Building on the next generation

Although Cavan students did not feature amongst the prizewinners of the 2022 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE), the six projects that made the final did the county proud.

When talking to young people who researched projects for the competition, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by their maturity and depth of thought.

A case in point is Aditya Joshi (15) and Aditya Kumar (16) from Synge Street in Dublin who won the top prize this year for their project entitled ‘A New Method of Solving the Bernoulli Quadrisection Problem’.

According to the two students, the project has a practical use within designing electronic circuits. Throughout human history young people have been the agents of progress in science, arts and humanities. Some can make those changes as individuals; think Greta Thunberg, while others do so as part of a collective.

For decades the Young Scientist exhibition has acknowledged such brilliance. The first ever Young Scientist competition was in 1965. The winner, Kildare native John Monaghan, ended up moving to California where he founded Avigen Inc a global leader in the pharmaceutical industry.

In 2005, Limerick native Patrick Collison won the competition aged 16 years. He moved to the US and sold his first software company Auctomatic, founded with his younger brother John, for €3 million at age 19. The Collison brothers went on to found Stripe, the online payments company, currently valued at over $9 billion.

In the 58 years of the competition, the projects, and the students behind them, have contributed to our understanding of science, technology, engineering, and maths. This year’s projects feature a wide array of topics from health and Covid-19 to climate and sustainability.

Cavan

Six projects by students from Cavan made it to the final stage of the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition 2022. Three are from students attending Colaiste Dun na Rí in Kingscourt, and one each from students at Breifne College, St Patrick’s College and Loreto College, Cavan Town.

The projects are: ‘How has rubbish disposal increased or decreased in the past five years and what are the causes’, by a group of students at Breifne College in the Biological and Ecological category; ‘The Impact Social Media had during the Covid-19 Pandemic’ by students from Colaiste Dun na Rí in Social and Behavioural Sciences; and ‘How the opinions and behaviour of other people influence how humans think and perform’ by a pupil attending St Patrick’s College, also in Social and Behavioural Sciences.

The remaining Cavan projects are: ‘The effect of different coloured lights on Phototropism’ in the Biological and Ecological category and ‘Anti-bacterial sprays vs Anti-bacterial wipes’, both by Colaiste Dun an Ri students and a Loreto College student’s ‘The Effectiveness of Various Low Cost Options to Improve Indoor Air Quality’ in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences category.

Influence

St Patrick’s College student Dara Flood gave an insight into his project ‘How the opinions and behaviour of other people influence how humans think and perform’ to The Anglo-Celt: “I play lots of sports. I noticed that on the days coming up to a big match I get quite nervous. When I practice by myself, I don’t get nervous but when I perform in a match in front of people, I sometimes do better. The crowds cheering you on give a boost, make you feel you are doing things well,” he outlined.

Dara references “behind closed doors” events like Cavan’s 2020 Ulster Championship win and Gerwyn Price’s win at PDC 2021 Darts World Championships in a silent Alexandra Palace, as triggers for the inspiration for his project.

“Cavan hadn’t won an Ulster since 1997, I wondered did that win have anything to do with the lockdown,” he speculated.

“I did some research into the theory behind it. I found a theory called ‘Social Facilitation’, and that was what I based my study on,” Dara said.

Dara’s experiment saw two groups of nine students from Virginia College and St Patrick’s take shots at a basketball hoop with alternating environmental factors; alone, with a supportive crowd, a hostile crowd and random. The groups were a mix of male and female, experienced players and inexperienced players.

The range of the research extends beyond the sporting arena: “Teenagers are always on their phones. We are always performing, I would like to examine how virtual crowds effect our everyday lives.”

The project that Dara put forward was facilitated by his Science teacher, Amanda Shields. The Transition Year student says of the online experience: “It’s a lot more work. Our essay can be up to 50 pages, we had to keep a day to day record of everything we did since August. There were still online quizzes with the participants. I came seventh in one of the online quizzes.”

Micro-organisms

To the east of the county Colaiste Dun na Rí continue their strong showing at the annual event. Aoibhe Byrne and her group of Millie Burns and Sophie Williams undertook the timely project ‘Anti-bacterial sprays vs. Anti-bacterial wipes’.

“We were in our Home Economics room learning about micro-organisms, and how they grow. At the start of the year we were using wipes, but later on we used the anti-bacterial sprays. We just wanted to know which of the products lowered the levels of bacteria to a greater extent,” Aoibhe said of the genesis of their project.

Sophie Williams ran through the experimental process: “We bought three different brands of sprays and wipes. We prepared our nutrient, our agar and our petri dishes. We investigated the presence of the micro-organisms on the counters before and after the use of the cleaning products. We used sterile swabs to get samples. We tested surfaces treated with each product five times on three different days. We put the samples in an incubator and the bacteria grew. We recorded the data on tables and analysed the results.”

Millie Burns relayed the outcome of the research: “Our results found that 73% of the wipes left no bacteria. That compares with 17% of the sprays leaving no bacteria. We were shocked that the wipes came out on top. The wipes appear to spread the fluid evenly.”

The students benefited from the guidance of teacher Siobhan Hamill when putting their project together.

Aoibhe says the group were delighted to reach the final stage of the competition: “We didn’t expect to get this far,” she tells the Celt, while Sophie adds: “It is a really interesting competition to be a part of. We really enjoyed working on the project.

“We have never experienced what it was like in Dublin, but it is very exciting here. I’d say if it was ‘in person’ is would have been a lot more exciting. The nerves would have been more intense, because you would be in front of the judges, but online it was not so bad,” Aoibhe said of the project.

Trophy

The 2022 BT Young Scientist & Technology winners, Aditya Joshi and Aditya Kumar, receive the BTYSTE perpetual trophy and the top prize of €7,500. The worthy winners will also represent Ireland at the European Union Contest for Young Scientists, which takes place in September 2022.

The award for Individual winner went to Ross O’Boyle (16), a transition year student from Portmarnock Community College, Dublin for his project entitled ‘An investigation into the effectiveness of various ventilation methods using CO2 as a proxy for the spread of Covid-19 in both controlled and real-life scenarios’.