Tag Archives: Young Scientists

News, SCHOOLS

Moyderwell Pupils Show Project At Science Fair In Dublin

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Moyderwell pupils meet with the Minister for Health, Simon Harris, at the Primary Schools Science Fair as part of the BT Young Scientists Exhibition at the RDS today.

MOYDERWELL Mercy pupils got a chance to show a project they have been working on for months at the R.D.S. Primary Science Fair today in conjunction with the B.T. Young Scientist Exhibition in the R.D.S, Dublin.

It’s the culmination of much effort for the fourteen students from 6th Class who researched and presented individual projects on How the Basic Structure of the Bicycle Has Changed Over Time’ Bicycles at the end of October last.

This group progressed to working on a team project; ‘The Science of Cycling and Why are students in our school not cycling to school?’ with the School Primary Science Fair teachers.

A moyderwell pupil explains the project.

The project involved scientifically investigating the various subsystems of the bicycle and how these work together in a Transport System. Student and Parent surveys were created and analysed.

Data from Nov/Dec student and parent surveys show that:

• 87.8% of the 148 students surveyed from 3rd to 6th Classes own a bike, while 89.2% indicate that they are confident cyclists, but only 2% travel to and from school by bike, while 22.3% walk.

• 77% of the 148 respondents indicate that if there were safer routes to and from school, they would like to cycle to school regularly.

• 67.7% of the 99 parent respondents from 3rd to 6th Class indicate that they are able to cycle confidently, but  only 5.1% are themselves daily commuter cyclists.

• 61.6% of parent respondents indicate that route safety is the main barrier to allowing their children cycle to school, followed by distance and weather concerns.

A Moyderwell pupil explains the project.

It is the intention of Government to radically change public attitude to cycling by 2020 (National Cycle Policy Framework (2009-2020), with schools being a strong focus Moyderwell Mercy Primary School wishes to lead this ‘drive’ by increasing the number of student cyclists  in 3rd to 6th Classes from 2% in November 2016 to 10% by June 2017, and an additional 5% thereafter until June 2020. At that point we intend to review our progress.

Census Results for 1986 and 2006 there was an 83% decrease in the population of primary school children commuting by bicycle (from 23,635 to 4,087 nationally , 17% of the 1986 figure.).

Kerry County Council has responded to this in the  Tralee Transport Strategy (2011-2020) by stating  “we will supply safe cycling routes to all primary and secondary schools and third level colleges by 2020’’ (page 23).

The fourteen students from 6th Class, who are exhibiting today at the R.D.S. Primary Science Fair met with Kerry County Council Engineer, Mr Eamon Scanlan in December and presented their findings.

They called for to reduce Heavy Goods Vehicles , calming-traffic measures, provision of safer junctions, provision of safe cycle lanes, extension of and safe-surfacing of existent cycle-ways  along ‘cycle-priority areas’ mapped in the Tralee Transport Strategy (2011-2020)/Section 8.

It is stated on page 7 of the Tralee Transport Strategy (2011-2020) that ‘’schools will be a strong focus…we will support the provision of secure cycle-parking at all destinations of importance to cycling’’.

Mr Scanlan was very accommodating and walked the children through the town to outline Phase One Programme of Works in the centre of town. He committed to helping the school meet their ambitious cycling targets.

News

Gaelcholáiste Students Pick Up Awards At BT Young Scientists Exhibition

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Ursula Ní Mhochóir, Lorraine De Nais and Janine Ní Chonchúir with their project on wave energy and coastal erosion. Photo by Dermot Crean
Ursula Ní Mhochóir, Lorraine De Nais and Janine Ní Chonchúir with their project on wave energy and coastal erosion. Photo by Dermot Crean

THE students at Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí didn’t come away empty handed from the BT Young Scientists Exhibition in Dublin at the weekend.

The exhibition drew entries from 1,200 students and was held over four days last week in the capital.

Laura Ni Eaidhin, of Gaelcholaiste Chiarrai with her 'Safety On Our Roads' project at the Scifest Fair at the ITT on Thursday. Photo by Dermot Crean
Laura Ní Eidhin, of Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí (pictured here at the ITT Scifest in May) was ‘Highly Commended’ for her project. Photo by Dermot Crean

Second year student, Laura Ní Eidhin, was ‘Highly Commended’ for her project on ‘Reducing carbon dioxide emissions and road deaths’.

