AP Chemistry · Handsworth 2026–27 · Post-Exam Capstone

The Chemistry of Medicine

Dr. Ras Mulinta
Handsworth Secondary
≈3 weeks · teams of up to 4

You've finished the AP exam, now you get to use the chemistry you built all year on a question you choose. This capstone connects three or more AP units to a question you want answered, tested with your own lab work, ending in a poster and a formal lab report. It is graded and reported in its own Capstone category, 10% of your course mark, scored out of 20 on the capstone rubric. There is no resubmission. Some sessions may be co-run with UBC medical students as your near-peer mentors.

Driving question: How does chemistry explain the way a modern medicine is designed, dosed, and works in the human body?

Your question: choose your own

Your team picks a question you actually want answered, somewhere chemistry meets the human body, health, or the environment. Then you state a hypothesis and use the lab skills you have built all year to test it: titration, spectroscopy, calorimetry, gravimetric analysis, chromatography, equilibrium, electrochemistry. The four below are worked starting points, not a menu. Bring me your own and we will shape it together in the first class.

The three things every capstone needs: a question you chose, a hypothesis you can test with chemistry you can actually do here, and evidence you gathered yourself.

Safety and feasibility come first. Any procedure you design must be approved by me before you run it, and the reagents have to be things we have or can order in time. Bring your idea early.

Topic	The chemistry it pulls in (AP units)
GLP-1 agonists (semaglutide, Ozempic / Wegovy) ★	Peptide structure & functional groups (U2) · intermolecular forces & the fatty-acid chain that binds albumin (U2/U3) · drug clearance & half-life (U5 kinetics) · receptor-binding equilibrium (U7) · dosing stoichiometry (U4)
Ocean acidification & the carbonate system	Acid–base & buffers (U8) · solubility / K_sp (U7) · Le Châtelier (U7)
The lithium-ion / EV battery	Electrochemistry & cell potential (U9) · redox (U4→U9) · thermodynamics (U6/U9)
Green ammonia (Haber process, clean fuel)	Equilibrium & yield (U7) · thermochemistry (U6) · kinetics & catalysis (U5)

A worked example, if you want a model: GLP-1 / semaglutide

Native GLP-1 is a small peptide hormone that lowers blood sugar and appetite, but the body destroys it in about 1–2 minutes (an enzyme, DPP-4, cleaves it). Chemists re-engineered it into semaglutide: they protected the vulnerable peptide bond and attached a long fatty-acid chain that grabs onto a blood protein (albumin) through intermolecular forces. That one structural change stretches the half-life to about 7 days: which is why it's a weekly injection, not a per-minute one. Every step of that story is AP chemistry.

Structure & bonding (U2): draw the peptide (amide) bond; identify polar groups; explain why the hydrophobic fatty chain interacts with albumin (London dispersion + hydrophobic effect).
Why injected, not swallowed (U2/U3): peptides are broken apart by stomach acid & enzymes, connect to IMFs, bond breaking, and solubility. (Stretch: oral semaglutide uses an absorption enhancer, research it.)
Kinetics & half-life (U5): drug elimination is first-order. Use t_½ = ln 2 / k. Given t_½ ≈ 7 days, find k; find what fraction remains after 1, 2, and 3 weeks; explain weekly dosing.
Receptor binding = equilibrium (U7): drug + receptor ⇌ complex. Write the expression, explain what a small dissociation constant (tight binding) means, and how Le Châtelier-style thinking applies as concentration changes.
Dosing stoichiometry (U4): doses step 0.25 → 0.5 → 1.0 → 2.0 mg. Convert a 1.0 mg dose to moles (M ≈ 4114 g/mol); find concentration in the pen; scale a dose by body mass.

What you'll produce (the three deliverables)

Research brief (team): 1–2 pages explaining the chemistry behind your topic, explicitly connecting to at least three AP units, with ≥4 credible sources cited.
Quantitative task + formal lab report (this is one of your two graded lab reports): a hands-on or data investigation tied to your topic, e.g. a kinetics run (rate of a colour-change or clock reaction as a half-life model), an equilibrium / Le Châtelier investigation, or an acid–base titration / buffer build, written up in the formal lab-report format with the half-life or equilibrium calculations worked through.
Poster + 5-minute team presentation: tell the chemistry story to the class (and your UBC med-student mentors). Clear claim, evidence, and reasoning.

Timeline (≈3 weeks · 70-minute blocks)

Block(s)	Focus
1	Launch · pick topic & team · driving question · (meet UBC med-student mentors)
2–3	Research brief, the chemistry behind your drug/issue (3+ AP units)
4–6	Lab investigation + data collection (your graded lab report)
7–8	Calculations (half-life / equilibrium / dosing) + write the lab report
9–10	Build the poster · rehearse
11–12	Showcase presentations · peer + mentor feedback

Marked on the Capstone Rubric (4 levels, Emerging→Extending), five criteria scored out of 20 → your course grade in MyEd, in its own Capstone category worth 10% of the course mark. Labs and class work are a separate 30%, and unit tests plus the final exam are the 60%. There is no resubmission.

Working with the UBC medical-student mentors

During this block, UBC Faculty of Medicine students (FLEX) may join as near-peer mentors, they are a few years ahead on exactly this chemistry-meets-medicine path. Bring them your question and your hypothesis early: they can tell you how it shows up in real practice, help you sharpen what you are actually testing, and talk through your data with you. Treat them as collaborators, not graders (your grade is mine).

AP Chemistry · Post-Exam Capstone "The Chemistry of Medicine" · Dr. Ras Mulinta · Handsworth Secondary 2026–27 · Applies AP Units 2–9 to a current question in medicine · Reported in MyEd (Capstone category, 10%, scored out of 20) · Optionally co-facilitated with UBC FLEX medical students · Black & white, print-ready.