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Young Scientists!

Editorial Tom J Kennedy Production Tom A Kennedy Design Clear Concept www.clearconcept.ie

Published by Albertine Kennedy Publishing Swinford, Co. Mayo, Ireland

As hundreds of students from all around Ireland set up their stands at the RDS Tom Kennedy reports on just a few of the fascinating and thought provoking projects from the 2015 exhibition.

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Young Scientists!

Hydrogen power

Young Scientists: Sean Lane and Alan Dwan

Using electricity to break the bond between hydrogen and oxygen takes a lot of energy, so hydrolysis is often dismissed because it takes more energy than it produces. However, as transition year students, Alan Dwan and Sean Lane argue, instead of using fossil fuels to generate electricity for hydrolysis, the water from which we get the hydrogen, could also provide the renewable and non-polluting source of energy.

As they pointed out, a lot depends on how we work out the energy balance, and there would be big environmental advantages in producing hydrogen directly from hydro power. Unlike fossil fuels, hydro power will continue into the future, there are oceans of water and we will never run out of hydrogen.

Honey for health Young Scientists: Rebecca Duffy, Martha Cosgrove and Meggan McGee

Ireland was once known as the land of milk and honey, and as three transition year students at Magh Ene College in Donegal found, one can be of benefit to the other. When Rebecca Duffy, Martha Cosgrove and Meggan McGee found out that Donegal producers of honey had won a good food award they were interest to learn that researchers from Sligo Institute of Technology not alone had been involved in confirming the health benefits, but had progressed to developing an antimicrobial extract.

The honey extract, mycosinate, has already proved beneficial in treating diabetic ulcers, and the students were interested to find out if it could be used more generally.

With the help of the researchers, Dr John Barrett, Dr Tom Patton and Dr James Brennan, the students set up a series of tests to discover if mycosinate would suppress microorganisms in water or stop fresh milk from becoming sour.

As Martha remarked, the results with lake water were “unbelievable!”. Lake water, she explained, can be high in bacteria, but in tests a few drops of the honey extract produced impressive results in keeping those levels down. With milk, the students tested unpasturised samples, but as they explained, good results were not conclusive as it could not be certain that supplies were completely free of antibiotics.

However, when they conducted a test on pasturised milk, they found that it was still good after seven days out of the fridge.

The students were pleased with the results, but as they remarked “we definitely want to carry out more tests.” Not only could the honey extract prove useful in keeping milk fresh, but it could prove useful as a safe and natural alternative in countries where no other form of water treatment is available.

Young Scientists: Adam Toner, Jimmy Branagan and Aidan Connolly

A useful crop Instead of being a nuisance, nettles could be the farmer’s friend. According to Aidan Connolly, Jimmy Branagan and Adam Toner, fifth year students at St Colman’s College, Co Down, nettles should be thought of as a valuable crop. Their extensive roots are good at capturing nutrients which can be returned to the soil.

Among these nutrients are the phosphates, and as the students pointed out, these are the main components of amino acids, and thus can be seen as essential building blocks for life. Yet, phosphates are not alone in short supply, but they are being flushed away because recovery for recycling is expensive.

In sewage treatment works, coagulants are used to produce phosphate rich precipates, but in many other situations phosphates are simply washed away.

On farmland, low phosphate levels in soil are a widespread problem, but as the students pointed out, nettles could help correct that deficiency, or at least conserve the supply. Nettles can be fed with waste water and later the plants can be used as a fertilizer, cutting down the need to use chemicals, and as an extra bonus, said the students, there is a market for the seeds. Nettle seeds are bought by pharmaceutical companies to make medicines for treatment of prostrate disorders.

Outward Living in space is no longer an impossible dream. Mir, the Russian space station, launched in 1986, was occupied continuously for 3,644 days, and the International Space Station (ISS) which followed in 1998 has been a home away from home for astronauts for over 15 years. These are remarkable achievements, yet, as Michael O’Callaghan, a fourth year student at CBS Thurles, Co Tipperary observed, the technology involved is now relatively old. We now know more about living outside our usual environment, and technology has advanced a lot since Mir went up in the late 1980s. Michael and fellow student, Tommy O’Sullivan, became interested in how these developments could enable humans to become an interplanetary species.

