Students from Desmond College brought home first place and third place honours at this year’s virtual BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.
5th years Ethan Kirwan and Jack Kelly took the gold in Senior Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences with their project “Aeroacoustics of the swinging corrugated tube”. This was an investigation using Bernouilli’s Principle to measure the velocity and pressured air flow passing through the free end tube. The two science students set out to investigate if the volume of air flow changes the sound created by passing it through different sizes tubes, and would corrugations on these tubes influence the air flow and the pitch. They wanted to measure the rate and volume of air that passes through a tube as the tube is being rotated in a circular motion.
5th years students Niamh O’ Mahony and Alzbeta Barisova achieved third place in the Senior Technology Group with their project “Smart Ruler – Reduce errors due to ADHD and Dyslexia”. The pair built a device that used a colour filtration overlay system to reduce errors when reading scales on a ruler coupled with contrasting colours to highlight text to be read. They designed their ruler and associated “Reading Panes” for children with ADHD who experience difficulty reading the scale on the ruler and text and students with dyslexia who find it challenging when faced with multiple words on multiple lines. The ruler allows students to focus on one line at the time whilst filtering out part of the ruler’s scale by having it disappear by overlaying which frustrates them from learning maths.
Other Desmond College students involved in this year’s competition were Laura Brennan with “Alert System to Warn of Harmful UV Rays”, Emma Greaney and Faye Murphy with “Self-Watering Plants” and Madison Brouder and Ciara Barrett with “Canine Comfort” A Device to assist dogs with phobias arising from thunderstorms & pyrotechnics. Also competing were Aoibhilinn Heath with her project “E.A.T. Eating Assistive Technology”, senior students Lucy Flaherty and Trevor O’ Shea with “Sanitising Station” and Edel McMahon and Róisín Solley-Ambrose with “Chicken Motel”.
Speaking about the student’s achievements, teacher Donal Enright who has encouraged students over the years to enter projects into the annual exhibition said “Desmond College has a proud tradition of involvement with BT Young Scientist. Our school and its teachers have supported projects and encouraged student participation in this STEM event since 1966, when students David Geary and Sean Flynn entered our school’s first two projects. Since then Desmond College students have continued to enter and indeed excel in this the biggest Science Fair of its kind in Europe and participation would not be possible without the dedication of our teachers along with the ongoing support and encouragement offered by our Principal Vourneen Gavin Barry.”
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