Local entries win awards at Young Scientist event

The new year got off to a high-profile start for three students from Athlone's Marist College when Ryan Tubridy interviewed them about their award-winning science project on RTE's Late Late Show last Friday. The second year students - Caolan Jameson, Sean Dunlea and Jack Ryan - travelled to the RTE studios from the BT Young Scientist exhibition, where their investigation into 'penny pusher' arcade games was awarded the joint first place prize in its junior group category. The Marist students were not the only Athlone entrants whose scientific rigour impressed judges in the RDS last week. Our Lady's Bower student Sinéad Carroll was also a first place award winner - coming up trumps in her intermediate individual category with the project 'Alternative oxidising agents for Leaving Certificate chemistry experiments'. Her Bower colleagues, Sinead Reidy and Niamh Brady, asked 'What happened to our honey?' and their project came third in its junior group category, while also winning the Eli Lilly Special Award. Eileen Reidy, also from the Bower, came third in her intermediate individual category with a project on 'smart seed delivery systems'. Meanwhile, Athlone Community College students Shane Gonley and Matija Milenovic were highly commended and also won a HEAnet Special Award for their entry: 'Group Idea Sharing and Developing Website'. The students set up a website for individuals and groups to share ideas on science and technology. Eithne Benson, science teacher at Our Lady's Bower, pointed out that twelve projects from Westmeath were chosen for display at last week's exhibition and all of these were from Athlone schools. She said one of the factors which influenced the high standard of the local entries was the establishment in recent years of the SciFest science fair for second level students, which is organised by Dr Noirín Morris and held at Athlone IT. "I think SciFest has definitely helped students in all of the local schools," she said. Ms Benson praised the Bower entrants and said the school was delighted they had done so well this year. The three Marist College students were told last Friday that their project examining 'penny pusher' arcade games would be featured on Ireland's most prominent talk show that very evening. One of the students, Sean Dunlea, said that despite the short notice he was not particularly nervous ahead of the TV appearance. He said Ryan Tubridy was "the exact same in person as he is on TV. He's very nice and if you ask him any question he'll give you a straight answer." The group came up with the idea for their project after unsuccessful attempts to win some money on penny pusher arcade games. The Marist trio commenced the project in late October and worked on it after school and on weekends. They put together a replica of a typical arcade machine before carrying out various experiments to test the likelihood of money being paid out to those who played it. One of their findings was that when screws were put into the backdrop of the arcade game it sends the player's coins in a direction which forces money into the 'house payout' section rather than the 'player payout' section. Their conclusion? "We found that the house always wins. It can't lose," replied Jack Ryan. This year's competition attracted a record 1,743 entries, 550 of which were selected to appear at last week's exhibition. The overall winners were Mark Kelly and Eric Doyle, from Synge Street CBS in Dublin, with their project 'Simulation accuracy in the gravitational many-body problem'.