Clonmel High School students make the most out of Science Week 2020

Science Week 2020 made for a week packed with activities and challenges in the High School in Clonmel.

This year's core theme was ‘Choosing our Future’, focusing on how science can improve our lives not just in the future but also in the present. The overarching aim of the theme was to explore how science can help us to make positive choices that will impact the environment, our health, and our quality of life. Changes based in scientific evidence that we make today can not only hugely improve our future life but also right now. The subject matter was broad and incorporated topics such as the future of work, the future of health and wellbeing and how we all live in a world where we have had to mitigate and adapt to the challenges facing society. Unfortunately climate change has not gone away and now society has also had to unite and face the coronavirus disease COVID-19.

The Science Department kick-started Monday with a Kahoot Challenge for all students. The quiz questions were based on students’ prior knowledge on Climate Change and served as a stimulus to get students thinking about the overall theme and what they could do to promote sustainability. The challenge was won by Alby McNamara in 1st year. Further Kahoot Challenges ensued for the week with James Killen, Luke Hannigan, Eoin King and Christopher King winning on the other days.

On Tuesday Jen Harris from S.L.I. - Sustainable Living Initiative Waterford visited our Green-schools Committee with a wonderful workshop on the Sustainable Goals and how they can influence our health. Jen also held a workshop during last year's Science Week so it was excellent to have her back and to provide continuity for the students. The workshop proved to be very active and thought provoking for the committee which includes students from 1st to 6th year. Jen also looked at the Sustainable Development goals from the perspective of COVID-19 and how it changes our outlook on them.

On Wednesday, our Transition Year students attended a virtual workshop on Elite Sports Science. Here the boys learned how science helps our favourite athletes to optimise their performance and create the ideal body composition for an All-Ireland winner.  They also studied the performance profiling of cyclist Sam Bennett and predicted the marathon performance of Irish running legend Aubrey Storey. They then took part in a body composition analysis with Kilkenny Hurlers. Thanks here go to Bruce Wardop and Aubrey Storey in the Department of Sport and Exercise Science W.I.T. for delivering the workshop.

Thursday and Friday were busy days for our 6th year biology, chemistry and physics students as they took part in the Irish Science Teachers Association senior quiz in their class groups. Here Cathal Berrigan, Simon Smith and Michael O’Donnell came out on top, scoring the highest marks.

Science Week came to a close with a splat the following Monday. 35 students had been working hard all week to compete in the much anticipated Egg Drop Challenge. Students had to build a contraption that would help keep an egg intact when dropped from a height. There was an impressive and highly creative array of parachutes, packaging, paper planes, household food items, bird nests, balloon houses (inspired by the film Up) as well as some inventive uses of face masks. The two winners in this section were Patrick Keating (1st year) with his clever bird nest design and Christopher King (3rd year) with a fantastic parachute.