1s November 2013: Natural Vs Complete denture occlusion

I decided to compare more specific dental restorations and the natural teeth. The first being dentures. 

One online powerpoint website was extremely helpful and introduced many new ideas and sub headings that were relevant to my EPQ. The information directly compared dentures (in particular their occlusal surface) and the natural occlusal surface of teeth. 

It included:

-non vertical forces 

-bilateral balance 

-Retention, Stability and support etc etc. 

my notes taken from the website (left)

A lot of theory on physics cropped up which was difficult to understand as the theories and equations were foreign to me. So I was thinking of asking a physics teacher in college to explain it in a simpler form. 

I further researched into the information from this website, so my research could be more detailed. Surprisingly I found some useful articles from the BDJ (British Dental Journal) which I struggled with earlier on, however once again the language used in these papers were difficult to understand. I also went on a mexican dental care website which gave similar information but this website also gave an equation known as Stefan's law. This law was pretty comprehensive and shows the force necessary to pull the plates apart (I think the plates are referring to the gum and the surface of the denture).

Most of these sources explained the physical mechanisms of complete denture retention (retention is the resistance of a denture to resist vertical movement away from the dentures). The factors involved in retention are covered in the sources which include surface tension, adhesion, cohesion, atmospheric pressure etc. These are factors I would like to further explore as it would give depth to my essay.

29th October 2013: Writing a literature Review
In the lesson, we were told we had to do a literature review at the end of our dissertation. From my understanding a literature review is a single page comparing and contrasting research from different sources relevant to one part of your essay. Its a simple evaluation of these sources whilst awarding credibility to the useful sources.
A literature Review is another brand new skill that I have learnt to do, nearer the end of my project I will practise this skill to produce my own literature review.

In the class we watched a video about what a literature review was and what was not. From this we took notes (below).

26th October 2013: Research into Restorative dentistry

Following my plan to change my EPQ title, I started to research firstly about dental restorations and the different types that are available currently in dentistry. For this I decided to research on wikipedia. 

I then attempted to research 'how good dental restorations are compared to teeth' (typed this in google) and found a couple of websites. Although the information was reliable and informative, I had a hard time relating it back to my title. Most of the information that I found on these websites discussed the advantages and disadvantages of restorative techniques including aspects such as durability, resistance to wear, resistance to fracture etc. This information is partly helpful but it doesn't compare the natural teeth with dental restorations. Nonetheless I decided to use some of the information and maybe do some further research about the same aspects of the natural teeth, e.g. their resistance to fracture/wear etc, and indirectly compare the two.  

The websites that I used to collect this information are the screen captures below.

http://www.quackwatch.com/03HealthPromotion/dentalmaterials.html

http://www.ada.org/sections/publicResources/pdfs/dental_fillings_facts_full.pdf

Following this, I went on BDJ (British Dental Journal) and typed in dental restorations in the search bar of the publications. Reading through the titles, I picked out a couple of titles which seemed relevant to my EPQ (below). I made notes on the relevant information and using yellow sticky pads briefly evaluated the source on its usefulness.

 This publication is Research

This publication is a Review 

(both publications are evaluated using yellow sticky pads (right))

Overall the Sources that I researched was fairly useful, however they lacked depth and wasn't directly related to my title (validity issues). However it has given me a starting point to the possible sub sections to research and for further research I will look into specific restorations compared to the natural teeth e.g. comparing dentures to the natural teeth.

22nd October 2013

Research Fail, Changing of Title, Deadline Extension

I have tried to find further research into the importance of teeth, however most of the information is monotonous and repetitive and unfortunately I can't seem to extend my project further. Following my research on the 17th October as well as a chat with my two EPQ teachers I have decided to extend my EPQ title to cover the level of similarity between dental restorations and the natural tooth. I feel like this is an appropriate change because it means I can explore another aspect of dentistry which can relate back to my original title. 

My EPQ teachers were worried that my original title 'How important are our natural teeth and could we develop to live without them' was going to be a simple yes/no answer. I was also skeptical of my title because my research had come to a halt so I decided this was the ideal choice. Extending my title also means that I will be able to back up my yes/no decision at the end with the research about dental restorations and if they can perfectly replace our natural teeth. 

Following my decision to change my EPQ title, I have edited my project verification form. (below)

This also means that I will have to carry out more research, including primary research, therefore I have decided to push my deadline further to April, so that I will have more time to adjust to the changes I have made, 

My Target this week is to start researching about the similarity between dental restorations and the natural teeth, so that I can begin to generate the different sub headings for my essay. 

Internet Research and The Beginning of the Bibliography

I decided to have another stab at researching some information on google and this time I was successful!
In google I entered: what would life be without teeth?

I found two websites that listed the importance of teeth and was surprised more than what I expected e.g. teeth as an importance of maintaining healthy bones.

The First Website I went on, it gave me ideas on the importance of teeth such as biting and chewing, distributing forces to core of tooth 

The second website I accessed was the one above. It also have me ideas on the importance of teeth, but this time about maintaining a healthy bone level (alveolar tissue) and speaking. 

I made some notes of the research that I did in my brand new EPQ Research folder, and decided to apply a key that would separate; different sites I explored, ideas that I thought of whilst  doing the research itself and parts of information that I would like to research further. This would be useful for when I start writing the dissertation because I can flick through the information to the ones I need.

