Rooftop gardens for cities, and abuse of referees explored by young scientists
Clíona Burgoyne and Caoimhe O’Callaghan from St Mary’s Secondary School in Macroom, Cork, looked at rooftop gardens. Pictures: Gareth Chaney/ Collins Photos
After three years of virtual events celebrating Ireland’s young bright minds, the RDS hosted a welcome return to reality for the 59th BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition.
This year was wall-to-wall with innovation and curiosity with 1,100 students participating and many more spectators visiting.
There were 550 projects on display from 212 schools across the country with climate change, sun damage, abuse in sports, and eating disorders at the forefront.
Clíona Burgoyne and Caoimhe O’Callaghan from St Mary’s Secondary School in Macroom wanted to examine the benefit of having rooftop gardens in Irish cities to tackle climate change using Cork as an example.
“Obviously you can’t put a park in the middle of every city so we wanted to find other areas where we could incorporate nature and there are so many rooftops not being used,” said Ms Burgoyne.
After measuring the roofs that would be suitable in Cork city, they found roughly 11 acres of space could be used.
Ms O’Callaghan said rooftop gardens would not only reduce CO2 but also help to address air pollution in cities like Cork.
“The plants act as a pollution filter for air and water so smog and dust can sit on the rooftop and when it rains it gets dissolved within the plants,” she said.
The students said grants should be made available by the government to fund the introduction of rooftop gardens.
Meanwhile, students from Colaiste Chiarain in Limerick designed and constructed a device that alerts wearers of high UV indexes while also reminding the wearer to apply sunscreen.
A survey carried out by the students found that out of 105 responses, 70% said they had experienced a sunburn at least once in the last three years, 34% had experienced a sunburn more than twice in the same period,
“One of my friends got skin cancer so we came up with the device which has a UV sensor,” said Aiden Oscar.
The device has two buttons, one which shows if UV levels are safe while the other tells the total UV exposure since the last reset, which can be done by pressing both buttons.
The students hope the device will become a commonly used product.
Two students from St Annes Secondary School in Tipperary both play football and camogie and decided to carry out a study on “the science of anger” following a string of news reports about abuse towards referees.
They found that at nearly every match, there is some form of abuse towards referees whether it be spectators, players or coaches giving it.
“We found that 99% of referees do get physically or verbally abused at juvenile matches. We also found that over 75% of spectators have witnessed coaches abusing referees,” said Millie Kelly.
“Even at our matches, some of our coaches get sent off the grounds,” said Maeve O’Callaghan.
Following their study, the students recommend harsher disciplinary proceedings for those who abuse referees while also encouraging parents to support their children rather than “coach from the sideline”.
Students from Coláiste Iósaef set out to establish the prevalence of eating disorders among adolescent boys.
“One of our brothers actually suffered from an eating disorder and they felt like they couldn’t talk to anyone so we wanted to raise awareness around that,” said Sinéad Harte.
Zero per cent of boys were diagnosed despite 5.8% stating that they have one, compared to 19% of girls.
Although their study shows a higher prevalence of eating disorders among girls, boys are less likely to speak about their eating disorder or seek medical assistance.
Their survey which involved 154 boys and 184 girls found that 60% of boys said there is not enough support available for those with eating disorders.
The students found that 75% of boys said they would not know where to seek help in relation to eating disorders.
“They don’t talk about it and it can be fatal, it can lead to huge problems,” said Sinéad.
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