Photography Course

From Monday the 17th of November till Wednesday the 19th of November my year was given the opportunity to complete a photography course. I was able to complete the course on the Tuesday from 9:00 - 12:00. Una Armstrong from Armstrong Photography was the person teaching us. She taught us about all the different parts and settings of the camera. We then began to take pictures of each other. We were split into groups of three, one person taking the pictures, on being the model and the other focusing on the light. Since the weather was really good we were able to take pictures outside for the rest of the time left.

Lecture - Headstrong

On Tuesday the 18th of November Eileen O'Reilly came to my school from an organisation called Headstrong. She talked to us about the organisation and the work that they do. Headstrong promote positive mental health among the youth in Ireland. The are an organisation helping a lot of adolescents in the country providing them a variety of different facilities. On of the interesting facts that she told us was that 1 person in every 4 will have some sort of mental health issue. The talk was very informative and gave a good over view of the work the organisation carries out.

Lecture - Drug Talk

On the 6th of November Gary Dunne from An Garda Síochána came to my school to talk to my year about drugs. He talked to us about his roles and that he is part of the drugs unit. He showed us pictures of all the different types of drugs and told us about what they look like, and the various people that deal with them around Dublin. He also gave us examples of the way people smuggle drugs into the country and also how they grow certain drugs in their homes. The lecture was very interesting and told me a lot about drugs which I did not know before.

Lecture - TEFL

On the 26th of September David Hopper a representative of the organisation TEFL, Teaching English as a Foreign Language came to talk to our year about the organisations work. Firstly he talked to us about himself, how he traveled around the world and noticed that there was a high demand for people wanting to learn English. He then decided to establish TEFL. TEFL allows people to learn English and become confident in speaking the language. David was telling us that there are many certificates which you can complete the work up the levels of teaching difficulty. He told us that we would be able to complete the first certificate already and could then get a job in the summer. Finally he also explained that they organise exchanges for students in Ireland to go abroad to countries such as France, Spain and Germany. At the end of the lectures he gave us brochures and a phone number for those who were interested in receiving the first certificate.

Lecture - Inside Out Nutrician

At the beginning of the school year Gillian McConnell came to my school to talk to us about the importance of a healthy diet. During the lecture she focused mainly on the diet regarding sport and exercising. She told us about the importance of eating something around two hours before a match or training and that it is extremely important that you eat something while you exercise. She gave us many ideas of healthy snacks that give you lots of energy. She also explained to us that once you are thirsty you are already dehydrated, and emphasised the importance of keeping hydrated. I found the lecture very informative and very relevant to myself.

Lecture - Donal Walsh

Donal Walsh

On the 2nd of October Donal Walsh's mother came to my school to talk to us about her son who died from cancer at the age of sixteen. She talked to us about his journey and showed us a video which he took of his life before he died. She also talked to us about the amazing work which Donal did throughout his life. He wanted to stop people from committing suicide because he felt that it was unfair for people to take there lives be choice when he was loosing his life by cancer. His mother has now established an organisation which is funded by donation only and has raised around a million euro already.

Lecture - Mini Company

On the the 24th of September Serena Brian came to my school to talk to us about our Mini Company's for this year. Serena is on of the people which organizes the Mini Company competition for the Wicklow area. She talked to us about the rules for applying such as that you can only have maximum five members per team. She also gave us all a paperclip and asked us to come up with as many uses using the paperclip. It showed us that a business idea can be very simple. Finally she then showed us peoples Mini Company ideas from previous years to give us inspiration.

Lecture - Enable Ireland

Justin Redding came into our school to talk to my year group about Enable Ireland on the 16th of September. They are an organisation that help families who have disabled children. Justin works in the Bray/Wicklow area and he was explaining to use how they do not have many facilities yet.
Therefore, they have only a limited amount of ways in which they can help these families. Enable Ireland has many centers across Ireland which you can see on the map.

