Big Bang awards for Ladies’ College scientists
STUDENTS from the Ladies’ College enjoyed a successful trip to The Big Bang science competition, with one of the two teams winning two awards and the other being asked to write about their project for a national magazine.
The projects shown by the girls were for a machine that could show whether a drink was safe for diabetics, and the creation of bio-ethanol fuel by fermentation.
The latter project, Potato Power, was created by Daisy Whiteman, 16, and Katie Connolly, 15, and it earned the girls two awards.
They were runners-up in the GCSE/intermediate category but were also given a special prize of a highly commended award for the environmental benefits of their project.
Katie and Daisy had come up with the idea of fermenting potatoes to make bio-ethanol fuel.
Ladies’ College head of science Dr Karen Marshall said that any project in the competition was eligible to win the environmental award, and while the girls did not get the top prize a highly commended was given after the judges were impressed with their project.
‘The judges were really impressed that it was a sustainable local solution. They really liked the idea that everything the girls needed was on-island.’
Finding out they had been named runners-up in their category came as a big surprise to the girls. ‘It was absolutely amazing,’ said Katie. ‘We were in shock when we found out.’
Lauren Rebstein and Pia Thapliyal, both 15, came up with a way of identifying whether a drink is safe for diabetics.
The pair made use of a Raspberry Pi computer in their project, and this so impressed representatives of the national MagPi magazine at the show, that they asked the girls to write an article about the project for the magazine.
‘They said it was really exciting and very innovative,’ said Dr Marshall. ‘They had never seen a Raspberry Pi used like that before.’
One of the men from the magazine was a diabetic, and told the girls he had never thought about an idea like theirs.
There is another challenge in store for Lauren and Pia, too, with Dr Marshall entering their diabetic machine into the TeenTech competition, which is focused more on engineering.
This has required them to look more at the marketing of their idea, costing it out and looking to see what else is on the market.
The girls will know whether their entry has been accepted after the Easter holidays.
