Cavan students await results at the BT Young Scientist Awards 2024

Students from five Cavan Schools are awaiting the results which will be announced very soon.

The RDS is alive with students from across the country as they await the results of the BT Young Scientist Exhibition 2024.

Among thousands of students taking part are teenagers from five Cavan schools who are bidding to be announced the winners later today.

The exhibition began on Wednesday as each group demonstrated their projects for three judges on three separate occasions.

Each judge scored the group secretly, and the numbers have been added up to reveal the winner.

The successful schools from Cavan include Cavan Town; St Bricin’s College, Belturbet; Virginia College and Coláiste Dún an Rí Kingscourt, all under the auspices of Cavan Monaghan Education and Training Board; while Loreto College, Cavan Town, has also had a number of entries qualify.

Coláiste Dún and Rí

Investigating ‘how development squads affect the mental health of teenagers,” Aoife Kennedy and Katie McCarthy completed a survey based project on how development squads affect the mental health of teenagers in Ireland.

“It just gives an insight into the different opinions and experiences of certain individuals around the country and how they’ve been affected by their teams or the sport they are playing.”

The group’s project was inspired by personal experience and witnessing their friends' mental health be affected by the pressure of making development squads.”

The survey results revealed development squads do have a negative effect on the mental health of teenagers and the group believe more supports need to be put in place to support the young people in this regard.

A second group of pupils from the Kingscourt school will present ‘An investigated study into the many different usages of photocatalysis’ in the Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences competition.

Lorna Hanratty and Roisin Lynch stated their project “is on the different usages of photocatalysts,” explaining “photocatalysts reactions can speed up because of the light”.

“We did photo dynamic therapy which can be used to treat cancer and it’s better than radiation because it doesn’t cause fertility problems and it can be used most of the time in the same area.”

The only Cavan group with just one member is ‘What are you drinking?’ by Coláiste Dún an Rí student Ciara McEntee.

My project is an assessment of the emerging and existing parameters set by the SI in 1999 and 2023. So that’s the drinking water regulations.

“When I’m older I’d like to be a doctor or do something in the medical field, so I wanted to do a project that would highlight the health effects of the drinking water. Drinking is quite important.”

Ciara found that water provided to rural areas has less chemical parameters in drinking water in comparison to water provided to urban areas.

Loretto College

Kayla Conaty-Hicks, Mikayla Daly and Sarah Smith from Loreto College in Cavan looked at ‘The Pink Tax- Wealth over Women’ under the Social & Behavioural Sciences section.

“Our project is based on the Pink Tax which is a term that was popularised in 1995 in California” said Kayla, explaining the projects looks at “disproportionately priced products for men and women.”

“It’s an investigation into discrimination against female consumers.”

A group from the same school, consisting of Sadhbh Daly and Aoibhinn Sexton are competing in the same category, exhibiting ‘From Grave to Blaze: Uncovering the Cremation Craze’.

“Our project is about the inclining rate of cremation in Ireland. Our results showed that when someone is making their end of life choice, it is all to do with religion, however when someone is changing their preference from burial to cremation it is all to do with personal beliefs.”

Aoibhinn explained the factors which affect the decision include costs, availability of land, family preference, personal preference and concerns for the environment.

St Bricin’s College

St Bricin’s College in Belturbet has two group projects in the mix - ‘Navigating the flood: Assessing the Effects of Water Stress Priming on Plant Stress Tolerance’ in the Biological & Ecological section are Nina Nawrocka and Ellie May McGovern.

“It’s about how plants respond to flooding,” Ellie May told the Celt. “So basically, plants face many abiotic stressors which are environmental factors or conditions which can negatively impact on plants.

“One of the main abiotic stressors in Ireland today would be excessive rainfall since we get a lot of rain. Waterlogging occurs when soil becomes saturated with water which then means there is no room for air in the soil which the plant roots need to grow properly.”

