How to detect a seam of undiscovered diamonds in Angola from a laptop in Kildare.
How to demonstrate that a motorway can be a greenway by deployment of vehicle-generated renewable energy.
How to save a child from losing their ability to speak while on a waiting list to see a speech and language therapist.
These were just some of the questions spinning around the heads of secondary school students whose answers made it to the finals of the annual SciFest competition.
RM Block
The event, now in its 19th year, attracted entries from 16,000 students who presented their work at school science fairs across the island.
Entries were picked from schools for regional finals, and then from the regionals to the national finals, which were judged in Dublin on Friday.
Zack O’Leary, a third-year student at Clongowes Wood College in Co Kildare, developed his own software, Mantis, that uses geological and hydrological databases along with atmospheric measurements to detect underground features remotely.
“I was reading about how Egypt spent millions to try to find a chamber in one of the pyramids of Giza,” he said.
“They had to have a lot of scientists on site and close to tourists so there was a lot of disruption. I wondered if there was a way of doing it remotely – capturing subsurface imaging without having to be physically on site.”
Mantis proves there is. After testing it, initially against conventional on-site surveys for mines in the US and Angola, the software showed a consistent accuracy rate of 97 per cent.
Dana Carney and Abigail Killeen, transition year students at Mount St Michael Secondary School in Claremorris, Co Mayo, worked on a project personal to both of them.
A family member and a friend have speech impediments and have struggled to get timely therapy. The friends developed an app, Talktime, that listens to and analyses speech and produces personalised exercises for children.
Parents of some of the thousands of children waiting for appointments tried it and gave it a huge thumbs up.
“It’s about confidence. If a child loses their confidence in speaking, they lose their way of expressing themselves, of communicating, of learning,” said Killeen.
Carney said: “This doesn’t replace speech and language therapy but it fills the gap while they’re waiting.”
Sri Raj Arush Satyavolu, who is in third year at CBS Tralee, Co Kerry, built a working model of vertical axis wind turbines that are turned into electricity generators by the rush of air from passing vehicles.
“I wanted to see if they could provide renewable energy because we need to use all the solutions available,” he said.
“I don’t know why we don’t have them in Ireland because they are used in other countries but my model shows we could.”
Grace Dornan from St Mary’s College, Derry devised a filter to help remove paracetamol and ibuprofen from used water.
“Medications in water systems can affect fish very badly. It can disrupt their hormones, their swimming patterns and their ability to reproduce,” she said.
More than 40 projects made the finals, but SciFest founder Sheila Porter said the competition was only part of the reason she set it up.
“It’s a celebration of science, really, and it’s to encourage students to explore it in all different ways,” she said.
“In the world we’re in today, we need problem solvers, and working on projects like these builds the kind of thinking and confidence that’s so important.”
The overall winner was Zack O’Leary, who will go on to represent Ireland at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona, next May.
