A Record Year for Moate at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition

It’s a record year for Moate Community School with nine projects and 23 students being accepted for the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition at the RDS in January. The students are diligently preparing their Science projects, completing experiments, analysing data, preparing videos, posters and presentations for judges.

In their project ‘Bio-Enzymes: A Cooler Way to Wash’, First Year Students Leah Winters, Millie O’Donovan, Lilly Daly are investigating if food stains can be removed by the enzymes in fermented fruits, such as pineapple, potato and banana. Using their results, they hope to produce an environmentally friendly detergent that eliminates the need for high temperature washes.

In their project called “Garden Greening”, First Year Students Domhnall Molloy, Terry Heffernan and Kerry Sun are investigating the differences in the biodiversity of flora, fauna and micro-invertebrates in local garden micro-habitats. With their results they plan to develop a biodiversity garden pillar which will support an array of invertebrates, birds and hedgehogs.

Second Year students Aoife Ross, Hannah Higgins and Katie Creggy are diligently working on their ‘Plan Bee’ project. These students have collected flowers from plants, clover, buttercup, daisies and more, from along the Greenway in Moate. They are using extracts from these flowers and icing sugar to make a natural feed which they hope will improve the quality of honey produced by bees in Autumn.

The following are the projects by Transition Year Students:

Niamh Kelly, Evanna Farrell and Emily Winters are investigating the effect of video games on peripheral vision. Their project aims to improve the peripheral vision in elderly drivers, as road accidents have become increasingly common in the elderly. These students have studied the change in peripheral vision among participants of varying ages after playing a video game that the group have designed.

Nathan Downes, Éannna Maxwell and Daniel Lynam are investigating whether native duckweed can be used to remediate silage effluent and dairy washings into an environmentally friendly fertiliser while providing a cheap nutritious feed for cattle. The students sourced native duckweed samples from unused canals. They are evaluating the effectiveness of duckweed at reducing the nutrient content of the run-off by growing the duckweed on various concentrations of effluent and measuring the nitrate and phosphate compositions and Biological Oxygen Demand.

Sarah-Jayne Hasson, Roisin Slevin are investigating whether gender influences the perceived enjoyment of team and individual sports. They are also investigating the age at which the gender barrier begins and how this impacts dropout rates in sports as well as young people’s mental and physical health. They hope to define key factors that affect enjoyment in sports and thereby improve retention.

Lauren Finan and Trina Fox’s project is titled ‘Evaluating the Effectiveness of Farming practices at reducing Laminitis Incidence among Irish Connemara Ponies’. Laminitis is a condition effects Connemara Ponies, causing the ponies to go lame and is very uncomfortable for them. They are creating a food supplement ‘lick’ to help reduce the cases of Laminitis by reducing blood sugar in horses.

Áine Shortall and Kate Whyte are creating natural equine wormers. Equine parasites are becoming resistant to chemical wormers. If untreated parasites can cause health issues such as respiratory problems and overall poor general health in horses. They are creating a natural and sweet solution to treat these parasites.

Brendan Egan and Arina Tsarkova are investigating the factors that affect the public’s willingness to make sacrifices to reduce Ireland’s Carbon Emissions. They are surveying people on their knowledge of climate change, their everyday habits and their willingness to change their lifestyles to reduce their carbon footprint.

MCS would like to wish all the students every success in their preparations and presentations of their projects.

Cover photos:

BTYSE Seniors 1:

Roisin Slevin & Sarah-Jayne Hasson

Emily Winters, Evanna Farrell, Niamh Kelly, Brendan Egan & Arina Tsarkova

BTYSE Seniors 2:

Éanna Maxwell, Nathan Downes, Daniel Lynam, Trina Fox & Lauren Finan

Kate Whyte & Áine Shortall