SciFest@College Success for Scoil Pól

Scoil Pol Students hit the high spots at SciFest 
Forty one students, along with their teachers, from Scoil Pól in Kilfinane recently attended the Scifest@College competition in LIT at Moylish. This full day event saw students from all over the county exhibit their unique research and development projects. The BiopharmaChem Ireland Chemistry award was captured by Bróna McGlinchey, Sophia Leahy and Leah O'Toole for their project 'True Colours', which looked at the acidity of berries. They received a trophy, individual vouchers and laboratory equipment for the school. 

Gaming influencing sleep
The Department of applied Social Sciences award went to James Corbett, Gavin O'Connell and Michael O'Farrell for their project 'How does gaming influence sleep' which looked at the effect playing computer games before bed can impact your sleep patterns. They received a trophy and individual vouchers.

It is worth noting that all these students are currently in first year in Scoil Pól and were competing against pupils from both junior and senior cycle. Special recognition awards for best questions asked during the science presentations went to Séan Meade, Rebecca O'Connell and Ciara Slattery.

Tremendous Work
The SciFest Fair consists of a competition and exhibitions of projects, a selection of science talks and advice on careers in STEM and courses available in the college. Students base their projects on their personal observations and form a hypothesis based on these and on research.  They then follow the steps of scientific discovery to design experiments, collect and evaluate data and form conclusions based on this information .The students of Scoil Pól participated in a school based science fair in February and the winners from this event went forward to represent their school in LIT. Following on from previous successes in the competition, this years' students again did themselves and their school very proud by putting in tremendous work into their respective projects.

Well done to all involved