The success of the space stations, said Michael, shows that we can now consider possibilities, such as mining on the Moon, or even going out to recover minerals from asteroids. With rising populations and limited resources on Earth, we may yet have no option but to go out into space. As Michael pointed out, we have

bound Young Scientists: Michael O’Callaghan and Tommy Sullivan. already established the first stepping stones, for once there are space stations in orbit, we do not have to overcome the pull of Earth’s gravity before venturing further.

Space crafts could come and go with relative ease and factories could be built in space.

Apart from mining, Michael said there could be other advantages. On Earth, he said, we have growing energy problems, yet there is an abundant supply ready to be tapped in space. The surface of the Earth only receives a fraction of the Sun’s energy, and the rest is reflected off into space. Capturing some of that energy, before it is lost to us, could solve some serious problems on Earth.

Keeping in contact Young Scientists: Lara Unger and Eleanora Micozzi

When teachers at Colรกiste Mhuire in Tipperary who were at the back of the school wanted to check if all the students were present, they looked at their mobile devices only to find that there was no WiFi connection. The school was connected, but the signal from the router did not reach outside. That got fifth year students, Lara Unger and Eleanora Micozzi thinking of how that problem might be solved. As Lara explained, the router sends out a signal in all directions, so they thought that reflecting them back in one direction would help focus them into an area of poor reception.

As it turned out, this was easily achieved. The students found that aluminium foil over a piece of cardboard placed behind the router made quite an effective reflector.

However, they wondered if other materials could work as well, so after some tests they concluded that while gold might be best, aluminium was a good choice, provided the foil was thin. A thicker metal reflector, said Lara, is less effective because it absorbs some of the signal.

Having solved one problem, the students thought their aluminium foil reflector could prove useful in other situations. The reflector, said Lara, could be flown in a kite or mounted on a high pole, and in areas of poor reception routers could be shared. In countries such as Rwanda, said Lara, the infrastructure is underdeveloped, so effective reflectors would help because neighbouring houses could share their connections.

Occupational hazard When Nessa Fitzpatrick visited her dentist she was struck by his awkward posture. She wondered why a man in his prime should appear so hunched over. Back home, she began investigating possible causes for this, and discovered that bad posture is surprisingly common among dentists.

Dentists around the world, she found, suffer from bad backs.

Obviously this is a serious issue, and to find out more, Nessa set off to the dental hospital intent on getting to the root of the problem. Her suspicion that the chairs used by dentists might be involved, was confirmed. Students might learn all about teeth, but they were not shown how to sit in their chairs properly.

Dentists, said Nessa, are quite particular about choosing their chairs, and although they usually find their saddle chairs effective, enabling them to move around a bit and sit while bending over their patients, the way they sit puts a strain on their spine. Good training and exercise would help, said Nessa.

In surveying a number of dentists, Nessa discovered that the problem is quite serious, with more than 80 per cent declaring that they suffer from bad backs, and about one third saying that this is something that they have to endure every day. Over half the dentists said that they had received medical attention.

Apart from the need for training in how to sit without strain, Nessa thought it would be a good idea to think of how chairs might be re-designed to take the pain out of working as a dentist.

Young Scientist: Nessa Fitzpatrick

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Holy water Young Scientist: Conor Farrell

When the faithful go into Mass they dip their fingers into the holy water font before blessing themselves. On a busy Sunday, countless fingers take their dip, making Conor Farrell, a Third Year student at St Eunan’s in Donegal wonder if the old saying ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’, is actually true.

Conor went around to four local churches to collect samples of holy water before and after Mass. At Letterkenny Institute of Technology he was shown how to conduct tests to determine levels of bacteria. Not surprisingly holy water was swimming with bugs, but what surprised Conor was that populations exceeded those occurring in a dirty puddle on the ground.

Holy water fonts, he said, provide an ideal environment for proliferation of microorganisms. The local priests, he said, were very interested in his findings, and like him, they had not previously been aware of this being a potential health issue. Although studies had been conducted in Spain and Austria no alarms had been sounded, so whatever risk of cross-infection exists is largely unknown.

Apart from being blessed, there is nothing in holy water to inhibit microbial proliferation, and to see what would happen, Conor added a few drops of household bleach.

He also tried adding salt, but the bleach proved to be more effective in maintaining the purity of holy water. However, be was not too sure if the faithful would approve of this departure from tradition.

Young Scientists: Anna Burns and Éibhlís Myers

Space food Not much point going out into space if there is nothing to eat there, so astronauts have to bring their own supplies. As Anna Byrns and Eibhlis Myers, second year students at St Mary’s in Mallow, explained, this adds to transport costs and the foods themselves, because they have to have a long shelf-life, are quite poor in nutrients.

