Studying a solar eclipse and experimenting with battery power: BT Young Scientist projects (video)

14 Jan 2013

We talked to some of the young exhibitors about their projects at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition before the event wrapped up on Saturday at the RDS in Dublin.

Three students from Kinsale Community School were crowned as this year’s winners of the science contest at the RDS on Friday evening. The three 15-year-old students, Ciara Judge, Emer Hickey and Sophie Healy-Thow, won for their project on the effects of certain bacteria on plant germination. Ciara’s older sister Aisling also won the competition in 2006.

This year, each of the four top awards were won by girls.

Before the winners were announced on Friday, BT Ireland CEO Colm O’Neill took to the stage to congratulate each of the 1,197 students who had entered this year’s contest to showcase 550 projects.

“We are in the middle of a techno-science revolution. We don’t have enough scientists and technologists,” said O’Neill, as he encouraged students to go home and tell their friends to enter the competition next year, as well as entering it again themselves.

In the following video we feature three projects from this year’s exhibition.

Firstly, Alex Buckley, Andrew Cleary and Conor Farrell, students from Gonzaga College, Dublin, talk about their project that involved carrying out experiments during a total solar eclipse.

The trio travelled to Australia to do the experiments during the total solar eclipse that took place on 14 November 2012.

Martha Kirwan and Aoife Phelan from Ursuline Secondary School in Co Tipperary then spoke about their project that looked into factors that have an effect on total bacterial count (TBC) in milk. The duo carried out a series of experiments to see how they could help farmers reduce TBC when milking cows.

Finally, Ultan O’Rourke and Louis Madden from St Macartan’s College in Co Monaghan carried out experiments to compare the performances and battery life of generic and branded batteries.

The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2013 – Part 2

Carmel Doyle was a long-time reporter with Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com