CONSUMER
Young scientists get to grips with gum
10-01-2008
by Charlie Taylor
From portable chewing gum removal machines to web browsers for the colour blind, there's ideas a-plenty at the BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2008.
The exhibition, which is the largest science & technology exhibition to be held in Europe, is now in its 44th year and yet its popularity continues to grow.
The first ever Young Scientist Exhibition, which was held in the Mansion House in 1965, saw 230 students participate and 5,000 people attend. Since then, some three quarters of a million people have visited the exhibition.
Entries for the Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition 2008 are up 11 percent compared to last year and entries have increased steadily every year from 606 entries in 2000 to a record 1,416 projects this year.
Some 500 of these projects have been selected to go forward and take part in the final competition at the RDS this week. Some 31 counties are represented and over 210 schools will take part in this year's exhibition, accounting for 1,128 students.
The overall winner, who will be announced on Friday, will be named the BT Young Scientist(s) of the Year and receive a Waterford Crystal trophy together with a cheque for EUR5,000.
This year's exhibition, which runs until Saturday, was officially opened by Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Michael Martin, and Chris Clark, chief executive officer, BT Ireland, on Wednesday while members of the public were able to check out the various projects for themselves from Thursday onwards.
Among this year's most unusual projects is a 'Gumbuster' machine which can enable users to do away with chewing gum. The project, which has been developed by Michelle Liston, James Hunt and Thomas Moran, who are all students at Desmond College, Limerick, is meant to make gum removal easier and cheaper.
Using a magnifier, users can position the Gumbuster over an offending piece of gum, apply a small amount of freezer spray to the gum at the flick of a switch and using a specially-designed tool on the device, can scrape the gum off the pavement and vacuum it up.
Another project that's proving popular with visitors is a guitar tutor with an electronic chord learning system built into a virtual fret-board. Christopher Harte and Michael Morgan, who are students at Abbey Grammar Christian Brothers School, Co Down, decided to design and develop a device that would make full use of visual communication with the user in order for complete understanding of the basic chords.
They have achieved this via a sequence of L.E.D.s that light up on a virtual fret-board showing the beginner which strings to place their fingers on and which frets to place their fingers behind in order to play the selected chord. When a chord is selected the L.E.D sequence for that chord will be shown accompanied by the name of the chord being displayed.
Other projects on show include a specially-designed web browser for the colour blind and a car lamp that automatically switches on when fog is present.
"In terms of interest, the exhibition goes from strength to strength. The number of participants has grown significantly as have attendance figures and we've also seen a huge level of interest from the Government with four ministers attending this year," said Chris Clark, CEO of BT Ireland.
"The energy and inspiration from the kids is truly remarkable and having spoken informally to a couple of the competition judges, the feedback is that the quality and diversity of the projects is increasing significantly and there's no doubt that the exhibition is now part of the fabric of the island's education," he added.
Caped Koala Studios has built a virtual world for kids, combining education and social networking 