The main competition awards at ISEF’17 were on Friday morning. In these our 6th Year student Cormac Larkin was awarded a second place in the Physics and Astronomy category.
This is another outstanding achievement for him as there were more than 1700 projects in total at the competition. Furthermore he will have the honour of having an asteroid named after him.
Congratulations Cormac from all in C.S N.
Cormac Larkin (6th year) is currently one of four students from the island of Ireland attending the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF) 2017 held at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles California. The competition is by invitation only and Cormac was in invited as a consequence of his achievement in winning the Intel Award at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition earlier this year.
Cormac’s project “Case Study of Data Mining in Observational Astronomy: The Search for New OB Stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud” involves a new method of searching for a particular type of star from openly available astronomical data. He has increased the total existing known number of these stars by about 10%. His method is currently the only systematic process for finding these and their distribution and presence has significant implications for the formation and structure of our Universe.
On Tuesday Cormac was invited to attend the Alumni Lunch. He was one of a very small number of participants invited to speak briefly in front of the entire audience at the Entrepreneur and Excellence in Science and Technology panel.
Wednesday involved a day of intensive judging and interviews after which the participants unwound with an exclusive all-expenses evening at the Universal Studios theme park!
We at Colaiste an Spioraid Naoimh are very proud that Cormac and his accompanying teacher Mr. Kerins are representing our school and our country at this prestigious competition.
C.S.N. Robotics Competes in DELL/EMC VEX WORLDS competition in Lousiville Kentucky
On the 18th April eight students accompanied by Ms. Walsh packed their bags and flew out to Kentucky via Chicago. We had won the national finals in the Dell/EMC Vex Robotics Competition held at the CIT in January, and we were preparing to compete in the World Vex Robotics Competition. The robot had been upgraded and painted and the team had practiced extensively in the run up to the trip.
We had a few days to ourselves on arrival and these were spent making the final touches to the robot, seeing the sights, and enjoying some tourist activities. We went on a shopping trip to the outlet center, saw a baseball game and went to downtown Louisville. We were also treated to a trip of the Flex Ltd. facility in Louisville, learning about the business and what products and companies they work with. Flex was responsible for shipping the robot and also gave the students an extensive tour and a great lunch, going above and beyond as a sponsor.
Day 1 of the competition was hectic with registration and setup as over 500 individual teams from all over the world were entering were . Once those were sorted the robot was sent for inspection and passed with flying colors. The team participated in the driver skills part of the competition which went well. Day 2 of the competition began with the parade of nations, with the boys and a giraffe walking out in front of the entire competition waving the Irish flag, there was an electric atmosphere in the convention center and the team were ready to jump into their first match. The tournament got off to a great start with a decisive victory for the robot. The competition was fierce on day 3 with a mix of wins and losses. Day 4 found the team finishing around mid-level in the competition. We watched an amazing final and were delighted as the overall winners came from our own division.
We are very grateful to all of the companies that sponsored us and enabled us to attend this competition. Please see school Facebook page for full list and for more details on the robot, the team and the trip. The travelling students were: Daniel Murphy, Sean Cronin, Aaron McGee, Harry Moran, Kevin O’ Regan, Matthew Cronin, Jamie O’Leary and Elvinas Seporatis
-Aaron McGee
This year the C.S.N. Robotics Team has been very successful in the Vex Robotics competition.
Previous Vex Robotics teams have done very well in the National Competition. In 2015 they managed to reach the semi-finals & in 2016 they also reached the semi finals and won the Design award.
This year however has been the most successful so far!
We have won four out of the six available awards: – The Tournament Champion, – Excellence, – Robot Skills and Partner of the Year awards. and we have been undefeated in both the scrimmage and the National Competition.
We have now qualified to participate in the Vex World Competition. On the 16th of April, the team will travel to Louisville, Kentucky. Thanks to the very generous sponsorship we have received from many companies, the team has raised enough money to allow 8 members of the team and one of our teachers, Ms. Walsh, to travel to Louisville.
To further our chances in the World Championship, the team have had to completely redesign our robot. We have replaced all of the steel with aluminium which has made the robot lighter and enables it to lift itself. We have also made a very effective claw which allows the robot to comfortably score multiple game objects at once and changed the lift so as to have more momentum and torque which makes the robot very effective at lifting itself and game objects.
With all of these changes and upgrades in place, we hope to continue our run of success in the World Championship.
The team members travelling to America are: Matthew Cronin, Harry Moran, Kevin O’Regan, Jamie O’Leary, Daniel Murphy, Seán Cronin, Elvinas Seporitas & Aaron Magee.
Please click on the following link to watch the teams reveal video for the World Competition: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WxYr8nYThY
– Matthew Cronin
On Tuesday the 31st of January Ms. Hanlon, Joel and I travelled to Dublin after being invited to present my project on Portion Sizes to the Junior Minister for Health at the Dail.
