St Mary’s College

YOUNG SCIENTIST

This week saw a group of our TY Young Scientist exhibitors travel to the RDS in Dublin with their teachers Joanne English and Brid Hempenstall to prepare their displays for the BT Young Scientist Exhibition at the RDS in Dublin. We are delighted to that four of our projects were selected for exhibition this year. The projects on display were as follows.

‘HOW ACCURATE ARE THE ‘BEST BEFORE’ DATES OF MILK’ – ALICE KEENAN AND AOIFE MCBRIDE: This project investigates whether certain brands of milk are going off quicker than its best before dates and if so, why?

The girls noticed their mothers shouting the house down when the milk had spoiled before its best before date, leaving them with chunky tea. They set about investigating if this applies to all brands of milk and to see which brand could provide their mothers with chunk less tea the longest. They also wished to investigate whether the fat content in the milk affected the length of time prior to its best before date.

‘THE SECRET TO CLEANING YOUR GUMSHIELD IN LESS THAN A MINUTE – GRAB AND GO’ – ALAIDH KAVANAGH AND ANNA KEATING: This project investigates the different level on bacteria on gum shields using agar plates to observe the bacterial growth after spraying with different mouth washes to establish which one succeeded in killing the majority of the bacteria. From their results Alaidh and Anna hope to inform fellow GAA players on effective methods of cleaning their gum shield and thus decrease the amount of bacteria being taken into their mouths.

‘TEENAGE VEGANISM-IS IT POSSIBLE?’ – NIAMH CURLEY AND KELSEY DEVLIN: The students are investigating if becoming a Vegan as a teenager is possible. Niamh and Kelsey noticed their peers struggling with body image and maintaining a healthy lifestyle.

Many young people nowadays resort to fad diets to lose weight which can result in extremely bad health issues in the future. The girls decided to go Vegan for two weeks to see how difficult it would be and also to examine the impact it would have on their health. The students questioned 100’s of students, male and female, to determine their opinions and attitudes to Veganism and to determine if the average teenager could healthily turn Vegan.

‘WHY FIDGET SPINNERS ARE MORE THAN TOYS.’ – KATIE GARRETT: The project aims to showcase the effect of the growing popularity of stim toys in media on Autistic students and students with ADHD, and whether toys such as fidget spinners are beneficial to students, specifically those with a neurodevelopmental disorder.

Katie also hopes to show whether schools are right to have banned fidget spinners, and whether or not the media’s widespread opinion surrounding fidget spinners is accurate (a nuisance, a distraction, etc) During her research, Katie interviewed two school principal’s and surveyed 100’s of students with a range of learning difficulties from three primary school special units and three secondary schools so as to collate her information on why fidget spinners are more than toys.

The girls have already enjoyed a great experience so far as they met with Dr Norah Patten, who is in training to become Ireland’ first astronaut, our local TDs and also have been interviewed by the judges and had their projects assessed so at time of going to press were enjoying the public exhibition and also awaiting the result of the adjudicators.

DEBATING SUCCESS

Our senior debating team were victorious again on Tuesday as they successfully opposed the motion ‘For women to access leadership positions, gender quotas must be implemented’. The team of Kate Campbell, Elizabeth Byrne, Emily Keenan and Zoe Cummins were voted unanimous victors after making the trip to St Kevin’s, Dunlavin.

Well done girls on another superb performance and good luck in the next round.