Young Scientist
The School has had huge success in the Young Scientist competition in recent years. Students prepare their projects, under the guidance of their teachers, during the first term. Projects are presented in the RDS in early January.
Young Scientist 2012
Congratulations to all the students who were out at the RDS displaying their science projects last week. This year we had four wonderful projects representing the school and with record entries of over 1700 for the 500 places the competition was very tough to qualify.
Alex Griffin and Kate Danaher from first year displayed their work on how friendship values changed over time. They surveyed first and sixth years and adults. They found that friendship values are established at a very young age and that first years prefer large groups whereas sixth years are more comfortable with small groups of friends. They were highly organised throughout their research and received a Highly Commended Award for their efforts.
Dervla Brennan, Megan Mulgrew and Victoria Brunton, also from first year, investigated the relationship between how high a person can jump and how fast they can run. They set up a research day in their local parish hall and carried out their tests on 40 teenagers. They found there was a strong correlation between vertical jump height and running speed. Another excellent project.
Regan McGlynn from second year was the sixth member of her family to display her work at the Young Scientist exhibition. She carried out her research on using orange peel to reduce the salinity of seawater so that it could be used for crop irrigation. This was a very impressive piece of work which could prove very useful considering the shortage of fresh water in some areas of the world.
And last, but definitely not least, a huge congratulations to Aoife Gregg who won the overall Runner Up Award for individuals. She carried out her project by investigating Cryptography in the Irish Language by analysing the frequency of letters and groups of letters that are used in Irish texts. Through her work she discovered that by analysing the letter frequency in Irish passages she could actually pretty accurately date old Irish texts. Aoife also won the very prestigious Intel Travel Award. As part of her prize Aoife won an all expenses trip to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) being held this year in May in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We wish her all the best with her further work in this area and with the competition in May.