Experimental programme › Collaborative Sciences Project

Collaborative Sciences Project

For two and a half days, every DP science student works in a mixed team on one real-world problem that no single subject can solve alone. This page explains how the project works, what is due and when, how to give a strong Colony Pitch, and how to write your reflection. Physics students also get a toolkit of energy, water and shelter calculations.

1. What is the CSP?

The Collaborative Sciences Project is part of the IB Diploma for every science student. Students from Biology, Chemistry, Physics and ESS, in both Grade 11 and Grade 12, work together in mixed teams on a problem with a local context and a global importance.

What is assessed? Only your individual 100-word reflection, written at the end of Day 3. It is your evidence that you took part in the CSP. Everything else (the journal, the manifest, the pitch) is how you get there.

2. The scenario: Survival on a Tropical Island

A fast-spreading virus has brought down global civilization. Your team is among the survivors, and none of you carries the disease. You have a small boat and one chance to collect supplies before leaving the mainland for good.

Your mission: choose a real island in Southeast Asia or the Pacific, research it, and design a colony that can support your community, and the generations born there, forever. The outside world can't help you any more.

The rules

Suggested islands

Pick any real island with enough geographic, ecological and climate data to plan with. For the scenario, assume it is uninhabited. Some good choices:

You can propose a different island if your teacher agrees. Check early that you can actually find data on it.

3. Session briefing slides

These are the slides shown at the start of each session, with what to do and what is due.

Open the slides in Google Slides

The slides are only visible to school accounts. If you see a sign-in message or a blank box, sign in to your school Google account in this browser, or use the button above.

4. Your role in the team

Teams have 4–5 students, with at least one from each of the four sciences and a mix of Grade 11 and Grade 12. You are your team's expert in your own subject, but everyone helps with everything.

Population size is a good example of why you need each other. Biology knows how many people avoid inbreeding; ESS knows how many the island can feed; Chemistry knows how much food and water each person needs; Physics knows how much energy and shelter that takes.

5. Day-by-day plan

Days 1 and 2 run from 7:45 am to 3:00 pm (break 10:50–11:15, lunch 1:15–2:00). Day 3 is a half day, finishing at 12:15. You will work mostly on your own as a team, with teachers circulating to ask questions and help when you're stuck. Keep your Colony Design Journal (a shared Google Doc) up to date all the way through.

Day 1: Scenario, island research and the supplies debate

Due end of Day 1 Island Research Dossier

Day 2: Supplies, colony systems and building the pitch

Due midday Annotated Supplies Manifest   Due end of Day 2 Systems Diagram and 3 interdisciplinary connections

Day 3 (half day): Colony Pitches and reflection

Due morning Colony Pitch   Due before you leave 100-word individual reflection

6. The deliverables

Island Research Dossier (end of Day 1)

The island's geography, climate (including the dry season), resources (freshwater, plants, marine life, soil, minerals) and hazards (storms, flooding, erosion, invasive species), with at least one real finding from each subject. Use numbers wherever you can: "average rainfall 2,100 mm a year, with under 50 mm a month from January to March" is far more useful than "it rains a lot".

Annotated Supplies Manifest (Day 2 midday)

Every item you bring, its weight, who proposed it and a one-line reason you could defend out loud. Good manifests:

Systems Diagram and interdisciplinary connections (end of Day 2)

Draw each colony system as a box, with arrows for what flows between them: water, food, energy, waste, labour. Drawing it shows the gaps. Then write down at least three places where two or more subjects had to work together.

An example colony systems diagram with six boxes: water, energy, shelter, food, health and waste. Arrows show energy pumping water, roofs collecting rainwater, water irrigating food and providing safe drinking water, energy powering the medicine fridge, food supporting health, compost from waste feeding the soil, and poor sanitation threatening health. Water Energy Shelter Food Health Waste pump roofs collect rain irrigation drinking medicine fridge sanitation risk compost
A simple example. Your own diagram should be specific to your island, and drawing it should make you ask questions such as "where does the energy for the pump come from at night?"

Examples of real connections: water chemistry (Chemistry) decides whether water is safe for crops (ESS) and how likely waterborne disease is (Biology); population growth (Biology) drives land use (ESS) and energy demand (Physics); shelter design (Physics) depends on how fast local timber regrows (ESS and Biology).

