But Why?

Posted on | January 8, 2010 | 3 Comments

I have no special talents.  I am only passionately curious.  ~Albert Einstein

Yes, its that time of the year again. The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition is starting next week in the RDS in Dublin and it looks like it’s going to be a wonderful few days.

The range of projects shown, from all ages of secondary school students, is impressive. An extensive choice of categories: technology, motoring, robotics, agriculture, social media, food science, gaming, music, behavioural science and more.

Two local projects caught my eye. The first from intermediate Bandon Grammar school students, Mark Gibbons, Conor Murphy, Conor Cronin, which investigates the crack-resistant properties of scallop shells and hopes to mimic these properties in glass. The second is from a group from Youghal community college, Lana Murphy, Amber Walsh and Kate Clerkin, which deals with the development and testing of a mechanical pollinator. I was also delighted to see a project listed from my alma mater, Dominican College Wicklow:  Jenny Doyle, Orla Fenton and Hannah Wolahan propose to use existing technology to develop a low cost solar cell that can be built and used in 3rd world. All terrific projects and hopefully some future engineers and  scientists in the making involved there.

In addition to the display of the students’ projects there are the following attractions:

• Team Extreme
• The World of Robots
• W5 Amazing Experiments
• Bending it like Beckham

I love the curiousity of my children, especially when they then proceed to investigate, test and solve problems themselves independently. It is brilliant to see so many students involved this year and the variety of projects, interests and schools from throughout the country. Diversity and differing opinions, backgrounds and gender can only help innovation, in my opinion.

Congrats and best of luck to all involved. If you’re in Dublin or can travel there next week and are curious, more details  are available on the website and twitter updates can also be followed for the most recent news.

For entertaining and interesting posts  from a participant’s point of  view,  check out Tommy’s blog.

The But Why? by ManicMammy's Blog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

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