Eagles Flight Workshop

Gerard O'Shea from Eagles Flight came to the school on the 12th of October. He runs a workshop to show people the importance of planning and working together as a team. The day began with my form being split into groups of around six. We were then told that we were going to play a board game called Gold of the Desert Kings. In order to complete the game there was a lot of planning involved and good communication was essential. A few teams failed to return however our team managed to come second. After we had completed the break we were aloud to have a short break. After the break he discussed the theory and the taught process behind the game. He explained to us that the game represented your work and that it is very important to plan and have good time management. I enjoyed the workshop, I thought that the game was a good way to get the message across.

Kairos

On the 10th of October my form, 4B, went to Kairos for the day. Kairos is a retreat centre which also has a small studio, and they were nice enough to allow us to use the facilities there. Before Kiaros we spent the week before writing a script during our English classes. We also assigned the roles we were going to be part of for the day. I was assigned to e in control of the graphics. We decided to make our film a talk show. Once we arrived in Kairos we were all shown how to use the equipment for our various roles. We then began to practice our show. Then we went for lunch so that when we were back we could begin doing the official filming. We took two takes of the film and then we were able to take the completed video back to school with us. The video turned out well and it was a good day out.  

Festina Lente Volenteering Week

Festina Lente is an organisation which provides employment for people with special needs and also offers many facilities for the people in the community. They have an Equestrian Center and Riding School and a Victorian Walled Garden. From the 9th to the 13th of November a few people from my year were chosen to go to Festina Lente to help them with a few jobs that had to be done. I went everyday, we mainly helped in the gardens

weeding, cutting hedges and cleaning up areas which they wanted to renovate. For example we cleared an old well which they are going to make a sandpit for the children to play in We also helped bag manure which they sell to the public for fertiliser and cleaned the kick-boards around the riding schools arena. The four days spent in Festina Lente was a great way to help the community and was a lot of fun, except the terrible weather, which meant that we had to leave early some of the days.

DCU Open Day

DCU Open Day

On Friday the 14th of November the DCU Open Day was being held. My year was given the opportunity to visit for the day to experience what courses are to offer and what we may have an interest in in studying after school. Throughout the day the college was holding lectures for us to go to and see what each course involves. I went to three lectures, Business Studies, Applied Physics,Physics with Astronomy, Physics with Biomedical

Sciences, Common Entry into Science and then Economics, Politics and Law. I'm not sure if I would be interested in studying in either of the three courses I learned about however, I did find it very interesting.

Dublin Zoo

Dublin Zoo

On Tuesday the 21st of October my year went to Dublin Zoo for the day. When we first arrived we were told that we could look around the zoo. Then we all came together in our forms to get a conservation talk. My tour guide focused on the oldest building in the zoo which housed the small monkeys and then also brought us to the elephants. I learned a lot about the monkeys and the elephants and also that Dublin Zoo is the third oldest zoo in the world. She told us that the elephants receive no human contact so that in the future they will be able to be released into the wild again. Following the conservation talk we were then able to look around the zoo again until we had to go home. I really enjoyed the day especially seeing the baby elephants and giraffe.

Maths Project - Statistics

During  maths class we were told to complete a statistics project. My group chose look at the relationship between the amount of hours you sleep according to the amount of exercise you do. 

Below is the completed project:

AN INVESTIGATION

INTO EXERCISE IN RELATION TO

SLEEP

By Hilary Gallagher, Keelan Glennane and Bríd O’Donnell

Introduction

We have decided to base our project on a comparison between the number of hours slept by any student and the number of hours spent exercising .

The aim of our project is to discover whether or not more exercise requires more sleep. We have also decided to view the statistics of male and female members of our school population that play sport, and see if this varies with age. As we all participate in sport on a daily basis, we were interested in answering this question and forming our own theory.

Method

In order to gather results, we created a survey which contains the following questions:

• What sport do you play daily?