Another group of students, Áine McGovern, Ruta Dulaityte and Alicja Czop from St Bricin’s College created ‘Evaluating the Impact of Hospital Visibility and Scholarly Contributions – An Intra-Country and Inter-Country Comparison’ in the Social & Behavioural Sciences section.

Speaking to the Anglo-Celt during the exhibition, Áine outlined her projects stating “our project is about the visibility and scholarly contributions made by hospitals in Ireland. It compared the hospitals in Ireland and their funding locally to their contributions and their rankings on a global scale.”

The group’s project was inspired by the declining number of hospitals in Ireland from the 2000’s with 182 nationally to just 86 hospitals presently.

“There was a drastic fall between 2008 and 2009,” explained Ruta.

Virginia College

Many groups from Virginia College have also been exhibiting across a range of categories.

One of the projects which has received national coverage is titled The Green Goddess Experiment: A comprehensive examination on exploring optimal components for an Eco-friendly Dry Shampoo’ (Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences);

Kelly Ryan, Layla Lavelle and Leona McCullough from Virginia College, were shocked after they saw a TikTok video revealing dry shampoo contains carcinogens or cancer causing materials.

Following some research, the girls figured out how to make dry shampoo with completely natural products including starch, baby powder, cocoa powder, lemon oil and cornstarch, to make their product health friendly.

The project ‘In the Eyes of the Beholder: An investigation into testing the Accuracy of eyewitness Testimonies in criminal convictions’ was created by a group from Virginia College.

“The purpose of our project was to determine whether eyewitness testimony would actually be a viable source or recognition in the court,” explained Conor Sheehan on behalf of his teammates Evan Durston and Caolán Mahon.

The group showed viewers a video of a staged murder scene where the victim and the murderer were not identified. Ten photos were then shown to the viewers who were asked to identify the victim, murderer, accomplice and those who were simply present at the scene. These tests were conducted at different times following the video was shown, some straight away, some the following week and others over a month later. This indicated the impact time plays on the witness's memory. The test revealed the witnesses lost credibility following the more time that passed.

“We found that [eye witness testing] wasn’t that reliable,” concluded Conor.

‘You had me at Aloe! An investigation into the antifungal efficacy of Aloe vera in vitro and its use as a treatment to maintain post harvest table Berry quality’.

The study which was completed by Kayle Curran Doughty and Kate O’Sullivan investigates Aloe Vera’s potential as a natural fungicide to prevent the post harvest of berry decay.

“We wanted to do this investigation because any time we got fresh fruit or berries in the shop, we found they grew mould or fungus really quickly, so we wanted to find a way to prevent that from happening.”

The group found the introduction of aloe vera to the berries prevented 100% of mould forming on berries while being refrigerated after 16 days.

Presenting their project, ‘Different Club Different Game’ (Chemical, Physical & Mathematical Sciences) Virginia College students Daniel Lynch and Sean King stated “our projects is about the investigation on how the loft and angle of branded gold clubs effect the distance a golfball travels. “

Daniel explained “we used a swinging mechanism because for most golfers, you can’t get the same force each time you swing. We did about four shots with each club and figured out all the distances by using gravity and the force of the swing.”

Sean then continued stating “we did it with my clubs and Daniels clubs and then compared the difference. My brand is Mizuno and his is Slazenger, mine would be more expensive and there’s not a very significant difference.”

Mismatched Medics: An analysis of the inadequacy of skin-colour-matching plasters in promoting inclusiveness’.

Charlie Brady, Ciaran Conlon and Eve Brennan created surveys to find out how the public felt about the issue.

“Our project is on plaster inclusivity, we were just trying to figure out how people felt about the lack of dark plaster colours being available,” told Charlie.

“What we did find is that the darker people are, the more they care about the colour of the plasters and we think that’s because there are no plasters in that colour available in shops,” explained Ciaran.

The group revealed their project was inspired by their friends who explained the issue to them previously.

A group from Breifne College entered their project ‘Distillation Engine’ in the Technology category.

In this region, Ballybay Community College and Largy College, Clones, both also CMETB schools, are also among the 550 exhibitors nationally.