Culturing algae and bacteria in space, they said, would be a much better option. Single cell micro-organisms proliferate rapidly, and by contrast, food which takes a season or more to grow on Earth, can be cultured within hours. Microorganisms, they added, are highly nutritious, the food they create is compact, and it can be fed on the astronauts’ own waste. Culturing on board could provide the astronauts with fresh meals every day.

However, keeping starvation at bay with yet another cup of bacterial goop would not keep the crew happy for long, but, as the students said, adding value and variety is not a problem. There are lots of flavourings and texture enhancers that would make the food more appealing. Furthermore, 3D printing has now become highly sophisticated, making it possible to bake the equivalent of a cake in space.

To satisfy themselves that bacteria can be cultured for food, the students went to University College Cork and Limerick Institute of Technology where Drs Patrick Murray and Dan Murphy were happy to show them how to conduct their own trials. At school they were able to grow their own algae, and if the same could be done in space, they said, astronauts could end up dining on food that is better and more nutritious than the ‘real’ thing.

On track Every time a farmer drives a tractor across fields the soil suffers.

Compaction of soil is a serious and widespread problem yet, as Cian O’Leary from Colåiste Mhuire in Galway, remarked, many farmers are not sufficiently aware that cattle they leave out in the wet or the machinery they use can cause such damage. To remain productive, soil should be loose and free, allowing for passage of air and water, and if compacted, land deteriorates.

To minimise the problem, said Cian, farmers should avoid zig-zagging across fields at random and instead stick to driving along regular tracks. The first pass with a heavy tractor, he said, causes most of the damage, so even if the going gets a bit mucky, keeping to one track makes a lot of sense.

The harder the tyre pressure the more the damage, and Cian said for this reason it would often be better for farmers to use quads rather than tractors. In going down the fields to fix a fence it could be better to walk or use a low-tyre pressure quad.

Cian looked at how tillage farmers minimise the damage by using spraying and other machinery with a wider reach so that tracks between crops can be further apart. Tillage farmers also depend on satellite nagivation to keep them on track, but as Cian observed, minimising compaction does not necessarily require high-tech solutions. As elder members of his own farming family have found, line of sight to a bag on a stick works just as well as GPS.

Plastics

everywhere

Young Scientists: Daniel Carey Keating, Des Cooke and Luke Breen

Noisy roads When it comes to a contest between highways and housing needs, the road makers often win. The highways passing by housing may relieve traffic congestion, but they also produce a lot of noise. As Helena Bonar, fourth year student at St Colmcille’s Community School in Dublin, reported, the noise level over the M50 is about 80 decibels. Helena lives just 30 metres away from the M50, and inside the house, she said, the noise level can be as high as 60 decibels. This could be compared to living with the irritating noise of a washing machine that is constantly on.

With Catherine Cuddy and Jessica Harris, Helena began researching the topic of noise, and to see if anything could be done to reduce the problem. It takes triple glazing, she said, to block out the racket, but that is far from an ideal solution. By measuring the levels, the students found that just putting up a high wall is not the solution either. Just beyond the wall, they found, noise levels drop sharply, but a few metres on they rise again. The students looked at how the problem is being addressed in other countries, and they found that wall barriers can be much more effective if the top is slanted to deflect noise back down to the road. Traffic speed, surface and weather conditions, they also noted, have a big influence. As the students pointed out, traffic noise has become such a serious issue that road engineers have to come up with more effective solutions.

Young Scientists: Jessica Harris, Catherine Cuddy and Helena Bonar

Natural cement Many of the materials we use, and think of as human inventions, were created by nature long before humans appeared on the scene.

Spider webs are stronger than steel, insects have armour plating, and as Stephanie Stewart, fourth year student at Ballyclare High School in Antrim observed, corals have been making cement for millions of years.

Stephanie wondered how soft bodied creatures can possibly manage to make their rock-hard coats when humans need big energy consuming plants to make cement. The answer, she found, is that corals harvest the calcium that has been dissolved in water by carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, dissolved in water becomes a weak acid, and this, in turn reacts with calcium to form a solution.

By neutralizing the acid, corals have a perfect system for recovering the calcium as a solid precipitate. A similar process can be observed in caves, where slightly acid rainwater washes dissolved calcium down to form solid stalactites as carbon dioxide comes out of solution.

