Fantastic experience for Young Scientists in RDS
By Brendan Grehan
TWO STUDENTS from a Palmerstown school won a top prize at this years BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition.
Dylan Bagnall and Richard Beattie from The Kings Hospital won first place in the Biological and Ecological Intermediate Group for their project: “Identifying Bats from the Roost- Using an Inexpensive Raspberry Pi Bat Detector and PCR.”
Dylan Donohoe from Adamstown Community College won second place in the Social and Behavioural Intermediate category for his project “Why Do Trans People Have Some of the Highest Suicide Rates in the World?”
There was a great representation from local schools with their projects.
Molly Measey from Pobailscoil Iosolde Palmerstown, entered the competition with her project ‘Isolation of phenylacetonitetrile and gas chromatography analysis of the pitaya plant.”
James McDonagh and Azmain Faiq Bin Abuzzaher from Colaiste Phadraig in Lucan contributed on a project entitled “Can a Chua circuit really be used to produce random sequences”.
Hayley Brady from Pobalscoil Iosolde entered a project entitled “The Development of an Interactive and Tactile Learning Programme for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder using Modular Robotics.”
Zac Reid from Kishoge Community College entered a project entitled: “Modelling Evolution: a gradient descent approach to predicting population genetics”.
Finn Coyle and Geena Connolly from Colaiste Chillain entered a project entitled: “Athchursail San La Ata Inniu Ann”.
Dhanya Binoy and Mary Adekoya from Adamstown Community College had a topical project entitled : “Is your mobile making you less mobile.”
An Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, visited the exhibition and spoke to Dylan and Richard from The Kings Hospital about their winning project. Taoiseach Varadkar is a former pupil of The Kings Hospital.
Dylan and Richard told The Echo that they began the project due to the expansion of a maternity bat roost in Dylan’s home in Meath. A wildlife ranger was called out to look at it, and she thought there was around 200 female bats each with one to two pups. These were also thought to be from two species which were the Soprano pipistrelle and the Leisler’s bat.
A bat detector would have cost over €1,100 so they decided to develop their own detector which cost just €139.
Dylan said that entering the competiton was a “fantastic experience”.
He added: “At the exhibition our project was very well received and for it we won first in our category(Intermediate group Biological and Ecological sciences) as well as an award from the Irish Research Council. Overall we had an amazing time at this exhibition and can’t wait to go back next year.”