The Gaelcholaiste’s other entry from Transition Year students, Ursula Ní Mhochóir, Lorraine De Nais and Janine Ní Chonchúir on ‘Using water energy buoys to reduce coastal erosion whilst generating electricity’ won a ‘Display Award’.

Other Kerry award winners were Emily Cahill of Presentation Secondary School in Milltown who came third in the Intermediate Social and Behavioural Science category and also won a special award from the Psychological Society of Ireland for her project on ‘An investigation into the influence of gender equality education on the attitudes of children towards gender roles in the workforce’.

Two groups from Killorglin Community College won Highly Commended and Special Awards for their projects.

News, SCHOOLS

Young Scientists Hope To Make Waves At RDS Exhibition

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Science teacher at Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí, Elaine Ní Dheargáin with students Janine Ní Chonchúir, Lorraine de Nais and Ursula Ní Mhochóir and their project. Photo by Dermot Crean

STUDENTS from around the county are in Dublin this week to take part in the BT Young Scientists Exhibition at the RDS and Tralee schools are represented in three projects: two from Gaelcholáiste Chiarraí and one from Presentation Secondary School.

The Gaelcholaiste’s entries focus on ‘Using water energy buoys to reduce coastal erosion whilst generating electricity’ and ‘Reducing carbon dioxide emissions and road deaths’.

Three Transition Year students Ursula Ní Mhochóir, Lorraine De Nais and Janine Ní Chonchúir have been working on their project on wave energy and coastal erosion since September.

“It’s a project on harnessing wave power while preventing coastal erosion,” said Ursula. “We know coastal erosion is a big problem, especially in Ballybunion where we saw the effects over a year, so we decided to have a look at it. We researched it a lot and found out about wave energy and decided to incorporate that into the project,” she said.

The girls made a model which will demonstrate their findings to judges at the exhibition.

Laura Ni Eaidhin, of Gaelcholaiste Chiarrai with her 'Safety On Our Roads' project at the Scifest Fair at the ITT on Thursday. Photo by Dermot Crean
Laura Ní Eidhin, of Gaelcholaiste Chiarrai with her ‘Safety On Our Roads’ project at the Scifest Fair at the ITT last May. Photo by Dermot Crean

Their fellow schoolmate, Laura Ni Eidhin, a second year student, will be bringing her project on ‘Reducing carbon dioxide emissions and road deaths’ to the exhibition.

She has already finished Runner-Up in the Best Project category for her ‘Sábhálacht ar ár mbothaire – Safety on our roads (A statistical analysis of driver knowledge)’ project at the Scifest at the ITT in May 2014.

She has now developed her project further for the Young Scientists exhibition.

“Since we started going to the Young Scientists exhibition we’d normally have about two projects each year,” said science teacher, Elaine Ní Dheargáin. “We’ve been highly commended one year and won a display award a few years ago, so there’s a good science tradition in the school,” she said.

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Ciara Begley of Presentation Secondary School is up in Dublin at the BT Young Scientists Exhibition. Photo by Dermot Crean

Over in Presentation Secondary, Transtition Year student, Ciara Begley, was a late entry into the exhibition.

“Ciara spent a lot of time over Christmas on the project as she got a late call-up on December 18,”said her science teacher, Kay O’Mahony.

“We’re thrilled she was called up, but it was short notice. We’ve had numerous entries in the exhibition over the years with one of our students, Emer Jones, winning the overall prize in 2008,” she said.

Ciara’s project ‘Does Physical Training Cause Injury’ explores how injuries occur by overtraining and not warming up correctly while coming to recommendations on how to help avoid these injuries.

“It’s mainly about how not warming up correctly, or overtraining, results in injuries,” Ciara said.  “I interviewed physical trainers about it and did research into the subject over Christmas. I found 53% of women received ligament injuries by not warming up properly,” she said.

Among her recommendations are that trainers should record players injuries and how they happened and that all GAA trainers should be sent on courses in the latest developments in physical training and on how to do proper warm-ups and warm-downs to prevent injuries.

The BT Young Scientist Exhibition starts today and continues until Saturday. Best of luck to all Kerry students.