Antioxidants

[deleted-95090]

Hi, Can you please provide more information about antioxidants projects? I would like to make a research about different sources of antioxidants, but I don't know where to start.

Thank you!

[aelin]

Hi,

Antioxidants are certainly interesting to study. In my opinion, research has to be pretty self-motivated, meaning that really you need to be the one picking the project. That being said, I can try to guide you and provide other helpful bits of advice. Start by doing google and pubmed searches for antioxidants and look for something that seems interesting to you. For example, you might be interested on synthetic antioxidants, so that would be one way to go. Find a topic that gets you excited, and then start thinking about what more you would like to know. Your research should be aimed at finding that out.

[donnahardy2]

Hi,

This is a really interesting idea for a science project. Aaron has given you advice which will be very helpful in identifying your specific topic. Here are some other suggestions.

I think you have found this project idea, which includes an idea for a topic, but does not include a detailed protocol that is usually found on other Science Buddies projects. This means you have to develop your own experimental protocol

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... p001.shtml

Here is a previous topic from the Science Buddies website on this subject that includes a good discussion on measuring antioxidant activity. The problem with using apple browning to measure antioxidant activity is that it’s difficult to make this quantitative. The PubMed reference cited in this topic includes a quantitative colorimetric assay that uses ABTS reagent mixed with potassium persulfate. In science projects, it's really important to measure results and this would be a good method if you could get the reagents and have access to a spectrophotometer. Other details in this paper that you could adapt to your project idea include: 1. The background section explains the significance of antioxidant activity to human health and you can use this as a general example, but you should also do lots of background reading and develop you own introduction that would explain the science behind your project. 2. Also note that each sample was measured six times! Science fair judges expect to see samples run in duplicate, and are ecstatic with results in triplicate. I have seen science projects with results measured 5 times, but never 6. 3. Another point is that the authors reported antioxidant activity for a plant that had never been reported before, so the research project was unique and original.

This paper gives you a general protocol for measuring antioxidant activity, and as Aaron Lin has suggested, you just need to identify a way to adapt this to discover something new about antioxidants.

https://www.sciencebuddies.org/science- ... =28&t=6637

I hope this helps. Let us know if you need additional explanation about the chemistry of this project, or any other questions.

Donna Hardy