St Killian’s College in Carnlough has won the ‘Best Northern Ireland School Award’ at the BT Young Scientist of the Year Awards in Dublin, for their project ‘Time compressed transport tester.’
The award, which was sponsored by MATRIX and presented by Joanne Stuart, saw St Killian’s beat stiff competition from 29 other participating NI schools to win the prize which was awarded last Friday at the RDS.
Leah Cosgrove, Eimhear Carey and Rachael O’Boyle designed a device to simulate transportation so that products could be tested for transport damage before they leave a factory.
They designed a vibration table and programmed a Zelio PLC to produce the appropriate transport frequencies between 0 – 20 Hz. This operated pneumatic cylinders to produce the desired vibrations. They also carried out tests using an accelerometer to see if the frequencies produced were correct and whether they could accurately simulate the conditions experienced by a product during transport.
They then carried out further research and tests to produce a Time Compressed Transport Tester. By increasing the pressure to the pneumatic cylinders they were able to show an increase in the intensity of the test and they were able to work out how much the test time could be reduced accordingly – so the effects of a 1 hour journey could be tested in a few minutes.
The team attended the Young Scientists of the Year exhibition in Dublin last week and the project was well received throughout the week with many people tipping it for one of the major prizes.
The prizes were announced on Friday evening with St Killian’s College on stage three times in total – not only did they win the ‘Best Northern Ireland School Award’ but they also won ‘Northern Ireland Best Project award’ sponsored by BT and came second in the Senior Group award.
The School’s Principal Mr J Brady offered his congratulations to Mr Connolly and the five students:
“St Killian’s has been a constant attendee at the BTYSTE exhibition since we opened in 2010. To achieve one accolade is superb. However both teams and Mr Sean Connolly have won three, including best project and best school from NI. A fantastic achievement and one thoroughly deserved. I want to congratulate the two teams and Mr Connolly; the hard work, dedication and commitment has paid off. St Killian’s is very proud of you!”
“The growth in our economy relies on more of our young people opting to study the sciences and to go onto careers in the STEM related industries and the BT Young Scientist and Technologist Exhibition (BTYSTE) provides a great platform for our young people to get involved in STEM and be inspired about what is possible. The level of innovation and the enthusiasm shown by our young people was inspirational and it was encouraging to see 14 schools from Northern Ireland reach the finals. The exhibition itself provides an array of science and technology exhibits, events and special acts that broaden the knowledge of what is possible, motivating and exciting our students in all areas of STEM. It would be great to see more schools from Northern Ireland take part and I would encourage teachers and pupils alike to get involved in BTYSTE 2016”
“Every year the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition captures the public’s imagination by demonstrating the creativity, ingenuity and potential of our young people. Over the past three days we have had some of Ireland’s brightest, hard-working and positive young people inspire us with their ideas. Everyone involved with the exhibition has been hugely impressed by the calibre of these entries.“This exhibition continues to be the showcase for our next generation of entrepreneurs, academics, scientists and technologists; minds that will tackle and solve some of the most challenging issues facing our planet. I would like to congratulate every single student who took part this week. Participating in the BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition is a great achievement and congratulations to every single student who participated this week. If our past winners have taught us anything, it’s that this award can be life-changing.”
In all, approximately 1,200 students from across the island of Ireland covering 550 projects from 206 schools competed for the overall title ‘Winners of the 2015 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.’ The top prize was won by Ian O’Sullivan and Eimear Murphy, both aged 16, from Colaiste Treasa, Kanturk, Co Cork for their project entitled, ‘Alcohol consumption: Does the apple fall far from the tree?’.
Ian and Eimear were presented with a cheque for €5,000, the opportunity to represent Ireland at the 27th European Union Young Scientist competition taking place in September in Milan and the BTYSTE perpetual trophy. In addition they will receive an all-expenses paid trip to London to go behind the scenes at the state of the art BT Sport studios, take in a Premier League game and also do a tour of the BT Information Age exhibit at the London Science Museum.