Colony Design Journal (all three days)

One shared Google Doc per team, which teachers can see at any time. Record your decisions, the disagreements you had and how you settled them, mistakes you found and fixed, and what each person contributed. At the end of each day, spend 10 minutes filling in the daily log. These notes are exactly what you will need for a strong reflection.

7. The Colony Pitch

On Day 3 your team gives a 15-minute pitch. Your audience are not judges: they are prospective colonists, deciding whether to join your colony. Convince them it will work, with scientific evidence, and be honest about the risks and trade-offs.

Suggested structure (about 15 minutes)

  1. Hook and island introduction (1 min, anyone): who you are, where you're going and why.
  2. Island profile (1–2 min, ESS): geography, climate, resources, hazards.
  3. Our community (1 min, anyone): population size and why; governance and decision-making.
  4. Food systems (2 min, Biology): what you grow, fish or forage; how long until you're self-sufficient.
  5. Water and soil (1–2 min, Chemistry): water source and purification; soil for farming.
  6. Shelter and energy (1–2 min, Physics): colony layout map, shelter design, energy system.
  7. Health and sanitation (1 min, Biology/Chemistry): waste, disease prevention, medical plan.
  8. Supplies manifest (1–2 min, all): your top 10 items and the hardest trade-offs.
  9. Interdisciplinary connections (1 min, all): show how 2–3 systems depend on each other.
  10. Long-term sustainability (1 min, ESS): staying within the island's carrying capacity for generations.
  11. Our biggest risk and our plan (1 min, all).

Use slides, a poster, a whiteboard or a mix. Show, don't tell: a colony map, a water-system diagram or a chart of food produced against calories needed beats a slide full of bullet points. Hand-drawn maps are fine. Everyone speaks, and it should sound like one connected argument, not four separate subject reports.

Self-check the night before

Teachers will give your team feedback on coverage, scientific accuracy, how well the subjects are integrated, supplies and trade-offs, long-term sustainability, delivery, and how you handle questions. This feedback is to help you; it isn't part of your assessed evidence.

8. The challenge round

After your pitch, the audience and teachers have 5 minutes to question you, the way a real colonist would before joining. If you don't know an answer, say what you would need to research: that is a good scientific answer. Guessing isn't. Practise with these:

When it's your turn in the audience, ask from genuine curiosity, not to score points. Note one strength and one question for each team.

9. Writing your reflection

Your 100-word reflection is the only part of the CSP that is assessed, and you write it on your own. Be honest and specific. Think about:

The best reflections describe one real moment of difficulty, discovery or disagreement, not a summary of what the team produced. Compare these two (both invented):

Weak

"Our team worked really well together and we made a great colony on Phu Quoc. I was the physics student so I did the energy and shelters. I learned that all the sciences are connected and that teamwork is important. Everyone contributed and we communicated well. Our presentation went well and we answered the questions. Next time I would manage our time better. Overall it was a good experience and I enjoyed working with students from other subjects."

It is vague: nothing in it could only have been written by this student, about this project.

Stronger

"On Day 2 I calculated that our 20 solar panels weighed over 400 kg, a quarter of the boat. Our biology student wanted that space for seeds and medicine, and we argued for twenty minutes. What settled it was the chemistry student's data showing a stream with a 15 m drop, so a small hydro turbine could replace half the panels. I realised I had been designing energy as if the colony were only an energy problem. Next time I would share my numbers with the team earlier, before I was attached to a plan."

It describes a specific disagreement, how evidence from another subject settled it, and what the student learned about their own thinking.

10. Physics toolkit

As the Infrastructure & Energy Engineer, your job is to put numbers on the colony. These examples use made-up but realistic values: replace them with real data for your island (see where to find data). Most of the physics is from A.3 Work, energy and power.

1. How much electricity does the colony need?

List what genuinely needs electricity: LED lighting, a refrigerator for medicines and vaccines, radios, charging tools, a water pump. For a colony of 100, a careful estimate might be about 0.3 kWh per person per day, so 30 kWh per day. (For comparison, a typical household in Vietnam uses several kWh a day.)

Energy = power × time: a 10 W LED on for 4 hours uses $10 \times 4 = 40$ Wh $= 0.04$ kWh.

