The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
SCIENCE loving pupils at St Cuan’s National School, Kilbaha, are enjoying the breakfast of champions after success in a national competition, with popular morning foodstuffs playing a key role in their entry.
A group of fourth to sixth class students at the school achieved the Sustainability award at the Intel Mini-Scientist Competition, in which 4,000 students from 18 counties competed.
The students developed a project which explored “Natural Glue vs Synthetic Glue” with porridge and Weetabix among the ingredients they used as possible glue alternatives.
Teacher Sarah Cunningham told The Clare Champion, “We are so delighted to receive one of the top prizes on grand final day, national champions for sustainability.
“The grand final took place via Zoom. The students were both shocked and delighted to have their names called out over the live Zoom event.
“They received a beautiful glass trophy, Grand Final Medals and a STEM kit to keep and bring home.”
The national competition is open to all primary school children in 4th, 5th and 6th classes across Ireland and St Cuan’s National School has been entering this competition over the last 10 years.
For the competition the classes formed groups and came up with a science question and experiment ideas to try to answer their questions.
One group from each school was then chosen by an independent judge and put forward for judging by the judges at Intel.
The chosen group from St Cuan’s consisted of four children ranging from 4th to 6th class. Madison Burke (6th class), Orla Connolly (5th class), Oscar Tynan (5th class) and Nancy Collins (4th class) entered along with guidance class teacher Ms Cunningham.
Nancy told the Champion, “We really enjoyed carrying out our science experiments in the classroom, even though we all were in different groups and had different projects we completed all the science experiments together and learned from each other.”
Nancy recalled the reaction of the group when they found out they had won.
“We were so shocked when our group project was called out the Zoom call, we were jumping all over the place, on our chairs and hugging each other!
“It was so funny and we were so happy we put so much work and effort into our project to make sure it was environmentally friendly.”
Explaining the idea behind the project, Ms Cunningham said, “The children came up with a very original idea, ‘Natural Glue vs Synthetic Glue’ which identified glue as being harmful to the environment, identifying various toxins found in glues and the damage they can cause to the environment.
“The children aimed to identify possible natural glue alternatives and test their strength against the commonly used synthetic glue, PVA.
“The children identified casein, a mixture consisting of milk, vinegar and baking soda. Oscar made this with his Dad and brought it into school for use to use in our testing.
“The children also identified Weetabix and porridge mixed with milk when it hardens on a bowl as being very difficult to get off when washing after eating, as possible natural glues.”
“To test, we glued two pieces of wood together, the same area of wood, to make it a fair test. We then hung weights from the glued pieces to test their strength.
“We started by hanging 100g from the pieces for two minutes at a time.
“We upped the weights as we moved forward with our testing and three of the glues were able to support weights up to 1500g.
“Unfortunately the porridge didn’t support any weight which showed us that it wasn’t a very effective glue, but that’s what’s fun about science, sometimes you need something to fail to find the right answer.
“The Weetabix and casein natural glues proved to be as strong as the synthetic glue PVA (polyvinyl acetate), which prove that natural glues can be just as good. Plus, they are environmentally friendly.”
The children recorded a video presentation and compiled a report which was judged by the judges at Intel.
The class now aims to continue this project, adding more weights on the glue to further test their strengths.