• students were only given a single option for this question to gather a more specified set of results

• How many hours of sport do you play daily?
• How many hours sleep would you have per night?
• What age are you? In years

We decided to use a simple random sample from the population of our school. We achieved this by assigning a number to each form group from first to sixth year which gives us a total of 24 groups. These are the following assignations:

Number	Form Group		Number	Form Group
1	5a		13	4a
2	4d		14	1d
3	3c		15	6b
4	1a		16	5d
5	1b		17	2b
6	2c		18	3b
7	4c		19	2a
8	6a		20	3d
9	6d		21	4b
10	5c		22	2d
11	1c		23	5b
12	3a		24	4d

The method we used to generate random numbers on a calculator was:

1. We typed 24Ran# into a calculator and pressed equal five times
2. We discarded the decimal and chose only to use the whole number
3. We then paired the generated number with it’s assigned form group

The random numbers generated by calculator were:

19  = 2a

5    = 1b

9    = 6d

21  = 4b

17  = 2b

The total number of students surveyed was 94 students.

Graphs

Conclusion 

Age Pie Chart:

This pie chart displays that just under half of the sample we studied were aged 13. This statistic may result in our responses being biased as younger children in non exam years would have more free time to both exercise and sleep.

Sports Pie Chart:

This pie chart shows that most of the sample studied played rugby as their daily exercise. This proves that the sample studied would have been predominantly male. Out of all the students surveyed, all participated in at least a half hour of sports daily. We found this very interesting to know. As this was not a multiple choice question, students were forced to prioritise one exercise. We did this to limit the results to be collected. It is quite possible a percentage of the sample may play two different sports daily.

Time Spent Sleeping Pie Chart:

This pie chart shows that the most popular amount of time to be spent sleeping tended to be for 8 hours, in fact over a quarter of the sample, 27%, agreed this was how much they slept. The minority of the sample slept for 5 hours. We found this interesting because there was a wide variety in the amount of time spent sleeping, ranging from approximately 4% of the sample sleeping for 5 hours to the same percentage sleeping double that.

Time spent sleeping / time spent exercising Scatter Graph:

Unfortunately there was not as clear a correlation as anticipated between the number of hours spent sleeping and the number of hours spent exercising. We have guessed that this may be due to the fact that not enough exercise is carried out to have such a large impact on the body’s need for sleep. Or perhaps students do not feel they have time to spare to get extra hours of sleep if they have a high workload. These are the theories we have made. There appears to be no correlation between these two aspects.

Female Participation in Sport Bar Chart:

This chart shows that at a younger age, such as 13, there tends to be a high number of females participating in sport for a long period of time. The bar chart shows a decline in the length of time spent exercising between the ages of 14 and 16. Before carrying out our survey, we predicted this would be the case as a variety of statisics have shown that this is a popular age for females to quit sport. We believe this is because of females feeling extra time is required to study for the Junior Cert and so stop spending as much time exercising. The time spent exercising appears to increase again at the age of 17. We speculate that this is due to a rise in awareness about the benefits of exercise with health, however I feel this may be due to a few outliers in the sample at that age who would be more sporty than most girls their age.

Camping Trip - Lough Dan

TY Camping Trip  - Lough Dan

After receiving our Junior Cert results on the Wednesday morning, we were then brought to Lough Dan to begin our camping trip with the entire year. During the three days spent on the camp site we completed many activities such as a 27km hike through the Wicklow countryside which took around 5 hours to complete, cooking our own meals outdoors, going

down the waterslide and roasting marshmallows around the campfire. We all had a great time relaxing with our year group away from the distractions of school life and enjoying the lovely weather. We then returned back to school on the Friday morning exhausted and happy to catch up on the missed sleep from the nights before. 

Chemistry Project - Scientist

My chemistry class was given a variety of scientists that come up on the Leaving Certificate course.

 

Ernest Rutherford

The scientist which i was assigned was Ernest Rutherford. We has to present our project in a scrap book and have all the information hand written.

Below are the notes that I used to complete my project and a few pictures.