Above; notes that I made on the two websites i accessed 

Here I made a general list of what I found out from the research about the importance of teeth, and hopefully with further research I can add to this. I thought this would be useful so that when I go onto write my dissertation there will be a summary of all the parts that I could include, and I don't have to look through heaps of research.








 Furthermore on the two website I found a substantial amount of information on why restorative dentistry is not as good as the natural tooth, and I thought I would include this in my EPQ project as it seems to be an important subject in the dental world. Also it relates to my EPQ quite well as I am debating about the importance of teeth so incorporating the idea of unnatural teeth seems appropriate.

Also during research, I found a lot of links to forums e.g. yahoo answers, which I found to be useless as most of them were concerned about their own dental problems and dentures as opposed factual information. Although this information could be potential research I was hesitant to use it because most the sources lack expertise and the content may not be valid.

Finally I also started my bibliography which was slightly different to what we were taught in class because at home I use a macbook (APA system) which has different settings. I went online and looked at how I can citate and reference on this system and found it to be easily done.

My bibliography so far

Initially I was confused about how I was going to start a bibliography without actually writing the dissertation, and to overcome this I decided to copy and paste an appropriate phrase from the two sites and reference this for the moment being. When I start writing up my dissertation it means I can change/delete the phrase according to the essay and this will ensure that the sources that I have read are not forgotten in my bibliography. Also it means that my bibliography is starting to build up now as opposed to doing it all at once at the end.

LRC

Strangely in the lesson this morning we went through the LRC (basically the library) which was available for our research. In groups we were given the opportunity to go to the library and we were given a tour of the available resources.

One of the most useful resources I found were the online ones, which are a collection of journals magazines and articles that out college subscribes to. The 'Gale Virtual Reference Library' was pointed out by the librarian and when I accessed the page later on I found a an aggregation of books which looked potentially useful for my project. Also during my college break I went through the journals available on the LRC and was pleasantly surprised at the range available e.g. biology review, General one file, Scientific World, New Scientist and so many more. Unfortunately I had an unsuccessful attempt at accessing these online resources at home so I will ask the librarians about this tomorrow.

The librarian also does a very handy job of going through all the articles in the magazines and records them online so students can access the ones that they need. Finally there were also ebooks and hard copies of past EPQ projects, however i found that there was only one project related to dentistry which was about forensics. Nonetheless I do really want to read some EPQ projects to get a better idea of how much I have to research and eventually write up.

All in all, I found this lesson had answered my prayers to my difficulties that I had finding research related to my project. Therefore during this week I will have no excuses to put off my EPQ research any longer.

Finally i talked to my EPQ teachers about the situation of trying to get in contact with some dentists and they suggested that I go to the practice and asked if they are willing to do it, so that I will not be wasting any time.

Wednesday 9th October
I sent a message to my work experience manager wether I could get in contact with some of the dentists who I shadowed during work experience in the summer.

I also went on google to research the importance of teeth,
When I typed in the search bar 'the importance of teeth' the articles/websites which came up were about the importance of going to the dentists regularly or why we should take care of our teeth. Most of these articles were useless as they covered of taking care of our teeth rather than the importance of teeth itself. Therefore I did not bother reading these articles as I thought it would just be a waste of time.
At this point I felt I had reached a dead end with research.

Sunday Update
This week (7th Oct-14th Oct) has been slightly unsuccessful in terms of my EPQ. When i tried to find research I reached a dead end where I could not find any sources related to my project. Finding information about 'the importance of teeth' was too broad for google and I had no luck! Also my work experience practice manager failed to get back to me about possibly getting in contact with some dentists to get hold of primary research.

This means I did not reach my target from last week, to firstly get in contact with some dentists and secondly evaluate my past research. I found this week to be very busy because of my workload from my other A2 subjects as well as being sick during the weekend from the sudden temperature drop.

I have decided to set only one target this week as I have much to catch up on from last weeks target as well as two practical assessments in biology and chemistry.
My Target this week is find out where I can get research related to my project and hopefully get hold of some secondary sources of research. Also I would like to finish evaluating my part research  

Referencing/Bibliography

In the EPQ lesson this morning, we covered referencing using the Harvard System. Having never used this system before, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy and useful it was. Furthermore we also looked at how our bibliography would be automatically created when referencing during our essay write up. It also reminded me to start a bibliography on the books/reports I have read so far. The teachers said it was very useful to start it now, because most people have trouble finishing it at the end of the project which 'can take days' apparently.

I have attached some pictures of my notes that I took in lesson, about how to reference different types of information e.g. statistics from websites, quoting from books etc.

Also in the last part of the lesson after we completed a task practicing referencing different types of information e.g. articles from text books, articles from websites etc. we completed the Aim and Outcome part of our verification form. For the Aim we wrote a short paragraph expanding our title and for the outcome we stated what type of project we were going to complete. 

In the class, I also asked the teachers about evaluation because I had not started yet and was slightly confused about what and how to evaluate (even after last weeks evaluation lesson). The teachers told me to evaluate all my sources using Raven and also big decisions that I might make in my project e.g. if I change my title or if I change the direction of my project mid way, explaining why  chose to do these things. 

I met my target from last week, to start a log diary through a blog, and my target for this week is to start gaining primary research by getting in contact with dentists from my work experience and to evaluate the sources that I have researched so far.