Students engineer winning projects at science contest
Reporting by Eilís Ryan at the RDS
READ REPORTS ON EACH OF THE LOCAL PROJECTS HERE
It was a proud day for Westmeath on Friday, as the county continued its record of high achievement at the annual BT Young Scientist and Technology competition.
With almost 40 projects from nine Westmeath schools selected for inclusion, the county was behind only Cork and Dublin in terms of the number of participants.
At the awards ceremony, as well as a number of category winners and places, Westmeath entries picked up four special awards – two for Coláiste Mhuire in Mullingar and two to Athlone Community College. Coláiste Mhuire had 10 teams taking part, and at the awards ceremony, five of its entries were called up for honours – one of them twice. The two projects submitted by St Finian’s College also featured at the awards event, as did an entry from Meán Scoil an Chlochair.
Moate Community College received six awards, Athlone Community College received five; and Our Lady’s Bower in Athlone received five awards.
Three other Westmeath schools had teams at the event – Wilson’s Hospital School in Multyfarnham, Loreto College in Mullingar and Marist College, Athlone.
Mullingar and Kilbeggan winners
Donnacha Doyle and Dylan Hanly, of Coláiste Mhuire, won one of the special awards – the Abbvie Award – for their project, DiaCare: Revolutionising Diabetes Management, and were also named as second prize winners in the Junior Group section of the Health and Wellbeing category.
An impressive course equipping teens with the skills they need to develop to build wealth while protecting themselves from financial scams entered in the Senior Group section of the Social and Behavioural Sciences category, earned Coláiste Mhuire trio Dylan Kennedy, Brian Wycherley and Charlie Dupuis a special award – the PTSB Award.
Ross Maxwell from Tyrrellspass, a pupil at Coláiste Mhuire, came second in the Junior Individual section of the Health and Wellbeing section with his ‘Radon Awareness’ smartphone app.
A detailed study of the impact of educational disadvantage in early school leavers, and the bias towards them among Irish employers, won Coláiste Mhuire’s Seán Murphy from Delvin second place in the Senior Individual section of the Social and Behavioural Sciences category.
Mullingar’s Darragh Vickery together with two young Spaniards spending a year at Coláiste Mhuire, Arnau Montal and Ignacio Marchante Crusells, opted to compare this country and Spain’s responses to the problems of coastal erosion and flooding with their project, Seas Apart, Tides Alike, and they were highly commended in the Intermediate Group section of the Social and Behavioural Sciences category.
St Finian’s College had two entries in the competition, and emerged with a category award winner and a highly commended.
The category winner was ‘Air-lert: How harmful is the air we breathe in?’, which came up with some eye-opening information on the particulate levels that result from vaping, and also from the use of stoves and open fires. The team was Noah Callum Hill from Rathconnell, Sarah Higgins from Delvin, and Donagh Carey from Rochfortbridge, who were entered in the Senior Group category of the Health and Wellbeing category.
The second St Finian’s entry was ‘Plastic not so fantastic’ entered in the Intermediate Group section of the Health and Wellbeing category, which looked at sustainability in diabetes management, and the work of team members Hazel O’Grady, John Tully and Grace McCann was highly commended.
A sustainable pest control solution, ‘Forever Farming’, was the entry of Meán Scoil an Chlochair pupil, Emily O’Brien, in the Intermediate Individual section of the Biological and Ecological category, and her research won Emily a second place award.
Athlone and Moate
Two special awards went to entries from Athlone Community College. The Eli Lilly Award went to Ayvin Lijo, Tomas Donohoe and Eoin Gately, whose project ‘Using Hydrophobic Magnetic Particles for an eco-friendly oil spill cleanup solution’, winner also of a third place award, was entered in the Intermediate Group section of the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category, while the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) Award went to Thenuka Handurukande, whose project sought out a system to test and develop low-cost heat storage materials, and was entered in the Junior Individual category of the Technology section. Thenuka’s project also came first in their section.
‘Lost, Found, and Optimised: A novel, revised outlook on Bellman’s Lost-in-a-Forest Problem’, entered in the Intermediate Individual section of the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category, won Athlone Community College’s Srindhi Karthik a first place award.
Moate Community School picked up six awards.
Aoife Howlin and Ally Duffy came first in the Junior Group section of the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category with ‘Nutri-Flo: A natural tree nut water filter for cattle’, while Lucy Carroll came first in the Junior Individual section in the Biological and Ecological Sciences category for ‘Methane Busters: Harnessing tannins and feed additives to clean up slurry tank emissions’.
The school’s Aoibh Larkin, Leah Pillion and Kayla Moran came second in the Intermediate Group section of the Health and Wellbeing category with their project ‘Botanical Barriers: Harnessing plant compounds for UV protection during nail treatments’.
Another second place award went to Moate’s Fionn Murphy and Gavin Quilty, who looked into the possibility of generating power by harnessing swells close to the seashore for their entry in the Intermediate Group section of the Technology category, while the Junior Individual entry ‘Crouch- Bind- Set… Protect!’ by Mollie Quinn in the Technology section came in third and also won a display award.
A highly commended award went to Hollie Field, Heidi Shellam and Saoirse Lynam, whose entry in the Intermediate Group section of the Biological and Ecological category was ‘Electrobloom: An electroculture growth chamber to increase the germination and yield of protected crops’.
Our Lady’s Bower had five winners.
‘The Mould Busters’ by Anna Marie Mullan, Bláthín Moran and Aideen Derwin came first in the Intermediate Group section of the Technology category, while the efforts of Laoise Claffey, Amber Gallagher and Muireann Kenny to determine the perfect potato for chips got them a third place award in the Junior Group section of the Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences category.
Display awards went to the Senior Group project submitted by Muireann Lambe and Grace Fleming, ‘The Effects of Acid Rain on Plant Growth: Implications for Bogland’ entered in the Biological and Ecological category; to Hannah Devlin, who entered ‘Cleaning the Air’ as a Senior Individual project in the Social and Behavioural Sciences, and Michelle Hughes, whose ‘Starry Nights or Missed Delights?’ project was also entered as a Senior Individual project in the Social and Behavioural Sciences.