Salters Festival of Chemistry at UCC

Well done to our team of scientists who represented the Coláiste Muire 

at Salter's Festival of Chemistry in UCC recently! 

First year students on the team: 

Niamh Morgan, Niamh O'Shea, Ben Barrett and Tony Lynch 

As well as representing the school in the laboratory during the chemistry competition, the students also toured some important parts of the UCC campus. 

Ogham stones 

Honan Chapel 

At the end of the day, our students had an exclusive tour of a research laboratory from Coláiste Muire past pupil Paul Buckley, who is working on his PhD in atmospheric chemistry in UCC. Paul explained how each of the instruments in his lab are used to collect and analyse information about the quality of air in Ireland. 

Thank you to Salter's Institute of Chemistry and to the Chemistry department at UCC for organising and hosting this successful event.

The Physics Behind a Roller Coaster

Eireann has spent some time researching the physics behind roller coasters! Well done Eireann! 

At the start of a roller coaster ride, the cart is pulled to the top of the first hill but after that, the cart must complete the ride independently.  The roller coaster is moved along the track because the energy converts from potential energy to kinetic energy. The roller coaster can be wooden or steel, the experience of the ride will change depending on the material it is constructed with. They can be all shapes or sizes. It may have a loop or it may not have a loop.  Wooden roller coasters sway a lot more compared to steel roller coasters. 

Inertia allows the roller coaster to glide along the tracks without an engine. Isaac Newton was the scientist who discovered inertia, it was his first law of motion.

“An object at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted on by an unbalanced external force. An object in motion will stay moving in the same speed and same direction unless acted on by an unbalanced external force.”

Read more about roller coasters at the following websites: 

http://www.learner.org/interactives/parkphysics/coaster.html

http://www.explainthatstuff.com/

https://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/rollercoaster.html

Student Spotlight: density, flotation and the human body

By Stevie Girasole 

Flotation  

Flotation is the phenomenon related to the relative buoyancy of matter. 
Understanding flotation is useful, for example when adding material to the hull of a watercraft to keep the hull afloat. 
Flotation is used in process engineering, as a method for the separation of mixtures e.g de-inking which is a process that takes ink from paper to make it a blank page again.  

Density  

The density (also known as the volumetric mass density) of a substance is its mass per unit volume. The symbol most often used for density is ρ, although the Latin letter D can also be used.  

Density or the volumetric mass of density is calculated by dividing the mass of the object by its volume, e.g: 

Mass of object = 5g 

Volume = 10cm3 
Density = mass/volume = 5g/10cm3 = 0.5g/cm3

How does the human body float in water? 

The density of water is 1g/cm3 and the average density of the human body is 1.062g/cm3 so therefore, the human body should not float. But there's an exception to this concept. In the human body, obviously there's extra muscle and fat, in ordinary water, fat will float because of its density of 0.9094g/cm3 so the more fat you have in your body, the more likely you are to float, but, if you have muscle you will sink because of its density of 1.0599g/cm3.  

Well done Stevie! 

Student spotlight: what is an atom?

This article was researched and written by Stevie Girasole. Great work Stevie! 

Atoms are the basic building blocks of ordinary matter. Atoms can join together to form molecules, which in turn form most of the objects around you. Atoms are composed of particles called protons, electrons and neutrons, according to Oxford English online dictionary.

As you can see from the diagram above, atoms are inside the nucleus all bundled up with protons and neutrons to form ordinary matter. The electron moves around the nucleus in a somewhat circular motion.

There are ninety naturally occurring types of atoms, and scientists have discovered how to make around twenty more.

http://ed.ted.com/lessons/just-how-small-is-an-atom 

Student spotlight: bloody good

This article was researched and written by David Oki. Well done David! 

Blood is made up of watery plasma in which three types of cell are suspended: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets.      

This video shows how centrifugation (spinning a test tube of blood at high speeds) is used to separate blood into its components.  

                                                         

Plasma                       

Plasma is 90% water and contains dissolved substances such as glucose, amino acids, fatty acid, mineral, vitamins, carbon dioxide, urea, hormones, antibodies and large soluble protein.  

Red blood cell           

Biconcave discs, with no nucleus or mitochondria. They live for 120 days and are then broken down by the liver. They are made continuously in the red bone marrow of the sternum, ribs and vertebrae. They contain the red, iron-containing chemical haemoglobin which can combine with oxygen to form oxyhaemoglobin.      

White blood cells                              

Larger and less numerous than red blood cells, they have a nucleus. They protect the body against disease. There are two types: monocytes and lymphocytes. Monocytes have a lobed nucleus and tiny granules in the cytoplasm. They engulf bacteria by phagocytosis.                                          

Platelets                                    

These are fragments of cells formed in the red bone marrow. They have an important role in clotting of the blood.