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.