2. How many solar panels?

Tropical islands get about 5 "peak sun hours" a day (NASA POWER gives the value for your exact location). A 400 W panel, allowing 25% for heat, dirt, wiring and battery losses, gives about:

$400\ \text{W} \times 5\ \text{h} \times 0.75 = 1500\ \text{Wh} = 1.5\ \text{kWh per day}$

For 30 kWh a day you need $\frac{30}{1.5} = 20$ panels. At about 21 kg each, that is 420 kg, a quarter of the boat, before batteries. Storing half a day's energy (15 kWh) in lithium batteries adds another 100–150 kg; lead–acid batteries would be about 450 kg.

Long term: panels lose about 0.5–1% of their output a year, so they last decades, but batteries and inverters often fail in 10–15 years. What replaces them? Could you cut demand, or use energy directly (pumping water by day into a high tank) instead of storing it?

3. A small hydro turbine

If the island has a stream that drops in height, its gravitational potential energy can be converted to electricity. The power available is:

$P = \eta\rho gQh$

where $\eta$ is the efficiency, $\rho = 1000\ \text{kg m}^{-3}$, $Q$ is the flow rate in $\text{m}^3\,\text{s}^{-1}$ and $h$ the drop in metres. For a stream carrying 20 litres a second ($Q = 0.020\ \text{m}^3\,\text{s}^{-1}$) down a 15 m drop, with $\eta = 0.6$:

$P = 0.6 \times 1000 \times 9.8 \times 0.020 \times 15 = 1.8\ \text{kW}$

Running day and night, that is $1.8 \times 24 = 42$ kWh a day: more than all 20 solar panels, with no batteries. But does the stream still flow in the dry season? (Ask your ESS expert.)

4. Is wind worth it?

The power in the wind passing through a turbine of blade radius $r$ is $P = \tfrac{1}{2}\rho Av^3$, with $A = \pi r^2$ and air density $\rho = 1.2\ \text{kg m}^{-3}$. Real turbines capture at most about 35–40% of it.

For $r = 1$ m and a typical tropical wind speed of 5 m s⁻¹: $P = 0.35 \times \tfrac{1}{2} \times 1.2 \times \pi \times 1^2 \times 5^3 = 82$ W, only about 2 kWh a day. Because of the $v^3$, doubling the wind speed gives 8 times the power, so the site matters enormously. In a cyclone, turbines must be taken down.

5. Collecting rainwater

1 mm of rain on 1 m² of roof is 1 litre. Allowing for splashing and evaporation (a collection efficiency of about 0.8):

volume (L) $= $ rainfall (mm) $\times$ roof area (m²) $\times 0.8$

A 100 m² roof in a wet month with 300 mm of rain collects $300 \times 100 \times 0.8 = 24\,000$ L, about 800 L a day. If each person needs about 20 L a day for drinking, cooking and basic hygiene, 100 people need 2,000 L a day: you would need about 250 m² of roof in the wet season. In a dry month with only 50 mm, the same roofs collect a sixth as much. How big must your storage tanks be to last the dry season?

6. Pumping water uphill

Lifting water to a storage tank on higher ground means water can then flow to the colony by gravity. The energy needed is $E = mgh$. To lift 2,000 L (2,000 kg) by 20 m:

$E = 2000 \times 9.8 \times 20 = 3.9 \times 10^5$ J $= 0.11$ kWh

That is tiny for an electric pump, but a person working a hand pump at a steady 75 W would take $\frac{3.9 \times 10^5}{75} = 5200$ s, almost an hour and a half, every day.

7. Shelters in a cyclone

Wind pushes on a wall with a pressure of about $\tfrac{1}{2}\rho v^2$. In a cyclone with gusts of 50 m s⁻¹ (180 km h⁻¹):

$\tfrac{1}{2} \times 1.2 \times 50^2 = 1500$ Pa, so on a 3 m × 2.5 m wall the force is about $1500 \times 7.5 = 11\,000$ N, like the weight of a small car.

Air flowing over a roof also lowers the pressure above it, which can lift the roof off. Design ideas: low buildings, steep hipped roofs, strong ties from the roof to the walls and from the walls to the ground, shutters, and sites sheltered from the sea and away from flood and landslide risk.

Other useful physics: thermal energy transfer for keeping shelters cool (B.1), circuits and cable losses for wiring the colony (B.5), and how generators work (D.4, HL).

11. Where to find data

Write down where every number comes from. "Where is that number from?" is a favourite challenge-round question.

12. Project documents

These open in Google Drive. Sign in with your school Google account to see them.