China :)

We've started a home ec project recently in which we have to research the culture, cuisine, geography, etc of one country. Myself and Jessica picked China to study.
As an additional part of the assignment, we have to cook three dishes from that country - 2 savoury and 1 sweet or vice versa. Last Thursday during our double class, we cooked sweet & sour chicken with rice. Although we had no red food colouring to make the dish look authentic, it tasted delicious in the end.
We had planned to make spring rolls this week, however there are a lot of unheard of and unavailable ingredients necessary. Instead, we have decided to make honey shredded chicken. Hopefully if will turn out as nice as it did last week :)
I'm not sure yet what we will decide upon for the sweet dish as we're not too familiar with Chinese desserts...

Drama Competition

Last Tuesday we went out to the theatre in Mullingar to perform the dramas we had been working on since the start of the year. The drama that I was in was called "Driving under the Influence" and followed the lives of five teenagers after the death of a fellow classmate. My character was called Kate, who was an unmotivated & lazy student, oblivious to the dangers of the world.
Our school was the first to perform so the other schools had not arrived yet...which I was quite relieved about - it didn't feel so pressurized. Noughts and Crosses was the first group to take the stage, followed by Time of Your Life, But you Didn't, and finally DUI. Everybody from the school performed excellently, despite some problems with the music and lighting,
Once this was all behind us, we went to McDonald's to grab some lunch, before making our way back to the theatre to watch the rest of the plays. I really enjoyed them...even though the themes were pretty strange & far-fetched. The first one was performed by a school from Killkenny & staged the life of a human ant - Zartan. Next up was a drama which told the story of a boyfriend meeting his partners family for the first time. The final play was about the inequality that exists within a school community.
All of the dramas got great feedback from the adjudicator & I am looking forward to finding out the results :)

Scifest Project

After our venture to the RDS for the Young Scientist competition on Friday, myself, Mia & Clara went into Trinity College to carry out some practical work for the upcoming Scifest event. Our project idea is very similar to the one we prepared for the Young Scientist, in that we still tested various every day items for bacteria, however instead of then testing them for immunity to anti-biotics, we will break them down into different categories of bacteria.
The first part of the experiment which we carried out on Friday afternoon involved taking 60 samples:
20 samples of money
20 samples of money
20 samples of random items, eg Mobile phones & pens.
Once these had been gathered using cotton swabs, we placed the swabs into test tubes containing PBS.
These samples were then spread onto agar dishes & places in an incubator for two days to allow sufficient time for bacteria to grow.
The final part of the project involves counting the number of bacteria on each of the agar dishes & breaking some of the unusual ones down further to see how many different types of bacteria exist on the items.

Young Scientist

Well we're just back a week after Christmas break and not much has been happening except the normal project work.
Last Friday all T.Y. and second year students took a trip to the RDS for the BT Young Scientist competition in which schools from all over the country competed. We arrived in town at about 10:30 and made our way into the arena.
While there, we walked around with our friends, looking at the different projects on display. Two groups from St. Wolstans were competing; one TY group and one 5th year group. Some of the stalls offered interactive demonstrations to show us how their project worked eg. there was one group controlling a robot. Overall the projects were very impressive; covering a vast range of scientific areas.
One project which I found particularly interesting was one which researched the deterioration of the blind spot with age. As this is a common problem which most people have to deal with at some point in their life, I thought it was very appropriate and topical.
Throughout the day, we saw various shows in the BT arena, such as: one which was presented by an Australian man and was about the different types of plants and dinosaurs which existed in the past and at present. Another performance which I found fascinating was a fire show demonstrated by two men. This involved creating fireworks, explosions and tornado's using a flame and different materials such as magnesium ribbon and iron filings.
All in all, I had a very enjoyable day looking at projects and talking with students from other schools around the country.