As Stephanie wondered, if nature has become so efficient in producing cement, could humans copy the process? To find out if this could be done, Stephanie set up an experiment, replicating what happens in nature. After bubbling carbon dioxide through seawater, the addition of some sodium hydroxide precipated the calcium out as a carbonate solid cement.

To make concrete, Stephanie mixed in sand and broken tiles as the aggregate. The finished product, she reported, was quite good compared to conventional concrete. Whether or not the process could be scaled up for industry is a question, but as Stephanie observed, corals have already solved the problem of global production.

Young Scientists: Stephanie Stewart and Emma Neill

Plants capture energy for growth through photosynthesis, but to stay alive we need to eat food. Plants and animals have a lot of differences, but do have to accept that evolution has excluded humans from photosynthesis? Clare King and Robyn Collins, Transition Year students at Loreto College, Foxrock, don’t think we should dismiss the possibility. Sunbathing, they maintain, could take on a whole new meaning in the future.

Emulating the chemistry of water splitting in photosynthesis is becoming a distinct possibility as chemists discover more about the processes involved.

So, whether we make use of plant chlorophyll or synthetics, we can begin to consider how photosynthesising tattoos or patches could produce enough energy for devices that consume little power.

A big surprise was nature has already come up with the equivalent of phosynthetic patches. In lichens, for example, a fungus lives symbiotically with a photosynthesising algae, and in another strange example, eggs of the Spotted Salamander have resident algae, so the young on hatching are solar powered.

There are other examples showing how plants and animals can sometimes take whatever they need from each other to survive. However, although humans are sensitive to light, and need sunshine to make vitamin D, we are not covered with chlorophyll filled spots.

The student said they had become fascinated with the subject, and that interest was shared by their teacher, Helen Hennessy. Although much of what they found was also new to her, Helen had the scientific knowledge to give the students guidance. A lot of the information was fairly complex, and the students said it was great to have a teacher that could help them make sense of it all.

Are people in the future likely to deck themselves like bushes or replace teenage pimples with green spots? Robyn and Clare did a survey to find out what people thought of the idea. Many of those they talked to said that they had nothing against skin grafting, and a sizable number were happy enough with the idea of being genetically modified to photosynthisise. Robyn and Clare admitted that these results came as a big surprise, but as they remarked, opinions might be a lot different if it comes to actually putting some of these possibilities into practice.

Young Scientists: Robyn Collins, Clare King and Lovetts Fox

Greening humans

Biofouling

Every so often, sailors have to clean their hulls, for any boat left standing in water soon becomes a home for barnacles. One or two might be no harm, but over time barnacles accumulate, slowing a boats smooth progress and causing it to consume more fuel. Once barnacles get a grip they are hard to remove, and as a preventative measure anti-fouling paints are used on hulls.

As Patrick Lee, Tom Lehehan and Stephen O Neill, Sixth Year students at St Andrew’s College, Dublin, pointed out, the widely used copper-based antifouling paints are toxic, so they wondered if there was some other safer way to discourage barnacles.

Their idea was to make it more difficult for barnacles to get their initial grip, and it occurred to them that graphene might just provide a solution.

They talked to one of Ireland’s leading graphene experts, Dr Jonathan Colmen at TCD, who explained to them how this one atom thick allotrope of carbon can be produced in bulk. Although this is just another form of carbon, as is a diamond, graphene has some remarkable properties, harder than steel and electrically conductive. The students thought that the extremely small size of graphene particles might interfere with the barnacle bonding process, and to find out if this would work, they mixed some with paint and compared the performance of this mix with conventional antifouling agents.

They found that there were some overlaps in results, but graphene appeared to show promise as an environmentally friendly alternative to copper based preparations. However, more extensive testing, they said, would be required to determine how much graphene should be added for paints to be effective.

Young Scientists: Patrick Lee and Tom Lehehan

Strawberry tree Do you think that strawberries grow on trees? Ultan O’Rourke and Louie Madden, Transition Year students at St Macartan’s College in Monaghan, had a bet on who had the right answer.

Until then, they said, neither knew about the existence of Arbus unedo, the Strawberry Tree.

Not that strawberries grow on the Strawberry Tree, which gets its name from the round orange fruits, but the fact that it grows in Ireland got them interested.

They learned that this evergreen tree is unusual in that it is only grows in the wild in two areas, Killarney in the south, and Sligo in the north west, and otherwise is a Mediterannean species.

