Selecting a Research Topic

1) Find an article you are interested in:

Choose a popular source article you are interested in related to climate change, greenhouse gases, or another key topic from Chapter 4 of your Chemistry in Context textbook. Your popular source article should be fairly recent (within the last 2 years) and should be a summary of science research that is written for a non-science expert.

One of the goals of this assignment is to learn how to evaluate scientific information that you will find in the media; choose an article that you may naturally find yourself reading.

2) Your topic may change as you go along:

As you start to browse for your popular source article, you may discover something even more interesting as you go along. You and your partner are not tied to your initial idea. It is a normal part of the research process to alter and refine your topic; so stay flexible.

3) Once you have found a popular source article:

Make sure your selected popular source article links to a peer-reviewed scientific article that was published within the past 3 years. Ensure you can find the authors of the peer-reviewed scientific article, the journal's name, the article publication date, and can also answer all of the questions about your peer-reviewed article found on Page #4 of your Climate Change Article Evaluation packet. If you cannot answer all of these questions, then you should reach out to your TA to ask if the article linked from your popular source article IS from a peer-reviewed journal or if you should select another article pairing. Your TA can also help you with this during your working time in Lab #7!