Dominican College

WELCOME BACK

Welcome back to all. We hope you all had a great Christmas break and we wish you all a very happy new year. CONGRATS AGAIN TO FIONNUALA

Congratulations once again to our past pupil, Fionnuala Britton who again defended her title in the Great Edinburgh International Cross -Country competition on Saturday January 5th 2013. The Euro- pean Cross Country Champion put in an impressive performance to win the women’s 6 km race. Despite a slight slip in the closing stages, Fionnuala Britton finished over 16 seconds ahead of her nearest rival. Well done Fionnuala! POSITIVE AFFIRMATION

Congratulations to the following students who won prizes for positive affirmation for November/December. These prizes are awarded to the students in each year group who make a positive contribution to school life.

1st Year: Hannah Ffrench (1 Emerald); 2nd Year: Maya Mc Devitt (2 Sapphire)3rd Year: Courtney O Neill (3 Sapphire); 4th Year: Holly Louise Larkin (4 Silver); 5th Year: Lucy Sheehy (5 Pearl); 6th Year: Niamh Ann Murphy (6 Pearl). YOUNG SCIENTISTS!

Best of luck to all our 20 students representing the school in this years BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. It is now one of the biggest science and technology events in the world. This year we have 8 projects in the Exhibition which is a huge achievement. They are carried out by: Emily Humby, Rose Fagan, Emily Dellow, Sarah Carroll, Emer Geraghty, Annie Loftus, Rachel Phillips, Aoibheann Dowd, Bronwyn Hogan, Carrie Corkish, Erika Dunne, Maya Mc Devitt, Zoe Byrne, Erin O’Dwyer, Saoirse O’Reilly, Nicole Devitt, Aisling Murphy, Jade Duffy, Lauren Fahy and Aine O’Cahill. Best of luck to all and huge thanks to Mr. O’Brien for all his time, effort and enthusiasm in coordinating these projects.

‘CHAIN REACTION’ BY ZOE BYRNE, ERIN O’DWYER AND MAYA MC DEVITT: Our Young Scientist project is called ‘Chain Reaction-an investigation into the apparent randomness of a chain reaction involving ping pong balls mounted on mousetraps’. Our project aims to find order in the random snapping of mousetraps when they are placed beside one another and the initial reaction is started by dropping a ping pong ball into the set-up. Our result was that the reaction is not as random as it looks, and seems to follow a pattern. The order in which the mouse traps snapped followed a wave-like pattern when graphed.

‘JUST BECAUSE I AM A GIRL’ BY EIMEAR GERAGHTY AND ANNIE LOFTUS: Our project is comparing the lives and rights of a 16 year old girl in Ireland and a 16 year old in Nigeria. We got a Nigerian girl to fill out a survey. We got four Irish girls to fill in diaries for a month and to fill out surveys. We found that although a lot of their daily loves are similar to ours the lives of Nigerians are much more difficult than ours.

‘THE FRIENDS PARADOX’ BY CARRIE CORKISH, BRONWYN HOGAN AND ERIKA DUNNE: The Friends Paradox was discovered by Scott L. Field. It shows that people are not as popular as they think they are and this applies to real life! In our project we wanted to see if it applies to Facebook. We did this by picking a random friend on facebook and picking 10 random friends of theirs. By seeing how many friends each of these ten have we were able to work out the popularity of each. By analysing complicated results and found that the friends paradox does not apply to Facebook!

‘HOW STRONG DOES A MAGNET NEED TO BE TO COMPLETELY WIPE A MEMORY STICK, KEYCARD OR FLOPPY DISC?’ BY RACHEL PHILLIPS AND AOIBHEANN DOWD: In our project we put magnets near keycards for different amounts of time at different lengths from the keycard. We added a magnet each time until eventually we discovered that 5 or more magnets would wipe the keycards (with the exception of 8 magnets for some reason). We did the same with the floppy disc and found that 2 or more magnets wiped the floppy disc. For the USB key we left it surrounded by 10 magnets overnight but it did not wipe.

‘TO DEVELOP A PORTABLE FRIDGE FOR A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO CARRY AND TRANSPORT ANTIBIOTICS’ BY A**ISLING MURPHY, SAOIRSE O’REILLY AND NICOLE DEVITT: We have been accepted into BT young scientist 2013 and are so excited about participating and displaying our project in the RDS. The project that we have been working on and developed is a portable fridge for a third world country specifically designed to carry and transport antibiotics. The fridge is made of raw materials, there is no electricity or solar energy involved. We would like to thank Dominican College Wicklow and especially Mr O’ Brien for all their support and mentor ship with this project.

‘COLOUR PERCEPTION – DO YOU SEE WHAT I AM SEEING?’ BY SARAH CARROLL AND EMILY DELLOW: Our project is an investigation into how we see colour and if we all perceive colour the same. We hope you will come visit us all in the RDS and check out our results! 1ST YEAR TRIP TO RDS

All first years will be taking their annual trip to the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition on Friday 11th. They are eager to show their support to their fellow students and experience some of the fun activities that are on in the RDS. FIRST YEAR PARENT-TEACHER

This will take place on Thursday 17th January from 4.15-6.45. Parent teacher meetings provide an ideal opportunity for parents to meet with teachers and discuss progress. We look forward to meeting as many parents and guardians there. BOARD OF MANAGEMENT MEETING

The first Board meeting of the new year will take place on Thursday 24th January at 8pm. MOCKS

The Mock Exams will begin on Wednesday 30th January for 3rd and 6th years.