Water-making backpacks and Theremin burglar alarms on Day 1 of BTYSTE 2016 (video)

6 Jan 2016

Aisling Daniels from Laurel Hill Secondary School in Limerick at the exhibition

The young innovative minds of entrants to the 2016 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE) from all over Ireland were on full display on day one of the annual event.

From solar-powered water-replenishing backpacks to tools that can prevent child and animal fatalities in hot cars, Siliconrepublic.com’s editor John Kennedy checked out some of the amazing innovations by Irish schoolchildren on display at the 2016 BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition (BTYSTE).

This year, more than 2,048 projects from 396 schools were entered in the annual competition and this was whittled down by the judges to 550 projects, which are on display at the RDS in Dublin for the next few days.

More than 1,134 students will compete at the exhibition, including 93 chemistry, physics and maths entries; 154 biological and ecological sciences entries, 97 for the technology category and 205 social and behavioural science entries.

For the second year in a row, there are more qualified project entries from Cork (118) than from Dublin (97).

Entries included a solar-powered water-replenishing backpack created by Craig McAuliffe and Darragh Quinn from De La Salle College in Waterford that produces water from the air by using a thermo-electric Peltier powered by solar panels installed on a backpack.

Ellie Bowen and Roisin Palmer from St Mary’s Secondary School in Mallow Co Cork created a zero-energy car climate regulatory system designed to prevent heatstroke and suffocation in children and animals in parked cars.

‘Can’t Touch This’ is a really cool system created by Eva Ryan, Ella Morrison and Maeve Rooney from Ursuline College in Sligo that uses a Theremin as a burglar alarm rather than a musical instrument.

And Aisling Daniels from Laurel Hill Secondary School FCJ in Limerick has created her own first responder app called iResponder, which can help emergency services respond to emergencies up to 10-times faster by helping them more accurately locate patients.

Keep an eye on Siliconrepublic.com for the next few days for full coverage from BTYSTE 2016.

Day 1 of BTYSTE 2016

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com