Each January, students from around the country pack up the fruits of several months' labour and trek to the RDS for the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The young boffins tell CLAIRE O'CONNELLwhat they made of this year's event.
GRAINNE NÍ LORCAIN, CARA NÍ DHUINN, AOIFE NÍ BHUACHALLA
Coláiste Íosagáin, Dublin
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Grainne: We were interested in psychology, and we wanted to find out why people's personalities develop in different ways, so we did surveys in our school and asked people's birth order in their family, do they prefer to be busy, how do they relax? I'm a middle child, and I fit the stereotype of competitive with the older sibling and confident.
Cara: I'm a youngest child, and I'm creative. I did all the art to go with our project.
Aoife: In the exhibition, the food is so expensive – we get special vouchers, but you have to pay on top of it. And there's a lack of bins. But the best thing is being able to walk up to people and ask them about their project.
TUNDE TOKI AND BOLA ADENIRAN
Balbriggan Community College, Co Dublin
Tunde: Our project was to compile, analyse and compare the physical and emotional effects of romantic relationships on students in secondary school. We did a general survey, a relationship survey, and we talked to a guidance counsellor.
Bola: We found that 62 per cent had been in a relationship for over six months, 52 per cent of people would skip homework to be with their partner, 93 per cent think regularly about their partners during class, and 73 per cent text their partners during class.
Tunde: Our conclusions were that romantic relationships have adverse physical effects in a school setting: people feeling tired, less focused in class. The exhibition is a great experience for us. We are really enjoying it.
JOHN FORDE, JAMES O’LEARY
Coláiste Pobal Osraí, Kilkenny
John(centre): We made a jacket with "ultrasonic eyes" to help blind people. It has four sensors on it, and if you are walking towards something the sensor starts to vibrate harder, then if you walk back it turns off a bit. We got the parts on the internet, and it took two months to put together. Eoin's dad is an electrician. We were going to do a backpack, but we couldn't fit all the sensors, so we put it in a jacket. At the exhibition a man got his son to wear it, close his eyes and walk around, and when he was walking towards a wall it started to vibrate so he turned back.
James(right): The best thing is meeting people here. We went to the disco last night. We're danced out.
JACK CAROLAN
St Peter’s College, Dunboyne, Co Meath
Our project is on the applications of mushroom waste as a potential bio-resource. Mushrooms are grown on a special compost, but once you have grown about three flushes of mushrooms it becomes useless. We recycled the compost by composting it again, and we got a compost accelerator for growing vegetables. We made briquettes from the compost to see if you could burn them, and we are also looking into bioethanol – maybe in a few years you could be running cars on mushroom waste. We want to keep the project going, and the company that helped us with the compost has offered us work experience. The social aspect is the best thing here – today I barely saw any of the other exhibits – I was talking to people.
DONAL NAYLOR
The High School, Dublin
My project was on the invasive plant Gunnera tinctoria (giant rhubarb). I got the idea because my parents have a holiday home on Achill Island, and I saw how Gunnera had spread there. It’s spread by birds, animals and through human activity, like improper disposal.
I tried to grow Gunnera. I had 59 different pots with five seeds in each pot, but none of them grew because it was the wrong time of year. But I found out all I needed to know through meeting people who work on Gunnera.
In summer on Clare Island they are spraying glyphosate, a chemical that kills Gunnera, and I might be doing it as well. The stands at the exhibition and the vouchers for the food are good – they have fish and chips and nice healthy options too.
DECLAN GARDINER
Brannockstown NS, Co Kildare
Our class did a project on rocks, erosion and mountains. It was our teacher’s idea. For our experiments we tested if rocks were permeable or non-permeable, by putting a drop of water on each of them. If the water soaked in they were permeable, and if it didn’t they were non-permeable. We made our own rocks too, with flour, salt, water, pebbles and food dye. We put them together and left them for about three weeks, and they got really hard – you can hit them off the table and they won’t break. The project has made me wonder a bit more about landscapes now. I think I’ll be doing science in secondary school.
KATE NEVIN
St Anne’s School, Shankill, Co Dublin
The whole class did a project on slime. We used paperclips as an example of a molecule, and when they all gather together it’s called a polymer. When all the molecules join up into polymers, it forms a little bit of slime, but then they get tangled up and that forms a lot of slime. Some of the slime is bouncy, some is stretchy, some is sticky. We did it once for Halloween, and it was a really cool experiment so we decided to do it here as well. It’s pretty easy to make.
SARAH COLLINS AND ERICA DE CAPITANI
Coláiste Chiaráin, Limerick
Erica: We were trying to find out why bubbles were spherical and what's the best bubble mixture. We found that glycerine helps a lot – it makes them bigger and last a lot longer because it stops them evaporating.
Sarah: We got the idea from my cousin's experiment book. We made different solutions using water and washing-up liquids, and oils like linseed, vegetable and olive oil. We have been around the exhibition a couple of times. There are table quizzes and you get a voucher in your goodie bag to go ice skating.
NATALIE SLOYAN AND SARAH LENEHAN
St Joseph’s Secondary School, Co Mayo
Natalie: Our project is basically about the long-term damage of wearing killer heels. It's really painful to wear heels, and they have short-term effects like blisters and then long-term effects like back pain, and shortens your Achilles tendons. We are interested in fashion, so we researched Victoria Beckham because she is always wearing heels. We looked at magazines and the internet, and we sent around a questionnaire about what shoes people wear. They all experienced discomfort in heels, and less than a quarter of people were aware of the problems.
Sarah: You think it's going to be nerdy but then you get here and people have done projects on normal things.
