can think of. 

Here are dozens of examples of papers written up by research students over the last 25 years. Browsing through these is a wonderful way to get ideas for research, in all sorts of topics, by building off what others have worked on - this is similar to how professors run research programs with their graduate students. 

For ETHS students, here is another option - participating in a Northwestern lab. Some resources are provided below, and talk with Doc V if ever interested: 

Another way to find research ideas is to go through the faculty pages at Northwestern University. And we can search for any topic or faculty member using Northwestern Scholars - this is a great resource! Check out the descriptions of their research programs, and let Doc V know who is doing interesting work.

Departments at Northwestern University:
- Physics and Astronomy  See their page for Research Opportunities open to ETHS students
- Applied Physics
- Chemistry
- Biological Sciences
- Molecular Biology
- Neurobiology
- Mathematics
- Earth and Planetary Science
- Materials Science
- Environmental Sciences

Northwestern University School of Engineering:
- Biomedical
- Chemical and Biological
- Civil and Environmental

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