Ernest Rutherford – Project Notes

Early background information – nationality, childhood, family, schooling (5

•  Born on the August 30, 1871 in New Zealand
•  4^th of 12 children, the second son
•  His father, James, had little education and struggled to support the large family on a flax-miller’s income.
•  Ernest’s mother, Martha, worked as a schoolteacher. She believed that knowledge was power, and placed a strong emphasis on her children’s education.
•  Nicknamed was ‘Ern’
•  Helped milking the cows etc. on the family farm after school
•  On the weekend he went swimming in to local creek with his brothers
•  Since money was tight they always had to invent
•  Motto in life was, “We haven’t the money, so we’ve got to think”
•  Age of ten he was given his first science book – inspired his scientific mind
•  Very intelligent - In 1887 he was awarded a scholarship to attend Nelson Collegiate School, a private secondary school where he would board and play rugby until 1889.
•  1890 Rutherford landed another scholarship—this time to Canterbury College in Christchurch, New Zealand.
•  Professors fuelled his enthusiasm for seeking concrete proof through scientific experimentation
•  Obtained both his Bachelor of Arts and his Master of Arts degrees there, and managed to achieve first-class honors in math and science.
•  Left for Canada when he was given the opportunity to take the chair of physics at McGill University in Montreal.
•  Married his landlady’s daughter, Mary Newton. The couple married in 1900 and later welcomed a daughter, whom they named Eileen.

Major findings (10)

•  The nucleus in an atom
•  1^st scientific experiment/ break through was his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances
•  Therefore discovering thorium gas
•  By 1911 he had already spent 4 years in the university of Manchester, which is where he held the chair of physics for 12yrs
•  Began work on his famous scattering experiments
• Came across his second ‘eureka moment’
•  He discovered that they majority of the mass of an atom is found in the centre – nucleus had been discovered.
• Third contribution was the world’s first alchemist to transform nitrogen into oxygen.
•  Result of bombarding nitrogen gas with alpha particles so that higher energy protons were ejected.

Theory related to major findings (20)

·         The gold foil experiment

Gold Foil Experiment

·         JJ Thompson’s theory before Rutherford was…. The plum pudding model explained an atom as a positive charge body which contains small negatively charged particles which are called electrons. He also described that the negative charge in atom is balanced with the equal amount of positive charge to maintain the neutrality of atom

·         There were many faults in his theory, which Rutherford later discovered

·         Rutherford discovered the entire structure of the atom while completing the Gold Foil Experiment carried out in 1898, however only published in 1911

·         His research is based on the experiment with alpha particles. Alpha particles are helium atom particles. He did bombardment of positive alpha particles on thin foil of gold approx. 8.6 x 10 -6 centimetres thick and took the observations on the screen of zinc sulphide which was behind the gold foil. He observed the deflection of these bombarded alpha particles on the photographic film

·         This experiment was determined to find out the structure of an atom. By this time it was discovered by J.J. Thomson that electrons are present in an atom and that they are negatively charged. So it was assumed that since an atom is neutral and electrons present are negatively charged, there should be some positive charge inside it that makes it neutral. So Rutherford worked under the discoveries and assumption of J.J. Thomson.

·         The alpha particles were confined to a narrow beam by passing then through a lead sheet through a slit. An extremely thin gold foil was bombarded with the narrow beam of fast moving alpha particles. On bombarding the alpha particles were scattered in different directions with different angles and were detected by florescent rotatable detector which has a microscope and a screen coated with zinc sulphide. The whole experimental setup was placed in an evacuated chamber to prevent scattering by the air molecules. These particles after striking on the screen caused scintillation's

After performing his experiment he made observations:

• Almost all the alpha particles did pass through the foil but
• Some alpha particles were deflected off at different angles as observed at the screen of the detector.
• Very few of the alpha particles (one or two) even bounced backwards after hitting the gold foil.

On the basis of these observations Rutherford made the following conclusions:

• Since most of the alpha particles passed straight through the gold foil without any deflection, most of the space within the atoms is empty.
• Since some of the alpha particles (which are big in size) were deflected by large angles or bounced backwards, they must have approached some positively charged region responsible for the deflection. This positively charged region is now called the nucleus.
• As very few alpha particles undergone the deflection, it was concluded that the volume occupied by the central region ( nucleus ) is very small.
• Since alpha particles which are relatively denser, were deflected by the central volume of charge, it shows that almost the complete mass of the atom must be within the central volume.