The Strawberry Tree is part of what is known as the Lusitanean Flora, plants that survived the ice ages to cling on as remnants of warmer times.

After being cut off for thousands of years, the students wondered if Irish Strawberry Trees are still exactly the same as their Mediterranean cousins, or have they diverged in any way.

Appearances alone can be deceptive, and to find out if there were genetic differences, the students focused in on one tiny segment of the genome. The chloroplast genes, they explained, are among those that evolve most rapidly, so for this reason this segment has become popular with plant scientists. If changes occur they are more likely to be spotted in this segment.

The students collected Strawberry Tree samples from Sligo, and they headed off to the Botanic Gardens in Dublin where there were samples from Kerry together with data on the southern genome. As the students remarked, ‘it was fantastic’ to have access to expertise and laboratory facilities in the Botanic Gardens.

There, they learned from a leading expert in the field, Dr Colin Kelleher, how to extract and read the genetic material. Having shown the students what to do, Dr Kelleher let them carry out their own procedures beginning with breaking open the chloroplasts to release the genetic material, and on to electrophoresis to produce the equivalent of a bar code which could be run through a computer program for comparative analysis.

Young Scientists: Ultan O’Rourke and Louie Madden

In one way the results were disappointing. The pattern of base pairs from the Irish trees, said the students was one hundred per cent the same as those from the rest of Europe. However, as the students pointed out, a few thousand years of isolation is not very long in evolutionary terms, especially compared to what happened when Europe and America drifted apart not just 10,000 years ago but over one hundred million years ago before there was an Atlantic ocean.

Strawberry trees were part of the flora, but once the Atlantic began to open, the population was divided, so the New and Old world inhabitants have had millions of years to adapt and diverge. There are now about 14 species of Unedo, four of which are in the Old World, and eight in the New World. Having determined that the Irish Strawberry Trees are still the same as those in southern Europe, the students said it would be interesting to find out what genetic difference separate the Old and New world Unedos.

Young Scientists: Aela O’Toole and Sién Ní Nhuimhneacháin

Burrowing worms Aelo O’Toole and Siún Ní Mhuimhneacháín, Transitiion year students at Coláiste Choilm in Cork would like farmers to look after their worms. Both come from farming families and their interest in how crops could be improved led them to look at how soil alone is not sufficient to support healthy growth unless it gets some help from burrowing worms. They went out counting the two most common type of worm, and investigated how their activities keep soil in good condition. A lot depends on what’s available, they said. Worms need to feed, they don’t like the cold or sunshine, so they love roots and leaf litter which keeps them out of the light.

As they found, worms return nutrients to the soil and by burrowing they keep it open which improves drainage.

Alltogether, they concluded, a healthy worm population would reduce the need for chemical fertilizers. However, fertilizers have an appeal because they act fast, while worms take their time to produce more sustainable benefits.

Mushrooms For the past 20 years the Seery family have been growing mushrooms, and Shane, a transition year student at Moate Community College, is determined to continue that tradition. As he explained, production increased over the years, but although the market is huge and global, it is a highly competitive business, so growers have to be efficient to survive. Every week, on the Seery farm, mushroom growing shelves, stacked six high, are filled with compost.

For the six following weeks mushrooms are grown and harvested until the compost is exhausted.

Even though incapable of feeding more mushrooms, that compost, said Shane, is high in potassium and, spread on land it makes good fertilizer. However, spreading spent compost is not always possible. The land may already have sufficient potassium, and in winter compost has to be stored because it cannot be spread at that time of the year.

Young Scientists: Shane Seery and Séan Pettit

These restrictions made Shane wonder if spent compost could be used as fuel. As a test Shane mixed compost with a small percentage of paper to produce fuel nuggets by hand. A pellitising machine, he remarked, would have been handy, but for his tests the hand-made nuts did the job. As he expected, it is possible to produce fuel, although, like wood, the material has to be dry enough to burn, and he also thought that performance could be improved with additives.

With satisfactory results, he said, it would certainly be worth investing in pellet making machinery.

Heating the mushroom farm is expensive. “We are burning the equivalent of €2,000 a week” he said, so is the compost could be used as fuel, huge savings could be made.

As hundreds of students from all around Ireland set up their stands at the RDS Tom Kennedy reports on just a few of the fascinating and thought provoking projects from the 2015 exhibition.

Young Scientists!