Electronics:Two 13-year-old students from Co Down have come up with a device that could help reduce injuries and even death caused by quad motorbike accidents. As an added bonus their invention also makes it more difficult to steal the bike.
Adam Magill and Matthew McCartney attend the Christian Brother (Abbey) Grammar School in Co Down and live in a rural part of the county where four-wheeled motorbikes are in demand.
"For Christmas instead of computer games everyone wants a quad," explains Matthew. Adam wrote to the local Daisy Hill Hospital asking about the rate of injury and death on quads. "The number was so high it really made us want to get involved in this project," he said.
Many accidents involve the person coming off the saddle while the bike continues on its way.
They began working on a device that would make the bike stop automatically if the driver was unseated.
They decided it had to be a wireless device and settled on a helmet-mounted ultrasound transmitter similar to the central door locking device in a car. It transmits a continuous signal to a receiver and matching electronics mounted on the bike and only allows the bike to start and move if the rider is seated and wearing the helmet.
"Without the helmet the quad won't start. You have to have the helmet and be sitting on the bike before it will start," Adam said.
If you come off the bike it will stop the engine immediately, adds Matthew. "Also it is a security feature if someone comes to steal the quad. You need the key and the helmet to make it go."
John Tabrica (16), a fourth-year student at St Peter's Community School, Co Cork, applied inventiveness of a different kind in his Young Scientist project with a complex mathematical study of geometry. He looked in particular at the work of Irish mathematician George Salmon (1819-1904), a former provost and professor at Trinity College Dublin.
"He was a pioneer of three-dimensional geometry and conical sections," John said. "I wanted to reintroduce his work and develop new ideas about it." Salmon's work is not well known today but he is famous for his Salmon line, a line which with others intersects a circle to form chords.
A geometric proof of the Salmon Line requires pages of steps and John decided to find a more efficient way to prove the Salmon Line. He decided to base a new proof on the work of an English mathematician, Thomas Simpson.
It took three months to develop the new proof using the Simpson Line, but the proof was much shorter and simpler than the original Salmon Line proof, John explained.
He then used this to solve multiple Salmon Lines intersecting a circle.
Although his project work exists in a very exotic and complex area of maths, he hopes to use his expertise in maths and science to help him qualify to study medicine.
He loves the technical subjects but wants to contribute something practical to society in general, he said.
