Months of research and experiments paid off for students from Athlone and Roscommon, with a number of local entries taking home awards from the 2013 BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition, held last weekend.
Roscommon student Shauna O’Neill from Mean Scoil Mhuire gan Smál won one of the top four awards in the entire competition, taking the runner-up individual award for her study entitled ‘The effect of static magnetic fields on molecular and macroscopic properties of water’.
The fifth year student also won the Intel Prize for the best project in the chemical, physical and mathematical sciences category, and goes forward to the annual Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in May.
Marist College Athlone were successful in different category awards, with two projects picking up prizes.
In the technology category, Liam Leahy, Sean Kilgarriff, and Patrick Dooner came second for their project ‘Infra-Reddy, Steady, Go!’.
A second group of Marist students, Shane Galvin, Ben Fallon, and Adrian Garvey picked up a display award for their project ‘Integrating solar panels into manhole covers to prevent freezing stopcocks’.
This year’s BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition featured 550 projects from across the country, all competing for the coveted title of BT Young Scientist & Technologist of the Year 2013. For further details on the winners, visit www.btyoungscientist.ie
