Looked at forwards or backwards, Caoimhe Loftus's project is a striking piece of work. The 15-year-old developed mathematical formulas to predict the number and placement of numeric "palindromes" in a series of numbers.
"A palindrome is something that reads the same forward or backwards," Caoimhe explained. Text examples include radar and rotator and a simple numerical example is the date 2002.
That number and the fact that some reversed number combinations when added can produce palindromes - 14 and 41 equals 55 - got her thinking about whether there were patterns of these occurrences. "I wanted to see their distributions and symmetries," she said.
She looked at our conventional base 10 number system but also base 2 - used by computers - and bases 3, 4 and 5. She took each of these to 6 decimal places and base 2 to 8 decimal places in her search for numeric palindromes.
Patterns began to emerge, so much so that she was able to create formulas for locating patterns in each base counting system. She could predict the number of palindromes and how frequently they would occur. "They are predictable, it depends on the base you use and the number of digits."
She admits she is no maths wizard. "I would say I am pretty average but this was pretty exciting, being able to see these patterns." It encouraged her to delve deeper into this difficult subject. She has lots of experience, however, this being her third Young Scientist exhibition.
Similar brain power was exhibited by two transition-year students from Loreto College, St Stephen's Green. Anna Piggott (16) and Niamh Irving (15) looked at long-term memory and whether this is influenced by left- or right-handed brain dominance.
The left brain hemisphere handles logic and language, while the right handles creativity and spatial aspects.
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