After a brief excursion to Trinity College and Grafton Street we made our way to Leinster House. There we were greeted by the Minister’s Private Secretary and invited to dine in the TD’s restaurant as Minister Corcoran Kennedy had been called to the Seanad. After a quick scone and cup of tea we were escorted through the Dail, past the chamber where we witnessed some heated debate and onto the Minister’s office.
During our hour long meeting we covered all elements of my project during which the Minister was very interested in my recommendations in how we can educate people on portion size and give them the knowledge they need to make informed decisions. She also loved the logo I have been using for my project which was designed by Joel (Thanks Joel!). She has also taken two copies of my project to pass onto the Minister for Health and the in house Dietician.
After some quick photographs we left in time to grab a quick bite to eat and catch our bus home. I am very much looking forward to continue working to raise awareness about the “portion problem”.
Tony O’Halloran, 4th Year
We have just received news that our VEX Robotics team has achieved amazing results at the VEX Robotics Ireland.
They have won:
-Partner of the Year
- Programming Award
- Tournament Champions
- The Excellence Award, which entitles them to represent Ireland in the “Vex Create Open Championship” and The “World Championship” in the US later in the year.
Huge congratulations to our Robotics team & to their teacher Mr Kerins.
Three of our 6th Year students featured in an article in the Evening Echo on Tuesday 10th January before their visit to Dublin to take part in the 53rd BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition. The full article from the Evening Echo may be read by using the following link: http://www.eveningecho.ie/life/project-secret-life-teens-raises-alarms/2605336/
Ahead of the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition this week, ELLIE O’BYRNE talks to Cork students about their projects.
SCHOOL SICK DAYS — COLÁISTE AN SPIORAID NAOIMH BISHOPSTOWN
A group of sixth years from Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh in Bishopstown have used mathematical modelling to calculate how many students should take sick days to stop the common cold from spreading in a school.
“We wanted to see how many sick people you need to remove to stop the disease and make it die out,” Conor McKeown, aged 17, says.
Conor and his fellow Chemistry and Physics classmates Nathaniel Grant, and Dylan Morley, both aged 18, used epidemiological concepts from the 1900s and Python Code, as well as surveys of their schoolmates’ experiences with doses of the sniffles for their Physical and Mathematical Sciences project.
“You first calculate the number of people being infected each day,” Conor explains. “You have people who stay in school and recover, and then there are people who come back to school after they’ve recovered and are at risk again. But basically all we really needed to know was the infection rate; you’ve a 50/50 chance of being infected when you’re around someone who is contagious.”
As with so many scientific experiments, sometimes the boys had to go back to the drawing board when they discovered inaccuracies in their data.
Surveys they conducted in May yielded accurate data. “We did another survey in October when a cold was going around,” Dylan says. “but also, we had problems with the first survey because we let people fill in their own answers instead of giving them multiple choice options, and the results were very confusing.
“Our conclusion shows that the optimum value of students to send home is 33.3%; then the cold will die out naturally,” Nathaniel says. “If you increase the number of people you send home, it will die out faster, but then people will miss too many days of school.”
As yet, the team are unsure if their research will lead to any practical applications.
“We have a model that could be used for an app,” Nathaniel says.
“You could input numbers, but there are too many variables for it to be used for other diseases.”
Teacher Tim Kerins, who has taught physics, maths and applied maths at Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh for a year and a half, says that he has no doubt that the team will represent their findings well at the Young Scientist exhibition.
“With maths-based projects, you don’t have a physical thing at the end of it and it’s about the ideas,” he says.
“But the guys are very good at presenting those ideas. It’s about the science, and the projects speak for themselves.”
Tim says that the standard of work on display at the BT Young Scientist Exhibition is astonishingly high.
“When you think of the ages of the people involved, it’s spectacular really. Some of it is genuinely of a really high quality.”
So how will he feel when a third of his students start absenting themselves from class on the basis of the team’s findings?
He smiles. “I’ll be happy they’ll be getting better faster.”
The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition is in the RDS, Dublin 4 this week, from Thursday, January 12 to Saturday, January 14. Tickets: student €7/adult €12 / family pass €25. For more information see http://btyoungscientist.com/
Young Scientists Journal – the world’s peer review science journal written and edited exclusively by 12-20 year olds – held its second annual conference on 14 October 2015 at The King’s School, Canterbury.
250 students from more than 20 schools attended. Two students from Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh, Cormac Larkin (5th year) and Harry Moran (4th year) travelled to the conference.
Cormac presented a poster detailing the Astrophysics research he undertook whilst completing a summer internship in the Physics Department in UCC. The poster came 3rd overall and was the highest placed Physics presentation at the conference.
During Science Week a group of First Year students had their project win first place in CSN.
Science Week is the national initiative of the Government to generate interest in the Sciences.
The students are Daniel Coleman, David Corkery, Chris Connolly and Kevin Barry-Dorney and their teacher Mr T. Healy.
They are pictured with their 3D Food Pyramid which they constructed and their aim is to advise students about food quality, nutrition and appropriate quantities to be consumed.
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