·          His theory is considered to be very important in the history of atomic theories as he was the first who discovered and proved the existence of central positive charge i.e. nucleus inside an atom.

Following are the main points of Rutherford’s theory:

• Most of the part of an atom is empty.
• Approximately all the mass of the atom is concentrated at the center of atom which is now called nucleus.
• In the central region of atom, the positively charged particles are present.
• The charge on the nucleus of an atom is positive and is equal to Z.e where Z is charge number, e is charge of proton.
• The negatively charged particles i.e. electrons revolve around the central positive portion in different circular orbits.
• Central region (nucleus) is very small in size if compared to the size of atom.

There were mainly two defects in Rutherford's atomic theory as follows:

1. Being a charged particle, electron must emit energy when it is accelerated, according to classical electromagnetic theory. We know that around the nucleus, the motion of electron is an accelerated motion, hence it must radiate energy. But this does not happen in actual practice. Assume that if it occurs then due to continuous loss of energy orbit of electron must decrease continuously. As a result electron will fall into the nucleus eventually after some time. But this is against the practical situation and hence this shows that atom is unstable.
2. If the electrons emit energy continuously, continuous spectrum should be formed. But in practical line spectrum is observed.

Prizes awarded for work/recognition (5)

·         several honorary degrees and fellowships from organizations such as the Institution of Electrical Engineers

·         In 1914 he was knighted

·         In 1931, he was elevated to the peerage, and granted the title Baron Rutherford of Nelson

·         elected president of the Institute of Physics that same year

·         Nobel Prize in 1908 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his investigations into the disintegration of the elements, and the chemistry of radioactive substances.''  - delighted that he had  transformed from a physicist to a chemist.

·         became a Member of the Order of Merit (Civil Badge) in the New Year's Honour's List for 1925

·         In choosing his coat of arms Ern, and the Herald of Arms, worked in Rutherford elements (the legless swifts on the shield), New Zealand elements (the Kiwi and the Maori warrior), past honours (the Order of Merit), knowledge (the left hand supporter is Hermes Trismegistus, the patron saint of knowledge and alchemists) and his own researches (the shield is quartered by the curves of radioactive growth and decay). A translation of the latin motto is To seek the first principles of things, adapted from Lucretius' On the Nature of The Universe.

Other developments based on these findings, by other scientists and Applications to current use (5)

•     Later on the basis of his theory further improvements were made in the structure of an atom by Neil Bohr and other scientists.
•  913, Neils Bohr, a student of Rutherford's, developed a new model of the atom. He proposed that electrons are arranged in concentric circular orbits around the nucleus. This model is patterned on the solar system and is known as the planetary model.
•  In 1926 Erwin Schrödinger, an Austrian physicist, took the Bohr atom model one step further. Schrödinger used mathematical equations to describe the likelihood of finding an electron in a certain position. This atomic model is known as the quantum mechanical model of the atom.
•  Until 1932, the atom was believed to be composed of a positively charged nucleus surrounded by negatively charged electrons. In 1932, James Chadwick bombarded beryllium atoms with alpha particles. An unknown radiation was produced. Discovered the neutron

Key points for leaving Certificate exam about your Scientist (10)

•  Radioactivity gave him a new method for probing inside atoms
•  His co – workers for the Gold Foil Experiment were Geiger and Marsden
•  Hydrogen nuclei are produced in the break-up of the nuclei of the bombarded atoms
•  1920 he concluded that the hydrogen nuclei were called protons
•  The proton and the electron carry the same charge
• Suggested that the nucleus contains other particles of equal mass to protons but, with no charge, because hydrogen has one proton and helium had two, but heliums mass was four times the mass of hydrogen

·          

Final Years

•  Died in Cambridge on October 19, 1937, following a short illness, and was (ashes) buried in Westminster Abbey
•  Age 66 from the complications of a strangulated hernia
•  West of Sir Isaac Newton's tomb