IB Math HL IA topic help

Hi, I'm currently enrolled in IB MM3 and we've started our math IAs now... my topic that I've been trying to work on is about toroidal surface area, since my aim is how does one optimize the surface area of a donut... but is this a topic that could receive a high score? Or am I just digging my own grave... if it's a bad topic, could someone help me improve or even think of a completely new topic? any help is appreciated!

Reply 1

TeeEm

19

Original post by tsukiyoi

Hi, I'm currently enrolled in IB MM3 and we've started our math IAs now... my topic that I've been trying to work on is about toroidal surface area, since my aim is how does one optimize the surface area of a donut... but is this a topic that could receive a high score? Or am I just digging my own grave... if it's a bad topic, could someone help me improve or even think of a completely new topic? any help is appreciated!

Is the problem going to be given a torus of a fixed volume, minimize the surface area?

The volume of a torus can be done with single variable calculus and can also make reference to one of the theorems of Pappus.

I never come across surface area. There is an analytical formula but I do not know how hard is it to derive.

Reply 2

tombayes

12

Original post by tsukiyoi

Hi, I'm currently enrolled in IB MM3 and we've started our math IAs now... my topic that I've been trying to work on is about toroidal surface area, since my aim is how does one optimize the surface area of a donut... but is this a topic that could receive a high score? Or am I just digging my own grave... if it's a bad topic, could someone help me improve or even think of a completely new topic? any help is appreciated!

Original post by TeeEm

Is the problem going to be given a torus of a fixed volume, minimize the surface area?

The volume of a torus can be done with single variable calculus and can also make reference to one of the theorems of Pappus.

I never come across surface area. There is an analytical formula but I do not know how hard is it to derive.

Well Pappus's Theorems give you both the surface area and volume. It is almost trivial if your assuming Pappus!

Given the equations for both surface area and volume if you fix the volume then minimizing the surface area is simple (just a bit of algebra). Though you could use Lagrange multipliers if you want to show off!

Reply 3

TeeEm

19

Original post by tombayes

Well Pappus's Theorems give you both the surface area and volume. It is almost trivial if your assuming Pappus!

Given the equations for both surface area and volume if you fix the volume then minimizing the surface area is simple (just a bit of algebra). Though you could use Lagrange multipliers if you want to show off!

thank you ...

Reply 4

tsukiyoi

OP

2

Original post by tombayes

Well Pappus's Theorems give you both the surface area and volume. It is almost trivial if your assuming Pappus!

Given the equations for both surface area and volume if you fix the volume then minimizing the surface area is simple (just a bit of algebra). Though you could use Lagrange multipliers if you want to show off!

Hello! and thank you all for such quick responses... I didn't really expect them to come this quickly.

I've decided to change my topic, and I wanted to investigate the rate of change of olympic swimmer (gold medal) times... is that HL-enough? or too simple?

Reply 5

tombayes

12

Original post by tsukiyoi

Hello! and thank you all for such quick responses... I didn't really expect them to come this quickly.

I've decided to change my topic, and I wanted to investigate the rate of change of olympic swimmer (gold medal) times... is that HL-enough? or too simple?

It is a bit of a vague topic - What maths would you like use?

Are you attempting to predict future World Record times using past data? - The problem with this is either it is really simple (e.g. finding a straight line/polynomial/exponential/whatever equation to fit the data - which is like 1/4 of a page too easy for IB HL).

Or too difficult - requiring some quite advanced statistics (something like Bayesian Statistical Inference could be used) but this would be much harder (not impossible but the time and effort required is not worth it)

Reply 6

Phichi

11

Not that I know anything about IB, but a lot about maths, as tom said do you plan to predict times? Investigating purely the rate of change of times for swimmers would be quite a dull topic, and not really show off much mathematical skills. Predicting however, in my opinion would be attempting a task a little too big, I doubt highly the trend is as tom said, simple to fit. It'd probably involve many other variables to consider alone. The first idea however, if you're confident with maths, sounds interesting and somewhat difficult, I'd personally IMO say the first.

Reply 7

314thon

1

Hey!

"Given the equations for both surface area and volume if you fix the volume then minimizing the surface area is simple (just a bit of algebra). Though you could use Lagrange multipliers if you want to show off!"

Could you expand upon this?

Reply 8

old_engineer

11

Original post by 314thon

Hey!

"Given the equations for both surface area and volume if you fix the volume then minimizing the surface area is simple (just a bit of algebra). Though you could use Lagrange multipliers if you want to show off!"

Could you expand upon this?

Please don't try to revive six-year old threads. If you have a specific question please start a new thread.

IB Math HL IA topic help

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