'MEC Press' March School News Publication 2020 | Page 11

The BT Young Scientist Exhibition
Experience
By TY Siobhán Dalayap
We wanted to investigate whether small changes in diet actually
improves your academic performance and ability to retain
information.
Our idea for the project came from a conversation we had about
our parents giving us sweets in order to concentrate for exams,
but what they actually did was made us tired and we lost the
ability to concentrate so we wanted to test out this theory. All
our lives we have been told that eating healthy is good for our
mind and body but with our knowledge of the placebo effect we
wanted to challenge this idea.
We received our student passes for the following four days and
prepared our stand for the first round of judging. Soon after,
ourselves and the other thousands of students piled into the BT
Arena and officially opened the BT Young Scientist and
Technology Exhibition 2020. We were fortunate enough to
have many special guests including An Taoiseach Leo
Varadkar and Professor Brian Cox. When we returned to our
stand, we received our first judging card and commenced our
first round of judging.
On the morning of January 8th
2020, my project partner and I
made our way to the RDS in
Dublin for our first day of the
BT Young Scientist and
Technology Exhibition.
We walked into the main hall
with
excitement
and
anticipation for the next step
into our journey of becoming
BT Young Scientists.
Prior to arriving at the actual
event, we had spent many
months working on our
project: “Health or Head “: Is
healthy eating the key to
improving
academic
performance or is it all in our
heads?
Never having participated in the competition before, we were
nervous about the judging but found that it was all but a simple
conversation about your project and your work. This was the same
for all other rounds of judging. Along with that, we were also visited
by many journalists and politicians such as Minister for Higher
Education Mary Mitchell O' Connor, who stopped by to have a chat
and take some photos.
The times that we weren’t being judged, we roamed around the
exhibition visiting friends’ stands or the industry section towards the
back. It was interesting to listen to different busi nesses and what
they do. The eco section was much the same. We even got rulers
made out of bioplastic and posters or tattoos of the 17 Sustainable
Development Goals!
We got the gist of how the rest of the other days would go after the
first and attended the evening activities to meet others who
participated this year. The evening activities included an opening
disco, table quiz, karaoke night and farewell disco all of which
proved to be an unforgettable experience, part of why we both want
to return every year.