St Patrick's College, Cavan,News Desk

St Patrick's College, Cavan.
Many more news items from this school year can be found on our old news 09 page.

St Pat’s Transition Year Students enter BT Young Scientist
St Patrick’s College transition year students added yet another highlight to their calendar when two project groups qualified for the Young Scientist 2010.

One project group made up of Stephen Murray, Alan Kelly and Padraig Sexton, arrived at a prototype of a portable oxygen inhaler that assists people escaping from a smoke filled room or building during a fire.
This group discovered through much research that 75% of deaths in a fire occur from smoke inhalation rather than burns which meant there was a potential market for their device. They got the inspiration for the oxygen inhaler from Stephen’s late grandfather Brian Coleman. He was in Bundoran in 1979 when the Central Hotel went on fire, killing 10 people in total from smoke inhalation. He always wanted to come up with a device to try and prevent people dying under such tragic circumstances. He never completed his work and so the lads tried to take the project one step closer to completion.

The second project completed by Pauric Donnelly, Sean Van Haaster and Donal Cooney, involved the investigation on the effects of external sound on a person’s concentration. This study had only previously been carried out on rats, but dealing with human concentration levels gave it an extra edge. The inspiration for the study came from a school trip to Athlone. While at a talk in Athlone, almost everyone in the class was finding it hard to concentrate because of a high-pitched sound coming from one of the walls. It was later discovered that this was an anti-vermin device which emits a very high pitched sound that humans are not supposed to be able to hear, but which many young people can.
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The St Pat’s students were interviewed on the six one news on RTÉ and BBC Radio Ulster, as well as Northern sound. Also the St Pat’s ‘young scientists’ were delighted to be supported by their fellow TY classmates on the Friday who travelled from Cavan to see them.

On the Friday evening the awards ceremony took place – a most enjoyable experience for all. Congratulations to Pauric Donnelly, Sean Van Haaster and Donal Cooney who were credited with a high commendation award/rosette for their project.

Overall it was a most challenging, interesting and beneficial venture for all six students and has brought another strand of success to Transition Year programme in St Patrick’s College.

Young Scientists from St Patrick's College, Cavan

Pauric Donnelly, Sean Van Haaster and Donal Cooney

Alan Kelly, Stephen Murray and
Padraig Sexton

St Patrick's College Students and Staff raise €1644 for Haiti Earthquake disaster.

Transition Year students along with Ms Annmarie Madden and Fr Kevin Fay decided to organise a fund raising soccer match between teachers and students. The student body were asked to donate €2 towards the Haiti Earthquake Disaster Appeal and come along to see their teachers and fellow students battle it out on the soccer pitch. Two mixed teacher teams first took to the arena to play for the prestigious honour of taking on the student team. After what only can be described as an action packed game between Ms Mc Caffrey's and Ms Carolin's teams, the latter won out.
Then it was the turn of the students to show their skills against a mixed teacher team.
Again this proved to be a very tight game with some excellent scoring from both sides. Towards the end, the game took an unexpected twist when the referee Mr Brennan decided to take control by becoming a sixth player for the teachers. His skill on the soccer pitch is legendary and with some very fancy footwork and a very dubious penalty the teachers scored the winning goal.....just as the final whistle was blown!
Final score is still in dispute and may never be resolved....A re-play sometime later in the term maybe?

St Patrick's College, Cavan Haiti fund raiser

Aeronautics Scholarship for Edward Mc Caul, past student of St Patrick's College, Cavan.

Congratulations to Edward McCall pictured here with Dr Liam McNiff, who has been awarded a Science and Engineering Scholarship to study Aerospace Engineering at the University of Hertfordshire, England.

Edward has had a keen interest in Aeronautics, Aviation and the Design of Aircraft from a young age and has ambitions to pursue a career with the Royal Airforce, on completion of his studies. He presently holds a PPL Licence from St. Anglos Airport Enniskillen.