Loreto TY students Emma Spillane, Kate Mulcahy, Aine Mulcahy, Jemma Dearden and Gill Blackburne, accompanied by their teachers, Ms Aine McCarthy and Ms Catherine Russell, represented the school in the BT Young Scientist competition. Emma, Aine and Kate’s project was on genetically modified crops. Their experiment aimed to examine the characteristics, advantages, disadvantages, possible effects of genetically modified crops in future Ireland, the public knowledge and opinion of these crops. Gill and Jemma did a project entitled ‘Are birds influenced by colour?’, which investigated whether birds were influenced by a specific colour in their choice of feed.

The projects were only two of the five hundred and fifty projects that qualified out of over four thousand projects entered from all over the country. This was the 49th year of the competition, which was officially opened by an opening ceremony presented by Roisín Ní Thomáin and Aidan Power. Colm O’Neill of BT made a speech and music was provided by The Heathers.

On Wednesday, each project was allotted a time for their first judging. Students had to explain their projects, methods used, results and conclusions. On Thursday and Friday, the judging continued with the exhibition being open to the general public from 9.30am to 5.30pm. Many schools from around the country took the opportunity to come and view the exhibition.

When students were not introducing their projects to judges or the general public, they were being photographed or interviewed by TDs such as Sean Sherlock and Ruarí Quinn. Students also took the opportunity to view various exhibits and other projects present. ‘Titan the robot’, ‘Secrets of the Cosmos, ‘It takes guts’ and ‘The drumming workshop’ were only few of the interesting exhibits on display. There was also a primary school exhibit room, an Eco room and a science and technology exhibit room with stands from organisations such as Dublin Zoo, Self-help Africa, Bank of Ireland and the Gardaí.

The awards ceremony, hosted by Roisín Ní Thomáin and Aidan Power, took place on Friday. Both Loreto teams received a green rosette signifying their projects were highly commended. This was a fantastic achievement and hopefully will encourage other Loreto scientists to participate in this competition in the future.

The students would like to acknowledge the assistance and support given to them by Ms Aine McCarthy and Mr Murphy in completing their projects. They wish to also express their gratitude and appreciation to Ms Aine McCarthy and Ms Catherine Russell for accompanying them to Dublin. Without this the experience would not have been possible.

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